Network Analysis of State Formations
Typology
Mark Jacobsen:
Yuhua Wang has developed "a compelling theory about state-society relations. He argues that a state’s strength, and the form a state takes, follow from the network structure of state-society relations. To operationalize this concept, Wang defines “elite social terrain” as “the ways in which central elites connect local social groups (and link to each other)”.
He proposes a taxonomy of three archetypal network structures that represent elite social terrain:
(1) star networks in which central elites connect geographically far-flung groups;
(2) bowtie networks, in which fragmented elites connect only to their geographically localized groups; and
(3) ring networks, in which central elites are not connected to each other or any major social groups.
Different types of elite social terrains yield different types of states. In star networks, elites with expansive interests prefer to dispense public goods through the central state because of its geographic reach and economies of scale. Their concentrated power allows them to overcome collective action problems, mobilize geographically dispersed groups, and constrain the ruler. In bowtie networks, localized elites prefer to supply private goods locally rather than through a remote central government. However, their fragmentation leaves them vulnerable to divide-and-conquer tactics by the ruler. Ring networks provide virtually no accountability for the ruler, because elites cannot meaningfully organize. Each network type leads to a different equilibrium for the form and strength of the state, and exogenous shocks can transition a state from one equilibrium to another."
Example
China
Mark Jacobsen:
"The bulk of the book applies this framework to China’s state development over the past 13 centuries. During the Tang Dynasty (618–907 CE), an aristocratic elite ruled China. A tight-knit marriage network connected elites to social groups across the country, forming a star network. Elites leveraged state strength to protect their widespread interests, but their very centralization left them vulnerable to central rebellion.
A ninth-century-CE rebellion destroyed the aristocracy, created a vacuum, and shifted China’s elite social terrain into a more fragmented bowtie network. Under the Song, Yuan, and Ming dynasties (960–1644 CE), elites lacked the interconnections of the earlier Tang Dynasty and represented a host of local interests. Emperors played fractionalized elites against each other, undercutting state strength even as they solidified their own rule. When the Opium Wars of 1830–1860 weakened the state’s ability to quell violence and supply public goods, fragmentation accelerated, and elite social relations shifted to resemble a ring network. The state permitted elites to form private militias to tame the Taiping Rebellion (1850–1864), which accelerated the collapse of the state into warlordism.
Wang buttresses this narrative with dazzling empirical work. He draws on a wide range of preexisting quantitative data sources such as a Chinese catalogue of historical wars, Chinese Academy of Sciences temperature data (to justify a claim about climate change and conflict), and a biographical dataset of major Chinese officials. He also makes impressive use of his own original datasets. Wang has geolocated historical Chinese officials using tombstone epitaphs, digitized and geocoded more than 50,000 genealogies, and built a dataset of 282 Chinese emperors from 221 BCE to 1912 CE. He employs extended analytic narratives that show a deep command of Chinese history, as well as regression, geospatial, and network analyses. Despite the depth and breadth of cutting-edge quantitative work, the book remains approachable to a general audience; most quantitative work is partitioned in a substantial appendix."
Source
This is from a book review of:
- The Rise and Fall of Imperial China: The Social Origins of State Development. Yuhua Wang. 2023
See: The Social Origins of Chinese Imperial State Development