Introduction / Ronald Cohen -- Classical and modern theories of the origins of government / Elman R. Service -- The state, the chicken, and the egg : or, what came first? / Morton H. Fried -- Toward an explanation of the origin of the state / Henry T. Wright -- Irrigation, conflict, and politics : a Mexican case / Eva Hunt and Robert C. Hunt -- The proto-state in Iranian Baluchistan / Philip Carl Salzman -- State foundations : a controlled comparison / Ronald Cohen -- Secondary state formation : an explanatory model / Barbara J. Price -- Aristotle's concept of political structure and the state / Wolfgang Weissleder -- Political expansion as an expression of the principle of competitive exclusion / Robert L. Carneiro.