Explaining Wars in the Modern World, 1816–2001
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From Empire to Nation-State: Explaining Wars in the Modern World, 1816–2001 Andreas Wimmer Brian Min University of California, Los Angeles University of California, Los Angeles The existing quantitative literature on war takes the independent nation-state as the self- evident unit of analysis and largely excludes other political types from consideration. In contrast, the authors argue that the change in the institutional form of states is itself a major cause for war. The rise of empires and the global spread of the nation-state are the most important institutional transformations in the modern age. To test this hypothesis, the authors introduce a new data set that records the outbreak of war in fixed geographic territories from 1816 to 2001, independent of the political entity in control of a territory. Analysis of this data set demonstrates that wars are much more likely during and because of these two transformations. For the transformation to the modern nation-state, the authors confirm this hypothesis further with logit regressions that control for variables that have been robustly significant in previous research. The results provide support for the main mechanisms that explain this time dependency. Modern nation- states are ruled in the name of a nationally defined people, in contrast to empires, which govern to spread a faith across the world, to bring civilization to backward people, or to advance the world revolutionary cause. The institution of the nation-state thus introduces incentives for political elites to privilege members of the national majority over ethnic minorities, and for minority elites to mobilizeDelivered against by Ingenta such political to : discrimination. The American Sociological Association resulting power struggles over the ethno-nationalTue, 09 Jan 2007character 16:17:57 of the state may escalate into civil wars. Interstate wars can result from attempts to protect co-nationals who are politically excluded in neighboring states. The reported research thus provides a corrective to mainstream approaches, which exclude ethnic and nationalist politics as factors that would help understanding the dynamics of war. he lives and memories of most contempo- a postcolonial civil war. The list of current con- Traries have been shaped by the destructive flicts is long and includes entries from power of war. Entire generations fought and Afghanistan to Zaire. “Events of the recent past died in the two world wars. Throughout the have once again clearly demonstrated that the developing world, many remember the armed world is not yet ready for perpetual peace” struggles for independence or have experienced (Hintze 1975:215). This statement is as obvi- Direct correspondence to Andreas Wimmer, advice regarding research design and data coding; Department of Sociology, University of California Michael Hechter, Stathis Kalyvas, Jack Katz and Los Angeles, 264 Haines Hall, Box 951551, Los Rob Mare for offering us opportunities to present this Angeles, CA 90095–1551 ([email protected]). paper to various audiences; Lars-Erik Cederman, The authors thank Nicole Busse, Wesley Hiers, Michael Ross, Nicholas Sambanis, and Christopher Veronika Lenarz, Ani Sarkissian, and Nusrat Sheikh Winship for generous comments on a first written ver- for excellent research assistance; Christopher sion of this article. Four outstanding anonymous Blattman, Lars-Erik Cederman, Xiao Chen, Indra reviewers helped to improve and clarify the argu- de Soysa, Felix Elwert, Havard Hegre, Rob Mare, ments. All responsibility for errors of thought or fact Lillian Min, John O’Neal, and Michael Ross, for remains with the authors. AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW, 2006, VOL. 71 (December:867–897) 868—–AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW ously true today as when it was when penned Our study intends to overcome three basic 100 years ago by Otto Hintze in what is perhaps limitations of mainstream quantitative research the first sociological treatise on warfare. on war. First, most current conflict scholars Why do wars break out? Where and when are focus on short-term dynamics, such as the they most likely to occur? Despite the early impact of democratization over five years interest by Hintze and others of his generation, (Mansfield and Snyder 1995) or the effects of sociology has subsequently left the study of independence over two years (Fearon and Laitin these questions to other disciplines. Sociologists 2003). Recently, scholars have assembled ever have discussed war as a cause for other phe- more disaggregated data sets to explain where nomena of interest to them, but rarely as an and when wars are fought (Levy 1998), includ- explanandum in its own right. Thus, a long and ing detailed war event histories that decompose respectable tradition in comparative historical a civil war into various battle episodes (Raleigh sociology, stretching from the early work of and Hegre 2005) or studies of war theaters at the