Why do some village communities have access to basic services, such as health care and education, potable water and sewerage, while neighboring communities do not? How does the collective action capacity of local residents affect the distribution of development projects in decentralized political systems?

My book project explores the relationship between informal civil society institutions, protest behavior, and public goods provision in rural Mexico. In my argument, I build on the crucial variation in village-level governance arrangements among nearly 100 000 village communities in Mexico. In some communities, local informal institutions are legacies of customary rule, while in others state-led agricultural reforms in the 20th century.

I argue that Mexican village-level governance arrangements based on community participation (usos y costumbres)  – community assemblies and citizen committees - facilitate local public goods provision through allowing greater bargaining power in demanding development resources from higher levels of government in the federal system. The bargaining power of villages having usos y costumbres institutions stems from the greater ability of local leaders to mobilize their communities to organize protests, roadblocks and other violent disruptions in municipal centers and state capitals, in the case resources do not reach to them. Communities that lack usos y costumbres institutions, village presidents do not have the same mobilizational capacity, and have therefore less ability to demand resources from the municipal center, which hinders development investments in these villages.  

I test my hypotheses with different econometric techniques using data from an original elite survey of community presidents combined with precinct-level administrative and electoral data, and qualitative interviews with more than 250 local residents and federal and local politicians and bureaucrats.