Political Order, Violence and Institutions

What is politics?

Required Reading
Sartori, Giovanni. "What is "Politics"?." Political Theory 1, no. 1 (1973): 5-26.

Suggested Readings
Lasswell, Harold D. Politics, Il Politico , MARZO 1979, Vol. 44, No. 1: 7-33

Further Readings
Cioffi-Revilla, Claudio, and Harvey Starr. "Opportunity, willingness and political uncertainty: Theoretical foundations of politics." Journal of Theoretical Politics 7, no. 4 (1995): 447-476.

Deutsch, Karl W. "On the concepts of politics and power." Journal of International Affairs 21, no. 2 (1967): 232-241.

Sartori, Giovanni. "Politics, ideology, and belief systems." American Political Science Review 63, no. 2 (1969): 398-411.

Sartori, Giovanni. "The essence of the political in Carl Schmitt." Journal of Theoretical Politics 1, no. 1 (1989): 63-75.


What is conflict?

Required Reading
North, Douglass Cecil, John Joseph Wallis, and Barry R. Weingast. Violence and social orders: A conceptual framework for interpreting recorded human history. Cambridge University Press, 2009. Pp 1-29.

Suggested reading
Coase, Ronald Harry. "The problem of social cost." The journal of Law and Economics 56, no. 4 (2013): 837-877.

Further Readings

Coser, Lewis A. "Social conflict and the theory of social change." The British journal of sociology 8, no. 3 (1957): 197-207.

Simmel, Georg. "The sociology of conflict. I." American journal of sociology 9, no. 4 (1904): 490-525.

Simmel, Georg. "The sociology of conflict. II." American Journal of Sociology 9, no. 5 (1904): 672-689.




What is political violence?

Required Reading
Kalyvas, Stathis N. 2019. "The Landscape of Political Violence." The Oxford Handbook of Terrorism.


Suggested Reading
Kalyvas, Stathis N. "The ontology of "political violence": action and identity in civil wars." Perspectives on politics 1, no. 3 (2003): 475-494.

Further Readings
Bates, Robert, Avner Greif, and Smita Singh. "Organizing violence." Journal of Conflict Resolution 46, no. 5 (2002): 599-628.

Besley, Timothy, and Torsten Persson. "The logic of political violence." The quarterly journal of economics 126, no. 3 (2011): 1411-1445.

Hirshleifer, Jack. "The dark side of the force: Western Economic Association International 1993 presidential address." Economic Inquiry 32, no. 1 (1994): 1.

Tilly, Charles. The politics of collective violence. Cambridge University Press, 2003.




What is political order?

Required Reading
Robert H. Bates "Probing the sources of political order" In Kalyvas, Stathis N., Ian Shapiro, and Tarek E. Masoud. Order, conflict, and violence. Cambridge University Press, 2008

Suggested Reading
Huntington, Samuel P. "Political development and political decay." World politics 17, no. 3 (1965): 386-430.

Further Readings

Davenport, Christian. "State repression and political order." Annu. Rev. Polit. Sci. 10 (2007): 1-23.

Hayek, Friedrich A. "The principles of a liberal social order." Il politico (1966): 601-618.

Staniland, Paul. "States, insurgents, and wartime political orders." Perspectives on politics 10, no. 2 (2012): 243-264.





Governments and Governance

Required Reading
Fukuyama, Francis. "Governance: What do we know, and how do we know it?." Annual Review of Political Science 19 (2016): 89-105.

Suggested Reading
De Mesquita, Bruce Bueno, Alastair Smith, Randolph M. Siverson, and James D. Morrow. Chapter 2, The Theory, The logic of political survival. MIT press, 2005.

Further Readings
Fukuyama, Francis. "What is governance?" Governance 26, no. 3 (2013): 347-368.

Lake, David A. "Rightful rules: Authority, order, and the foundations of global governance." International Studies Quarterly 54, no. 3 (2010): 587-613.

Rotberg, Robert I. "Good governance means performance and results." Governance 27, no. 3 (2014): 511-518.

Conflict, Institutions and Regimes

Required Reading
Olson, Mancur. "Dictatorship, Democracy, and Development." American Political Science Review 87, no. 03 (1993): 567-576.

Suggested reading
Przeworski, Adam. "Divided we stand? Democracy as a method of processing conflicts 1: The 2010 Johan Skytte Prize Lecture." Scandinavian Political Studies 34, no. 2 (2011): 168-182.

