While almost all definitions of the state and state capacity (or stateness) derive at their core from a Weberian emphasis on the characteristics of institutions, the dominant measures of this concept rely instead on subjective, perceptions-based indicators. We propose an alternative strategy rooted in direct experimentation and econometric modeling to develop objective measures of the strength of state institutions, both for a contemporary cross section, but also (for the latter) for cross-time historical data essential for tracking the development of institutions.