Constructing a federal state: Political development, path dependence, and the origins of federalism in modern Europe, 1815--1871

This dissertation answers two questions: First, why do states merge together to form larger political units? Second, why, when farming larger political units, do they sometimes form federations and other times unitary state structures? In answering these questions, this study synthesizes existing accounts of the causes of national unification and shows the limits of existing theories of federalism's origins to propose a new perspective on the conditions under which federal states are constructed.;The analysis is centered around the following empirical puzzle: Why in the middle of the 19th century did the two new nation-states of Germany and Italy follow such similar trajectories of national unification but adopt such different institutional solutions to the task of national unification? In answering this question, the study makes three broad sets of comparisons. First, I combine Mill's "Method of Difference" and "Method of Agreement" to explore the impact of two potential causes---one societal and the other state-centered---that have been frequently used to explain why nation-states were created. Using the twenty-four pre-national Italian and German states as my units of analysis, I demonstrate how societal and state factors interacted to give rise to national unification in both cases. Second, I repeat Mill's "Method of Difference" but with a different set of hypotheses on the causes of federalism. Here, I show the limits of existing theory and propose a new state-centered perspective on federalism's origins that emphasizes the level of institutional capacity of the constituent states. Coupling new quantitative data with a narrative account, the study demonstrates that because Prussia inherited a set of states in Germany with higher levels of institutional capacity than Piedmont inherited in Italy, federalism was created in 19th century Germany while federalism, though desired and sought in 19th century Italy, could not be achieved. In the last chapter of the study, a third comparison is conducted and the argument is systematically tested and refined with evidence from the seventeen largest nation-states in contemporary Europe. The central finding of the dissertation is that if regional political institutions are consolidated before national unification, federalism is likely to be constructed.