Building a state one step at a time: Evidence from France

Cédric Chambru, Emeric Henry and Benjamin Marx in this research at voxeu look at how France was built step by step:

Effective states can raise taxes and armies, enforce laws, and produce public goods, but how these functions are built over time is not well understood. This column studies the administrative reform initiated by the French Revolution, one of history’s most ambitious state-building experiments, to shed light on the sequence of steps needed to build effective states. Cities chosen as local administrative centres initially invested in the state’s capacity to extract resources from citizens. These cities may not have grown in the short run, but the investments eventually delivered payoffs in terms of public goods, which stimulated long-run growth. 

Interesting!