Context: This is a set of notes from an interesting conversation I had with a friend.
How much centralization you need depends on the amount and types of threats you're facing. If you're facing no threats, then low centralization is generally better for progress and development.
If you look at nations that progressed much faster, then it is almost always loose confederations.
South Korea, Japan, Singapore and China are centralized and developed very fast. So centralization cannot be wholly opposed to fast growth.
But this is generally catch up growth. Expats of countries like China also did better, implying they were held back.
Japan probably caught up first, and then lead in several areas, because they were similar to Europe in terms of feudal structure i.e. a king gives lords land from which they derive revenue and owe their service to the king.
This is in contrast to China where all government officials had to pass Confucian exams or whatever, where they'd then have to climb up a pyramid of hierarchy. They had a PhD style program where you could accelerate things, but you still had to rise up from the bottom.
But in Europe, aristocrats were the dominants power in politics and the Kings couldn't remove noblemen arbitrarily.
And while bureaucrats might've scared child-emperors in China, strong emperors could do basically whatever. There was even a strong custom of the Emperor executing the high ranking officials of the last emperor.
Even when the emperor is far, bureaucrats would've faced co-ordination problems for taking over.
Moreover, big countries tend to be more autocratic as at that scale, historical nations needed autocratic methods to hold together. The social technology didn't permit anything less brutish.
There's also the matter of geography forcing autocracy through unity against outside threats. China was unified by threats to the North, and generally split when they weren't threatened.
Coupled with the relative ease of mobility within China, this incentivized centralized military and political structures.
Contrast this to Japan and Europe, where geography made it easier to make small, isolated kingdoms.
And in small nations, you usually find nobles co-operating against their ruler.
Either they limited the power of kings, or they chose one amongst themselves to be king.
Which option they choose is a matter of culture.
In places like Japan and the UK, there were norms around property protection. See the Magna Carta, for instance. In Japan, rulers couldn't just take anyone's property, there was some expectation of separation of powers.
Property protection was one of the big distinguishing features of Japan and Western Europe.
Coupled with their similar feudal structures, this limited the property kings controlled and reduced centralization.
Which is partly why Japan and the West progressed faster.
This is why Napoleon was probably a net negative. He kicked off centralization of a lot of Europe, discouraging innovation.
As for the French Revolution, he was an opportunistic outsider who took over from an admittedly incompetent regime. But the good things we associated with the revolution e.g. legal reforms were already occurring elsewhere and would've happened anyway.
Plus, all the countries he didn't conquer in Europe e.g. UK, Sweden, Russia were doing well and continued to do well.
Yes, that Russia. One of the major reasons WW1 started was that Germany was worried Russia was progressing too fast.
How Russia fits into the "less centralized, faster progress" model I've outlined above isn't clear to me.