State capacity

State capacity is fundamental to economic transformation, political stability, and social provisioning. Long durée theories of state formation identify common features of state capacity as a centralised bureaucracy, a monopoly on violent power, a cohesive national identity, and regulation of a territory’s economic production. To understand how such features come about, sociological studies point to the role of interstate conflict, social mobilisation, and colonialism. While these macro-sociological theories provide insight into the historical processes shaping the capacity of African states, current debates also consider how a state’s domestic political economy, positioned within a global economic system, shapes the contemporary state’s capacity to realise its objectives.