| What characteristics distinguish the processes of state formation and conflict that take place beyond the great powers? Contemporary debates regarding the role of the state in the developing world have produced much theoretical discourse, but relatively few conclusive empirical findings. Additionally, while a certain body of research in world politics has examined the domestic roots of international systems, little if any has done so comparatively across geographic areas. This study examines the evolution of state systems in developing world regions (i.e., Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, Central and Southeast Asia) from the date of political independence to 2001. The theoretical framework incorporates the propositions that the central problem of Third World state formation has been (1), the relative absence of the consolidation of geographic boundaries in response to external military threats, and (2), the limited ability of governments to project their authority over sparsely inhabited territories. Additional hypotheses address several theoretical concerns within the specific context of developing nations: the role of population and topography in economic administration; the impact of ethnolinguistic divisions on governance; the dynamics of domestic protests and violence; the political effect of external challenges to territorial integrity; and the relationship between boundaries and interstate conflict. These are evaluated using multiple regression techniques for a total of 87 countries, with attention to structural or contextual differences across regions, applied at three levels of analysis. The domestic-level model relies on ordinary least squares (OLS), and introduces a measure of internal power projection capability (IPP) that indicates the ability of political elites to administer taxation across territorial space. A second international-level model applies ordered logit (OL) to estimate the impact of these domestic structural variables on the extent of state participation in monadic militarized interstate disputes (MIDs). Finally, simultaneous or two-staged least squares (2SLS) equations are introduced in order to address possible interdependence between internal and external variables. The outcomes suggest that while several predictors have had a significant impact on trends of consolidation and conflict across systems, there is considerable variation in effects between regions, calling into question common generalizations about the intrinsic qualities of developing states. |
