Christoffer Cappelen
About
My research centers broadly around comparative politics and historical political economy. I am especially interested in long-term developments of political institutions and culture, such as the emergence and legacy of early state-building, evolution of cultural norms, and historical persistence. In my PhD, I traced the origins of the modern state in medieval and early modern Europe using castles to measure the historical monopolization of violence, a defining characteristic of modern states. As a postdoc at Stanford, I focused on the origins and evolution of patriarchal gender norms.
In my current position at NTNU, I am part of the LEGACIES project in which we map the historical presence of states globally from 1750–1900 (see below).
Research interests: State formation, state capacity, political institutions, cultural evolution, historical persistence, causal inference, GIS, data science
Visit my personal website for more information.
Publications
Peer-reviewed
Cappelen, Christoffer and Jason Sorens (2018). Precolonial Centralisation, Traditional Indirect Rule, and State Capacity in Africa. Commonwealth and Comparative Politics, vol. 56(2), pp. 195-215, DOI: 10.1080/14662043.2017.1404666
Under review
Agneman, Gustav, Kasper Brandt, Christoffer Cappelen, David Sjöberg (2022). Mapping Local State Capacity in Sub-Saharan Africa. SSRN Working Paper.
Recipient of Quality of Government (QoG) Institute's Best Paper Award 2022
Cappelen, Christoffer and Jacob Gerner Hariri (2024). Taking Out the Church, Bringing In the State. SSRN Working Paper
Working papers
Cappelen, Christoffer (2024). No Centralization Without Population: The Black Death and European State-Building. SSRN Working Paper
Cappelen, Christoffer (2024). Using Large Language Models to Classify Cultural Heritage.
Cappelen, Christoffer and Jacob Gerner Hariri (2024). Tracing the Origins of the Early Modern State: Introducing the Castles data. SSRN Working Paper
Cappelen, Christoffer and Jacob Gerner Hariri (2024). The Rise of the Territorial State: Fortification of Borders
Doucette, Jonathan, Christofer Cappelen and Jacob Gerner Hariri (2024). The Coercive Origins of Cities.
Work in progress
Cappelen, Christoffer (2024). The Origins of Traditional Gender Roles and the Rise of the State
Cappelen, Christoffer and Jacob Gerner Hariri (2024). State Formation: Causes and Consequences
2025
-
Agneman, Gustav;
Brandt, Kasper;
Cappelen, Christoffer;
Sjöberg, David.
(2025)
The uneven reach of the state: A novel approach to mapping local state presence.
Journal of Development Economics
Academic article
Journal publications
-
Agneman, Gustav;
Brandt, Kasper;
Cappelen, Christoffer;
Sjöberg, David.
(2025)
The uneven reach of the state: A novel approach to mapping local state presence.
Journal of Development Economics
Academic article