| Some states are strong, having centralized political power and removed violent challenges to state authority. They possess competent bureaucracies, collect taxes efficiently, and maintain steady sources of revenue. Generally speaking, these strong states uphold law and order, enforce property rights, and deliver public services to their entire population. However, other states are weak. They continue to experience violent challenges to state authority, and have difficultly collecting taxes. Possessing small, poorly equipped militaries, these weak states consistently fail to provide security and state services to many parts of the population. The primary research question that this dissertation seeks to address is: why are some states strong and others weak? What factors account for divergent patterns of state development? This dissertation examines patterns of state development in Colombia and Chile during the nineteenth and twentieth century by drawing upon original data on taxation, policing, and infrastructural development.;The central argument of this dissertation is that state building was shaped by the type and timing of conflict that each country experienced during the nineteenth century. I argue that Colombia emerged from the nineteenth century as a weak state as a result of frequent rural, regional conflict that occurred; and because of the factionalized nature of the political regime. I argue that successful Chilean state building was shaped by concerted elite responses to internal ethnic conflicts, class-based insurgencies, and international war. I also contend that initial patterns of state building were self-perpetuating. In Chile, societal elites came to rely on the services provided by an effective central government. In Colombia, the state remained absent throughout much of national territory and state services were instead usurped by local elites, who emerged in the twentieth century as a barrier to state expansion. |
