Historical contextualization is vital to comparative historical analysis in social science. The meaning of important concepts such as rights, popular sovereignty, and the state differs across diverse historical contexts even within a single case such as England. Neglect of such differences makes state formation appear to occur along a linear trajectory and the state–society relationship seem simply confrontational. A comparative historical analysis based upon deep and solid examination of historical contexts reveals hitherto unobserved similarities in state formation between Western Europe and East Asia. It provides a new account of how domestic governance was attained through state–society collaboration when the state's capacity to directly provide public goods remained quite limited. Moreover, it casts new light on understanding the political “great divergence” in the transition from early modern to modern states, as well as offering a novel explanation of the resilience of contemporary authoritarian regimes that legitimate their power mainly through care for domestic welfare.

This chapter critically reviews the extant scholarship of state formation. It argues that the excessive attention to war and violence produces a confrontational interpretation of state–society relations and neglects the state's role in public goods provision vital to domestic governance. It outlines the main theme of the book, which is to bring state legitimation through public goods provision into the scholarship of state formation. It argues that a public interest-based discourse of state legitimation furnished a common normative platform for state and society to collaborate in various issues of domestic governance. This platform allowed state and society to complement each other's weakness in pursuit of good governance. It also provided a limited yet important space for political participation that could be accepted by the state authorities. Although this space was grounded in the conception of "passive rights" rather than "active rights" – that is, rights granted by the state rather than inalienable to the individual – it allowed for a growing degree and scale of political organization and activity and laid the basis for a rethinking of the role of such rights in state formation.

This chapter introduces in detail the comparability of three early modern states: Tudor and early Stuart England between 1533 and 1640, Tokugawa Japan between 1640 and 1853, and Qing China between 1684 and 1840. Each episode examines governance during a period of relative domestic peace after the state had consolidated its power and established an administrative structure. The early modern state as an impersonal governing apparatus over delimited territory is common to these three cases. Likewise, a public interest-based discourse of state legitimation linked to concrete performance in domestic governance is found in all three states, despite their respective differences in territorial scale, political institutions, and international circumstances. Although each state had a different fiscal basis, state fiscal capacity remained highly limited. Given this constraint, state–society collaboration was key to attaining good domestic governance; and the norm of state responsibility for the public interest facilitated such collaboration to the benefit of both state and society. The chapter discusses under what conditions such state–society cooperation failed, showing the limits to the resilience of the early modern state.

Iraq’s post-2003 political order has experienced unremitting turbulence despite the end of Saddam Hussein’s dictatorial regime. While federalism was seen as a means to safeguard against the reemergence of authoritarianism, the rationale for decentralizing central authority, beginning in 2015, can be viewed primarily as an attempt to salvage state legitimacy by addressing governance issues amid growing popular disenfranchisement and the violent onslaught of so-called Islamic State. But the decentralization process has failed to achieve its desired results, namely, enhancing local service provisions and improving state–society relations. Meanwhile, contestations over the powers and authorities of national and subnational entities have exacerbated political tensions. Ensuring that decentralization contributes positively to state legitimacy rather than undermining it first requires addressing the underlying structural flaws. This includes improving the competence and expertise of local administrative units, enhancing accountability and anti-corruption mechanisms, introducing electoral reforms that can temper political intransigence, and recalibrating international assistance efforts.

Chapter six explains the role of Rwanda’s extraordinary state or ‘authority’ – the last of the three themes in the title. It distinguishes between three dimensions of the state’s power: its capability, legitimacy, and autonomy. While the Rwandan state’s unusual high capacity for coercion and coordination vis-à-vis its citizens is well-known, this chapter shows how its legitimacy and autonomy also mattered. Not everyone participated in the violence out of coercion. The chapter traces the origins of these three facets of the state’s power and explains the ways in which each contributed to the extraordinary scale, speed, and scope of the mobilization. The state’s unusual high legitimacy was essential for public acceptance of and participation in policies that targeted civilians. Its low autonomy was necessary for its institutions to be penetrated and its resources to be instrumentalized for private and ultimately violent ends.

The post–Cold War era is when the formation of new states or autonomous regions based on national or ethnic identity gained a new momentum following developments in the ex-USSR and Former Republic of Yugoslavia. The UN Security Council adopted a resolution declaring that states that suppress cultural and political rights of their citizens based on communal identity lose international legitimacy. This, in turn, empowered ethnic groups who were suppressed and whose human rights were violated. It also led to the revival of Wilsonian self-determination, but in a different format, and in this period when the legitimacy of states is questioned as never before through labels such as authoritarian, dictatorial, failed or weak states. Kurdish demands for statehood gained a new momentum in this new era. As a signifier of this trend, the de facto autonomous Kurdish region of Iraq emerged in 1991 and became official in 2005 with the collapse of the Iraqi state and the formation of a federal state. Other Kurdish parties, such as the PKK, shifted their ideological ground and increased their appeal among Kurds. This chapter explains how Kurdish political actors in the Middle East utilised the new international normative framework post-1990 to frame their nationalist self-determination claims within the discourses of justice, human rights and democracy.