The Origins of the Modern State

For centuries, philosophers have debated and theorized about the “state of nature”—how people lived before politics organized itself into governments. While this was a concept that was difficult to prove, it helped to address significant questions about political power and the choices citizens would willingly make.

Now, three reputable economists, Robert Allen of New York University, Abu Dhabi, Leander Heldring of Northwestern University, and Mattia Bertazzini of the University of Nottingham, have come forward to claim that they may have some empirical answers. According to a paper published in the American Economic Review, they assert that the rise of modern politics is not just a metaphoric concept, but has strong ties to the constantly changing courses of ancient rivers in Iraq.

Mesopotamia, situated between the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers, was home to ancient civilizations and was known as “the cradle of civilization.” The authors of this paper suggest that the timing of changes to the rivers’ course was directly connected to the number and size of settlements in the area. They provide proof that the architecture of ancient states can be attributed to farmers cooperating for economic reasons, rather than just a shelter from violence.

Their findings indicate that cooperation was initiated due to the shift in the river, providing opportunities to build new settlements, irrigation systems, and cities. These decisions, they argue, led to some of the earliest examples of governing bodies providing infrastructure in return for taxes, which marked the genesis of the earliest states.

Most intriguing is how they carved off a piece of territory known to have been occupied by political theorists and reasoning would suggest that more thought should have been given to economic factors behind the emergence of states. Identifying an area and time from ancient history where these philosophies played out is an economic experiment one couldn’t have imagined in the past, but today, it’s a reality.