ECONOMY

obert h. bates 719
promoted order and prosperity? Much could be learned as well by investigating
the transformation of the Kuomintang, whose leaders behaved as warlords on the
mainland but who turned developmental in Taiwan.
I sketched out three paths that descend from the knife edge. Research into each
would yield bountiful rewards. To focus on but one, consider the evolutionary account.
Much could be learned by comparing two regions, one with high levels of military
competition and another in which warfare has been suppressed. A comparison
between Europe and China would be apt. 6 So too would a study of economic development
in Africa, especially in the traditional states, before and after the imposition
of colonial “order.”
Such suggestions take as their premiss the argument of this chapter and respond
to the priorities that it implies. More valuable in the longer run, however, would be
a reformulation of that argument. I have in mind a program of research into what
could be termed “the industrial organization” of violence.
The production of coercion requires the inputs of labor and capital. By harnessing
a technology of violence (in the words of the old theory of the firm) or by forging a
“nexus of contracts” (in the words of contemporary theories), managers transform
these inputs into physical force. In doing so, they are subject to constraints (e.g.
mountainous terrain: Fearon and Laitin 2003); and they have to act in anticipation
of the best response of their opponent. The research program I endorse would view
conflict in this manner.
Adopting this perspective, consider the difference between decentralized and centralized
societies. In the competition for scarce resources, one strategy might be to
disperse and to infiltrate (as in Sahlins 1961) while another might be to bunch up and
to invade. The first response would lead to societies that appear stateless; the second,
to those in apparent possession of a state. To understand the manner in which such
choices are made, scholars might well turn to literature on industrial organization,
with its analyses of the strategic choice of competitive behavior, or to biology, with its
models of the conditions under which populations disperse or swarm.
Or, to return once again to history, consider the Thirty Years War. 7 On the one hand
stood (Albrecht Wenzel Eusebius von) Wallenstein. Recruiting, supplying, and moving
large forces, he became one of the most formidable commanders in the conflict.
While successful economically and militarily, Count Wallenstein did not create a state.
He favored “spot contracts” for soldiers and supplies, abjured incomplete contracts,
and failed to build organizations that were longer lived than those that staffed them.
On the other stood Gustavus Adolphus, an equally formidable commander. While
receiving aid from France, Sweden was poor and the resources at his command paled
by comparison with those available to Wallenstein. But although facing the same
hostile terrain as Wallenstein, Gustavus Adolphus forged relationships that endured.
The political order he helped to forge outlived him and those he commanded. By
viewing the “contract” offered by Gustavus Adolphus to his followers through the
⁶ Philip Hoffman and Jean-Laurant Rosenthal are undertaking such a comparison.
⁷ A more fruitful subject for this enquiry than others, such as the First World War, which political
scientists more frequently ponder.