State-Building, à la Louis XIV

Sheri Berman (author of an excellent and totally unrelated book) has an interesting piece in Foreign Affairs positing that it’s useful to take a look at state-building in early-modern Europe in order to get a clearer view of the challenges and possibilities of state-building in contemporary Afghanistan without an orientalist lens. Consider, in other words, a time when instead of “warlords” we just had “lords” and centralizing monarchs wanted to create a unitary state.

Corruption was involved:

During the second half of the seventeenth century, accordingly, he and his ministers focused on buying off and winning over key individuals and social groups that might otherwise obstruct their state-building efforts. Adapting and expanding a common practice, for example, they repeatedly sold state offices to the highest bidders; by the eighteenth century, almost all the posts in the French government were for sale, including those dealing with the administration of justice. These offices brought annual incomes, a license to extract further revenues from the population at large, and exemptions from various impositions. The system had drawbacks in terms of technocratic effectiveness, but it also had compensating benefits for the crown: selling off public posts was an easy way to raise money and helped turn members of the gentry and the emerging bourgeoisie into officeholders. Rather than depending on local or personal sources of revenue, these new officeholders eventually developed new interests connected to the broader national system.

Louis XIV and his ministers also adopted what would now be called targeted tax breaks. Nobles were freed from the hated taille (a direct levy on property), and the church was allowed to keep the revenue it earned from the land it owned (between six and ten percent of the country’s territory) in exchange for modest gifts to the king. The church was also permitted to collect the tithe — one-tenth of every person’s livelihood.

As was seemingly wasteful spending:

Another tactic designed to secure the state’s authority was the construction of Louis XIV’s glittering palace at Versailles, which was officially established as the seat of the French court in 1682. The luxury of the palace was more than merely a celebration of the wealth and power of the Sun King; it was also a crucial weapon in his battle to domesticate the obstreperous French nobility. Louis XIV made the aristocracy’s presence at Versailles a key prerequisite for their obtaining favor, patronage, and power. By assembling many of the most important local notables at his court, he was able to watch over them closely while separating them from their local power bases. The tradeoff was clear: in return for abandoning their local authority and autonomy, nobles were given handsome material rewards and the opportunity to participate in the court’s luxurious lifestyle.

Her bottom line: “Despite all the ways the contemporary world differs from the past, there is little reason to expect that history’s lessons about state building no longer apply: it can be accomplished almost anywhere, but only after a long, hard slog.”