Further Readings
Hegre, Håvard. "Democracy and armed conflict." Journal of Peace Research 51, no. 2 (2014): 159-172.

Møller J, Skaaning S-E. 2014. The state-democracy nexus: conceptual distinctions, theoretical perspectives, and comparative approaches. Democratization 21(7):1203-20

Przeworski, Adam. Crises of democracy. Cambridge University Press, 2019.


State as Institution

Required Reading
Poggi, Gianfranco. The development of the modern state: A sociological introduction. Stanford University Press, 1978. Chapter 1

Suggested Reading
Poggi, Gianfranco. The development of the modern state: A sociological introduction. Stanford University Press, 1978. Chapter 6

Further Readings
Spruyt, Hendrik. "The origins, development, and possible decline of the modern state." Annual review of political science5, no. 1 (2002): 127-149.

Poggi, Gianfranco. "Theories of state formation." The Wiley‐Blackwell Companion to Political Sociology (2012): 93-106.

Vu, Tuong. "Studying the state through state formation." World politics 62, no. 1 (2010): 148-175.


State Development

Required Reading
Tilly, Charles. "War Making and State Making as Organized Crime" in Bringing the State Back edited by Peter Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and Theda Skocpol (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).

Suggested Readings
Levi, Margaret. "The predatory theory of rule." Politics & Society 10, no. 4 (1981): 431-465.

Mazzuca, Sebastián Latecomer State Formation, chapter A Theory of Latecomer State
Yale University Press. (2021)

Further Readings
Karaman, K. Kivanc, and Şevket Pamuk. "Different paths to the modern state in Europe: the interaction between warfare, economic structure, and political regime." American Political Science Review 107, no. 3 (2013): 603-626.

Cohen, Youssef, Brian R. Brown, and Abramo Fimo Kenneth Organski. "The paradoxical nature of state making: The violent creation of order." American Political Science Review 75, no. 4 (1981): 901-910.

Besley, Timothy, and Torsten Persson. "State capacity, conflict, and development." Econometrica 78, no. 1 (2010): 1-34.

Kelemen, R. Daniel, and Kathleen R. McNamara. "State-building and the European Union: Markets, War, and Europe's Uneven political development." Comparative Political Studies55, no. 6 (2022): 963-991.

Hopkins, Terence K., and Immanuel Wallerstein. "Patterns of development of the modern world-system." Review (Fernand Braudel Center) (1977): 111-145.


State Capacity

Required Reading
Mann, Michael. "The autonomous power of the state: its origins, mechanisms and results." European journal of sociology 25, no. 02 (1984): 185-213.

Suggested Reading
Suryanarayan, Pavithra. "Endogenous State Capacity." Annual Review of Political Science 27 (2023).


Further Readings
Acemoglu, Daron, and James A. Robinson. "Weak, despotic, or inclusive? How state type emerges from state versus civil society competition." American Political Science Review 117, no. 2 (2023): 407-420.

Berwick, Elissa, and Fotini Christia. "State capacity redux: Integrating classical and experimental contributions to an enduring debate." Annual Review of Political Science 21 (2018): 71-91.

Hanson, Jonathan K., and Rachel Sigman. "Leviathan's latent dimensions: Measuring state capacity for comparative political research." The Journal of Politics 83, no. 4 (2021): 1495-1510.

Nathan, Noah L. The Scarce State. Cambridge University Press, 2023.

Nation Making

Required Reading

Linz, J.J., 1993. State building and nation building. European Review, 1(4), pp.355-369.

Suggested Reading

Migdal, Joel S. "State building and the non-nation-state." Journal of International Affairs (2004): 17-46.


Further Readings
Alesina, Alberto, Bryony Reich, and Alessandro Riboni. "Nation-building, nationalism, and wars∗." Journal of Economic Growth 25, no. 4 (2020): 381-430.

Connor, Walker. "Nation-building or nation-destroying?." World politics 24, no. 3 (1972): 319-355.

Cederman, Lars-Erik, Luc Girardin, and Carl Müller-Crepon. "Nationalism and the puzzle of reversing state size." World Politics 75, no. 4 (2023): 692-734.

Rokkan, Stein. "Nation-building: A review of models and approaches." Current sociology 19, no. 3 (1971): 7-38.