Ratzenhofer (1893) to Tilly (1975) and Centeno regional level (Buhaug and Rod 2005). (2003), analyzes the role of war in the making Meanwhile, macropolitical perspectives have of the modern, sovereign state in Western largely been abandoned. Europe and beyond. Another tradition was ini- The once prominent long-wave theories of tiated by Theda Skocpol’s (1979) well-known war sought to explain the periodic recurrence of book, in which she looked at how wars helped world wars as a consequence of economic cycles to bring about the great revolutions of the past stretched over six decades (Goldstein 1991), or centuries, such as those of Russia and China. of the rise and fall of hegemonic powers that Meanwhile, research into the causes of war has compete for preeminence in world politics remained almost the exclusive domain of his- (Modelski and Morgan 1985; Thompson 1988). torians and political scientists.1 Although there is no doubt that the past two cen- Yet sociology has much to offer for the study turies have seen several such global wars involv- Delivered by Ingenta to : of war. This article shows that Americanthat the macro- Sociologicaling Associationthe major power centers of the world, most historical processes traditionally Tue,studied 09 Janby 2007researchers 16:17:57 now recognize that they do not fol- comparative sociologists need to be taken into low a clear pattern of periodicity. In other words, account to arrive at a proper understanding of there are no cycles of a uniform length between why, where, and when wars break out. We assert global wars. that two such processes play an especially With this article, we attempt to revitalize this important role in the history of modern war: the macropolitical perspective by examining pat- expansion of empires during the 19th century terns of conflict over the span of decades rather and the spread of nation-states across the world than across a handful of years as in mainstream during the 20th century. contemporary research. In contrast to long- That empire building and nation-state forma- cycles theory, however, we do not conceive of tion are major driving forces of war might not the globe as an integrated system, nor as a sin- come as a surprise to scholars well versed in gle unit of observation, but rather as an arena world history or those familiar with the political for the discontinuous diffusion of institutional development of a particular region. It represents, forms. however, a new insight for the highly specialized Second, the standard units of analysis in quan- literature on wars that has emerged over the past titative political science are existing independ- several decades. Furthermore, considerable ent states, which are treated as continuous and methodological obstacles need to be overcome for comparatively stable entities once they enter this hypothesis to be evaluated in quantitative the international community of states. This over- terms. To that end, we created a new data set of looks the fact that their institutional shape and wars from 1816 to 2001 that identifies conflicts territorial extension may change dramatically in all of the world’s territories, including most pre- over time, not least as a consequence of war.2 colonial and all colonial lands. 2 For a general discussion of the problems associ- 1 A partial exception is Randall Collins’s theory of ated with the assumption of constant units—when geopolitics (see summary in Collins 1995). they may de facto merge or split—see Abbott (1998). FROM EMPIRE TO NATION-STATE—–869 Tsarist Russia of 1846, for example, is con- state, and thus are most likely to break out when ceived to be the same unit as the Soviet Union these institutional principles are contested. More of 1926 and the Russian Federation of 2006. precisely, our model suggests that the mecha- Even more disconcerting, standard country- nisms relating nation-state formation to war are year data sets exclude those parts of the world’s similar: wars over territory inhabited by co- surface and population that are not governed by nationals on the other side of a state border independent states—still more than half of the globe by 1900. With such data sets, we cannot (commonly called irredentist or revanchist wars) observe the consequences of macro-institutional follow the same logic of nationalist politics that transformations such as the colonization of the may drive civil wars, as majorities and ethnic world in the 19th century or the shift to the minorities compete for control over the state nation-state form during the 20th. (Weiner 1971). The entrenched division of labor To overcome these difficulties, our data set between scholars of interstate wars and schol- uses fixed geographic territories as the unit of ars of civil wars may be an obstacle to the devel- analysis, independently of whether a territory is opment of an encompassing understanding of part of an internationally recognized inde- war, as many political scientists have recently pendent state. By relating each territory’s con- flict history to its history of institutional change observed.