Rebels, Rivals, and Post-colonial State-Building: Identifying Bellicist Influences on State Extractive Capability

A recent, notable strain of empirical research argues that postcolonial state-building follows a pattern similar to the European state-building experience. It acknowledges that war is less common today, but contends that interstate rivalry now drives state-building. We argue that postcolonial state-managers have little reason to build state capacity in response to rival states. There is only a slight chance that these rivalries will escalate into an existential threat for the government. Attention should instead be focused on the more tangible threat posed by transnational rebels and postcolonial governments’ use of low-scale military force to combat such non-state actors. Using interrupted time series methodology on a sample of 72 countries from 1972 to 2002, we find that postcolonial state military intervention against transnational rebels increases direct taxes (a measure of state penetration) and non-tax revenue (state autonomy) collected by governments, while intervention against rival states reduces direct taxation.