State rupture I: occupations (external threat)
Required Reading
Edelstein, D.M., 2004. Occupational hazards: Why military occupations succeed or fail. International Security, pp.49-91.

Suggested Reading
Lake, David A. 2016, The Statebuilder's Dilemma: On the Limits of Foreign Intervention. Cornell University Press,

Further Readings
Hechter, Michael. "Alien rule and its discontents." American Behavioral Scientist 53, no. 3 (2009): 289-310.

Kocher, Matthew Adam, Adria K. Lawrence, and Nuno P. Monteiro. "Nationalism, collaboration, and resistance: France under Nazi occupation." International Security 43, no. 2 (2018): 117-150.

Lawrence, Adria. "Triggering nationalist violence: Competition and conflict in uprisings against colonial rule." International Security 35, no. 2 (2010): 88-122.


Required Reading
Downes, Alexander B. Catastrophic success: why foreign-imposed regime change goes wrong. Cornell University Press, 2021. Chapters 1 and 2

Suggested Reading
Lee, Melissa M. "International statebuilding and the domestic politics of state development." Annual Review of Political Science 25 (2022): 261-281

Further Readings
Byman, Daniel. "An autopsy of the Iraq debacle: policy failure or bridge too far?." Security Studies 17, no. 4 (2008): 599-643.

Russell, Kevin, and Nicholas Sambanis. "Stopping the violence but blocking the peace: dilemmas of foreign-imposed nation building after ethnic war." International Organization 76, no. 1 (2022): 126-163.

Siroky, David S., and John Cuffe. "Lost autonomy, nationalism and separatism." Comparative Political Studies 48, no. 1 (2015): 3-34.

Yi, Joowon. "Demand for Statehood: The Case of Native Military Recruitment in World War II." International Studies Quarterly 67, no. 4 (2023): sqad080.




State rupture 2 : civil war ( interna threat)

Required Reading
Sambanis, Nicholas. "What is civil war? Conceptual and empirical complexities of an operational definition." Journal of conflict resolution 48, no. 6 (2004): 814-858.

Suggested Reading
Sambanis, Nicholas, and Jonah Schulhofer-Wohl. "Sovereignty rupture as a central concept in quantitative measures of civil war." Journal of Conflict Resolution 63, no. 6 (2019): 1542-1578.

Further Readings
Bates, Robert H. "State failure." Annu. Rev. Polit. Sci. 11 (2008): 1-12.

Blattman, Christopher, and Edward Miguel. "Civil war." Journal of Economic literature 48, no. 1 (2010): 3-57.

Walter, Barbara F. "The new new civil wars." Annual Review of Political Science 20 (2017): 469-486.



Required Reading
Cederman, Lars-Erik, and Manuel Vogt. "Dynamics and logics of civil war." Journal of Conflict Resolution 61, no. 9 (2017): 1992-2016.

Suggested Reading
Cederman, Lars-Erik, Nils B. Weidmann, and Kristian Skrede Gleditsch. "Horizontal inequalities and ethnonationalist civil war: A global comparison." American Political Science Review105, no. 3 (2011): 478-495.

Further Readings
Arjona, Ana. "Wartime institutions: a research agenda." Journal of Conflict Resolution 58, no. 8 (2014): 1360-1389.

Balcells, Laia, and Jessica A. Stanton. "Violence against civilians during armed conflict: Moving beyond the macro-and micro-level divide." Annual Review of Political Science 24 (2021): 45-69.

Lewis, Janet I. "How does ethnic rebellion start?." Comparative Political Studies 50, no. 10 (2017): 1420-1450.


State rupture 3: Revolutions

Required Reading

Beissinger, Mark R. "The Evolving Study of Revolution." World Politics (2024).

Suggested Reading
Goldstone, J.A., Grinin, L. and Korotayev, A., 2022. The phenomenon and theories of revolutions. In Handbook of revolutions in the 21st century: The new waves of revolutions, and the causes and effects of disruptive political change (pp. 37-68). Cham: Springer International Publishing.


Further Readings

Hobsbwam, Eric "Revolutions" in Porter, Roy, and Mikuláš Teich, eds. Revolution in history. Cambridge University Press, 1986.

Lachapelle, Jean, Steven Levitsky, Lucan A. Way, and Adam E. Casey. "Social revolution and authoritarian durability." World Politics 72, no. 4 (2020): 557-600.

Tullock, Gordon. 1971. "The Paradox of Revolution." Public Choice 11, no. 1: 89- 99.


