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Economic coercion depends on the credibility of both threats to punish noncompliance and assurances that compliance will not be punished. What instruments can states deploy to make the necessary assurances without undermining the credibility of …

We argue that the gunpowder revolution in medieval Europe encouraged the amal- gamation of smaller polities into larger centralized states. The advance in military technology made existing fortifications obsolete and substantially raised the cost of …