NDLI: From comparative historical analysis to “local theory”: The Italian city-state route to the modern state

Content Provider	Springer Nature Link
Author	Tarrow, Sidney
Copyright Year	2004
Abstract	Many explanations have been offered for why the dominant city-states of Italy declined, giving way to the larger, national states of Western Europe. Some, like World Systems theorists, have seen the decline of the Italian city-states as the result of the shift of trade from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, while others, like Richard Lachmann, have focused on institutional arrangements that rendered these systems less resilient when faced by external threats. This article focuses on the relations of local institutions with the interests of capital, and on the role of contentious politics within the city-state that developed as a result of this interaction. Taking as my starting point the comparative historical analysis of statebuilding in the work of Charles Tilly, in Coercion, Capital and European States, the article places contentious politics as a bridge between the Tillian categories of capital-domination and statebuilding, using the case of Florence in the late 14th and early 15th centuries to etch the skeleton of that bridge. With Tilly, I argue that the class interests of the urban elites that were built directly into the mechanisms of city-state politics worked at cross-purposes to the collective requirements of statebuilding. Next, I argue that Tilly pays too little attention to the specificities of the Italian case and gives short shrift to its internal political processes. Finally, I argue that class domination working through institutional conflicts led to periodic outbursts of conflict and built a lack of trust into the structure of governance. I conclude by suggesting why the Italian city-states, at least, were inhibited from taking the nation-state route to the modern world until quite late in their histories.
Starting Page	443
Ending Page	471
Page Count	29
File Format	PDF
ISSN	03042421
Journal	Theory and Society
Volume Number	33
Issue Number	3-4
e-ISSN	15737853
Language	English
Publisher	Kluwer Academic Publishers
Publisher Date	2004-01-01
Publisher Place	Dordrecht
Access Restriction	One Nation One Subscription (ONOS)
Subject Keyword	Philosophy of the Social Sciences Sociology
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Sociology and Political Science History

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