Required Reading
Kuran, Timur. "Now out of never: The element of surprise in the East European revolution of 1989." World politics 44, no. 1 (1991): 7-48.

Suggested Reading
Beissinger, M.R., 2022. Chapter A Spatial Theory of Revolution in The revolutionary city: Urbanization and the global transformation of rebellion. Princeton University Press

Further Readings

Bayat, Asef. 2021. "The Arab Spring and Revolutionary Theory: An Intervention in a Debate." Journal of Historical Sociology 34, no. 2: 393-400

Kurzman, Charles. 1996. "Structural Opportunity and Perceived Opportunity in Social-Movement Theory: The Iranian Revolution of 1979." American Sociological Review 61, no. 1: 153-70

Walt, Stephen M. "Revolution and war." World Politics 44, no. 3 (1992): 321-368.

Weyland, Kurt. 2009. "The Diffusion of Revolution: '1848' in Europe and Latin America." International Organization 63, no. 3: 391-423





Transnational Governance
Required Reading

Abbott, K.W. and Snidal, D., 2010. International regulation without international government: Improving IO performance through orchestration. The Review of International Organizations, 5, pp.315-344.

Suggested Reading

Koremenos, Barbara, Charles Lipson, and Duncan Snidal. "The Rational Design of International Institutions." International Organization 55, no. 04 (2001): 761-99

Further Readings
Hale, Thomas. "Transnational actors and transnational governance in global environmental politics." Annual Review of Political Science 23 (2020): 203-220.

Mearsheimer, John J. "The False Promise of International Institutions." International Security 19, no. 3 (Winter 1994-1995): 5-49.

Wendt, Alexander. "Why a world state is inevitable." European journal of international relations 9, no. 4 (2003): 491-542.

EU and other experiments

Required Reading
Pollack, Mark A. "Theorizing the European Union: international organization, domestic polity, or experiment in new governance?." Annu. Rev. Polit. Sci. 8 (2005): 357-398.

Suggested Reading
Sabel, Charles F., and Jonathan Zeitlin. "Learning from difference: The new architecture of experimentalist governance in the EU." European Law Journal 14, no. 3 (2008): 271-327.

Further Readings
Caporaso, James A. "The European Union and forms of state: Westphalian, regulatory or post‐modern?." JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies 34, no. 1 (1996): 29-52.

Ferrera, M. (2017) "The Stein Rokkan Lecture 2016. Mission impossible? Reconciling economic and social Europe and the euro crisis and Brexit", European Journal of Political Research 56(3): 3-22.

Ferrera, M. (2019) "Disproved or vindicated? Stein Rokkan's 'impossibility theorem' on welfare democracy and European Integration", Journal of European Social Policy 29(1): 3-12.



Global Political Order?

Required Reading
March, James G., and Johan P. Olsen. "The institutional dynamics of international political orders." International organization 52, no. 4 (1998): 943-969.

Suggested Reading
Lake, David A., Lisa L. Martin, and Thomas Risse. "Challenges to the liberal order: Reflections on international organization." International organization 75, no. 2 (2021): 225-257.


Further Readings
Adler-Nissen, Rebecca, and Ayşe Zarakol. "Struggles for recognition: The liberal international order and the merger of its discontents." International Organization 75, no. 2 (2021): 611-634.

Börzel, Tanja A., and Michael Zürn. "Contestations of the liberal international order: From liberal multilateralism to postnational liberalism." International organization 75, no. 2 (2021): 282-305.

Failure of Global Governance?

Required Reading
Ikenberry, G.J., 2018. The end of liberal international order?. International Affairs, 94(1), pp.7-23.

Suggested Reading
Eilstrup-Sangiovanni, Mette, and Stephanie C. Hofmann. "Of the contemporary global order, crisis, and change." Journal of European Public Policy 27, no. 7 (2020): 1077-1089.

Further Readings
Evangelista, Matthew. "A "Nuclear Umbrella" for Ukraine? Precedents and Possibilities for Postwar European Security." International Security 48, no. 3 (2024): 7-50.

Nye Jr, Joseph S. "The rise and fall of American hegemony from Wilson to Trump." International affairs 95, no. 1 (2019): 63-80.

Salehyan, Idean, and Burcu Savun. "Strategic Humanitarianism: Host States and Refugee Policy." Annual Review of Political Science 27 (2024).