POL327Y5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Indirect Rule, Protection Racket, Theda Skocpol
Document Summary
Lecture 2 - tilly - state formation as organized crime (summary part 2) Main point: war makes states, states make war. Tilly traces the origins of european state formation and parallels it with crime organizations. His argument sets on the use of force, a necessary tool for government authority, but not sufficient on its own. The roles of the state are: war making (dealing with outside threats) State making (creating the inherit inside of the country) Protection (security for their clients: extraction (a means of ensuring these are possible) Focusing on extraction, tilly finds different ways to provide resources including plundering and taxation. In medieval europe, there was little other way of financing the above mentioned roles of the state other than simply fighting for spoils or taxing subjects. Neither is a particularly sustainable model endlessly support a state. That didn"t stop kings and princes from engaging in these behaviors though.
