The growth of the 17th century French state contributed to the establishment to a more regular, and even liberal legal order. Higher fiscal demands on the state led to a process of legal standardization that extended the rule of law. We use data on witch trials and taxation covering twenty-one...

How do civil war dynamics affect state-building decisions in the aftermath of conflict? This paper argues that, in the post-conflict period, the state focuses its efforts to build state capacity on areas in which state power has been eroded during wartime, with the goal of avoiding future...