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Charles Tilly, an American sociologist, political scientist, and historian, claims that within the context of European history, "war makes states." While the purposes of war were to expand territory and to check or overcome neighboring states, the process of war inadvertently engendered European-style state-building. War making resulted in state making in four ways:

1. War making that culminated in the elimination of local rivals gave rise to one centralized, coercive strong state power that had a large-scale monopoly on violence.
2. Eventually, this large-scale monopoly on violence held by the state was extended to serve the state's clients or supporters. This encouraged pacification, led to the formation of police forces, and provided protection as a state service.
3. War making and military expansion would not be possible without extracting resources from the population and accumulating capital. Historically, this led to the establishment of fiscal and accounting institutions to collect taxes from the population to fuel war.
4. Finally, courts of law, guarantees of rights, and representative institutions were demanded by the state's populations whose resistance to war making and state making led to concessions made by the state. This enabled the population to protect their individual property without allowing them to use force, which would compromise the state's monopoly on violence.

War making and the extraction, protection, and state making that followed were interdependent. Tilly ultimately argues that the interactions between these four processes influenced the classic European state making experience.

American political scientist and professor Nicolas van de Walle has argued that despite nearly two decades of donor-supported reform in Africa, the continent continues to be plagued by economic crises due to state generated factors and to the counter productivity of international development aid to Africa. Van de Walle attributes the failure to implement economic policy reform to factors within the African state:

1. Neopatrimonial tendencies of state elites that serve to preserve and centralize power, maintain limited access orders, and create political obstacles to reform.
2. Ideological obstacles that have been biased by two decades of failed economic policy reform and in turn, create a hostile environment for reform.
3. Low state capacity that reinforces and that in turn, is reinforced by the neopatrimonial tendencies of the state.

Van de Walle argues that these state generated factors that have obstructed the effective implementation of economic policy reform are further exacerbated by foreign aid. Aid, therefore, makes policy reform less likely, rather than more likely. International aid has sustained economic stagnation in Africa by:

1. Pacifying Africa's neopatrimonial tendencies, thereby lessening the incentives for state elites to undertake reform and preserving the status quo.
2. Sustaining poorly managed bureaucratic structures and policies that would be otherwise rectified by market forces.
3. Allowing state capacities to deteriorate through externalizing many state functions and responsibilities.

In order for aid to be productive and for economic policy reform to be successfully implemented in Africa, the relationship between donors and governments must change. Van de Walle argues that aid must be made more conditional and selective to incentivize states to take on reform and to generate the much needed accountability and capacity in African governments.