The Cartel System of States An Economic Theory of International Politics

The people who live in border towns often have closer relations with people across their immediate borders than with people in the same country as them. Despite how intertwined these border communities often are, neither community can access the governmental institutions of the nation on the other side. Why are the citizens of neighboring regions that lie across an international border often subject to very different governance systems? More broadly, why can't public services be bought piecemeal, on an a-la-carte basis, with governments competing to provide higher quality services at the lowest cost in a marketplace for government services? These questions lie at the heart of modern International Relations.

In The Cartel System of States, Avidit Acharya and Alexander Lee provide a powerful and field-shaping theory to address a fundamental issue in world politics: the character of the territorial nation-state. They contend that the modern territorial state system works as an economic cartel in which states have local, bounded monopolies in governing their citizens. States refuse to violate each other's monopolies, even when they could do so easily. Acharya and Lee examine what makes this system stable, when and how it emerged, how it spread, how it has been challenged, and what led it to be so resilient over time. Drawing from the centuries long process of modern state formation, The Cartel System of States explains both how the present system of territorial states--by no means a foregone conclusion in retrospect--took over the world and how it might change in the future.

Avidit Acharya is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Stanford University. His research is primarily in the fields of political economy and game theory as it applies to the study of politics. He is the co-author of Deep Roots: How Slavery Still Shapes Southern Politics.

Alexander Lee is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Rochester. His research focuses on the politics of South Asia, the process of economic and political development, and the role of historical forces and events in shaping modern politics. He is the author of Development in Multiple Dimensions: Social Power and Regional Policy in India and From Hierarchy to Ethnicity: The Politics of Caste in Twentieth-Century India.

List of Figures

Acknowledgments

1. Introduction

2. The Cartel Model

3. The Cartel Emerges

4. The Cartel Takes Over

5. Challenges to the Cartel

6. Resilience of the Cartel

7. The Cartel Today

Notes

Bibliography

Index