Current research suggests that all states share a perpetual appetite for extraction and standardization. However, this research overlooks that subnational regions present different appeals and challenges to ruling coalitions. While states seek to impose bureaucratic rule on peripheries with valuable assets and favorable geography, they might instead seek to preserve local patrimonial bastions when those areas offer substantial electoral support. In turn, these strategies lead to broad subnational heterogeneity in the reach of the state. This paper introduces a theory that focuses on regions’ ecological, military, and clientelistic features to explain local trajectories of bureaucratic rule and country-level state capacity. In particular, I assess Chile, a successful case of capacity-building. Prompted by a fiscal crisis in the mid-1850s, Chile’s central government launched state-building projects to offset its budgetary deficit. Using GIS and original data from censuses, budgets, and other primary sources, I show that Chile’s ruling coalition paradoxically modernized its peripheries while deepening its own traditionalism. These results challenge prevailing narratives about the projection of political authority and Chile’s territorial uniformity.
Patrimonialism as Insurance: Landlords and Democracy in Latin America. In Progress
Conventional wisdom suggests that landowning elites resist democratization due to the perceived risk of land expropriation resulting from enfranchisement. This association is particularly prevalent in contexts of high land inequality and labor-dependent agriculture, where empowered peasants are more likely to demand land redistribution. Contrary to this dominant approach, this paper suggests that landowning elites may prefer democracy if they have established clientelistic ties with a significant number of peasants, whom they can mobilize as a base of electoral support. In such cases, landlords perceive a strategic advantage in engaging in the democratic process, especially when they find themselves in the opposition. I build and illustrate the theory using the case of Chile. Despite being one of the countries with the highest levels of land inequality, Chile was also successful first-wave transition to democracy. Drawing from previously untapped evidence sourced from censuses, budgets, statistical yearbooks, and records of business organizations, I show that following their loss of control over the ruling coalition in 1873, and within a context of existing clientelistic relationships with peasants, landowners actively supported reforms aimed at enhancing the regime's competitiveness while resisting further incorporation reforms. By extending voting rights to peasants and shaping electoral rules in their favor, landed elites strategically positioned themselves for long-term electoral dominance. These findings challenge prevailing assumptions regarding the dynamics of first-wave transitions to democracy, the formation and dissolution of subnational enclaves, and the electoral mobilization of peasants.
Agricultural Expansion, Technocratic Development, and Bureaucratic Capacity
Existing state-building theories attribute professional bureaucracies' development to sustained geopolitical pressures. However, this research applies only to Western Europe, a region that went through a perpetual state of warfare throughout the Middle Ages. This paper suggests an alternative mechanism for bureaucratic development in the absence of such geopolitical threats: The expansion of the agricultural frontier. In particular, the effort to disrupt hard-to-reach ecologies, govern distant regions, and make them productive prompts investments in the field of civil engineering to perform activities such as infrastructure development and land measurement. Such efforts can lead to bureaucratic development at the central level, as the availability of technocratic cadres and institutional templates can prompt public goods, administrative reforms, and bureaucratic autonomy. Empirically, I assess the Chilean settlement in Araucanía, a region dominated by the native Mapuche until the 1850s. In that decade, a wheat boom incentivized political elites to take over the area to increase agricultural production, leading to a large-scale project of internal colonization. Using original data from censuses, statistical yearbooks, ministries reports, and other primary sources, I show that the central government trained large cohorts of civil engineers to deforest the area, measure land, and build infrastructure. After being included in policy-making communities, engineers pushed for administrative reforms and bureaucratic autonomy, contributing to the development of state capacity. These results challenge prevailing narratives about state-building, bureaucratic development, and public goods distribution in the Global South.