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Bringing War Back in: Victory and State Formation in Latin America
Author(s) -
Schei Luis L.
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
american journal of political science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 6.347
H-Index - 170
eISSN - 1540-5907
pISSN - 0092-5853
DOI - 10.1111/ajps.12552
Subject(s) - victory , latin americans , state (computer science) , world war ii , spanish civil war , political science , affect (linguistics) , political economy , development economics , economic history , history , sociology , politics , law , economics , communication , algorithm , computer science
Scholars have often dismissed the effect of war on state formation in regions like Latin America, where mobilization for war is deemed insufficiently intense and international conflict fails to out‐select weaker states. Against this conventional wisdom, I contend that wars can affect state‐building trajectories in a postwar period through the different state institutions that result from victory and defeat. After reconsidering the role of war outcomes in classical bellicist theory I use difference‐in‐differences analysis to identify the effect of losing vis‐à‐vis winning a war on levels of state capacity in a panel of Latin America (1865–1913). I then illustrate my causal mechanisms in case studies of the Paraguayan War (1864–1870) and the War of the Pacific (1879–1883) and apply the synthetic control method to these cases. Although out‐selection of losers obscures the effect of war outcomes in European history, Latin America illuminates their long‐term consequences.