Cappelen on No Centralization Without Population: The Black Death and State Formation in Europe @ccappelen.bsky.social

Christoffer Cappelen, University of Copenhagen, Department of Political Science, has published No Centralization Without Population: The Black Death and State Formation in Europe. Here is the abstract.

When and where do states expand their territorial reach? In this paper, I address this question by studying the impact of the Black Death on local state-building. I argue that the labor scarcity caused by the pandemic, by altering the costs and benefits of local state presence, affected rulers' decisions of where to invest in statebuilding. Areas that were hit relatively hard by the plague would ultimately experience a weaker presence of state authority compared to areas with lower mortality rates. Combining data on local mortality rates across Europe and an original dataset on castle ownership, I show that higher mortality rates are associated with lower levels of state presence as measured by the share of crown castles; and this divergence persisted through centuries. I further show that this divergence can be traced even to contemporary variations in critical infrastructure, suggesting a modern-day legacy of the Black Death.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.