In a CDDRL research seminar held on April 30, 2026, Anna Grzymala-Busse, the Michelle and Kevin Douglas Professor of International Studies in the Department of Political Science, senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and the director of The Europe Center, explored historic state development and fragmentation in Europe, focusing on how conceptualizations shape conclusions about state formation. She examined how scholars define both “Europe” and “the state,” comparing how different coding and measurement choices lead to different patterns of fragmentation over time. 

Grzymala-Busse first defines what counts as Europe, noting that while some scholars define Europe through Western Christianity, others rely on geographic cutoffs like west of the Don River or west of the Ural Mountains. This is significant, as including large cases like Russia or the Ottoman Empire creates the impression of growing state size over time, while excluding them makes Europe appear more fragmented. She also points out the risk of circularity, in which Europe is defined by certain institutions, and then that same group is used to explain why those institutions developed. In that sense, excluding places like Russia or the Ottoman Empire based on cultural or institutional reasons can lead to conclusions about European distinctiveness that are already built into how Europe was defined in the first place.

The second big question is how a state is defined, since historical Europe included a wide range of political units like empires, kingdoms, duchies, city-states, and trading leagues, making it hard to rely on a single clear definition based on sovereignty or centralization. This ties directly to how fragmentation is measured, since it depends on methodological choices such as which units are included and how they are counted. One of the most important choices is whether to include city-states. When excluded, the data show fewer and larger states over time, which supports the bellicist idea of consolidation. When included, Europe appears more fragmented, aligning more with revisionist arguments. Overall, this illustrates how a few key classification choices can shape broader conclusions about state development.

This issue becomes even more apparent when looking at fragmentation itself, which both bellicists and revisionists treat as central to their arguments. For bellicists, fragmentation is a starting point that declines over time, while for revisionists, it is more durable and persists across periods. The Holy Roman Empire serves as a key example: it was one of the largest political entities in Europe, yet remained highly fragmented, with overlapping authorities and no clear centralization. This highlights the importance of measurement and coding decisions, as choices such as which polities to include, whether to count borders or use concentration measures, and even the size of geographic grid cells all shape the results. 

Ultimately, Grzymala-Busse concludes that rules and definitions fundamentally shape how fragmentation appears in the data. Once these methodological choices are made clear, there is less clear evidence for the bellicist claim that states were consistently consolidated, but this does not fully confirm the revisionist argument either. Consequently, if the debate is a matter of coding rather than evidence, transparency in concepts and measures becomes even more important.