Ethnicity, State Capacity, and Democracy in Historical Latin America

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

The literature on Latin American politics offers a careful consideration of the determinants of historical state capacity, but relatively absent from this scholarship are studies that consider how the differential presence or absence of the state affects marginalized ethnic groups. The papers that comprise this panel seek to address this gap, drawing on the literatures on civil conflict and democracy, among others. The paper presented by Callis will examine whether state presence helped or harmed Indigenous populations in nineteenth-century Latin America, demonstrating the important role of understudied, sub-municipal officials. Carter and Calderon analyze how democracy expanded state willingness and capacity to enforce Indigenous peoples' property rights in nineteenth-century Latin America. When these rights were revoked, Indigenous groups experienced greater land-related conflict. Garbiras-Díaz and coauthors examine how the extension of state capacity through schools reduced the likelihood of conflict in rural areas, including those with a majority Afro-descendent or Indigenous population. Finally, Mangonnet explores how coercive and racialized labor institutions shaped later state capacity, particularly the willingness of marginalized ethnoracial groups to collaborate in government-led information-gathering projects.

Sub Unit

• Division 12: Comparative Politics of Developing Countries

Individual Presentations

• Enduring Effects of Disenfranchisement: Evidence from Nineteenth-Century Peru - Christopher Lee Carter, University of Virginia; Alvaro Calderon, Stanford University

• Accents as Capital: Experimental Evidence from Colombia - Leopoldo Fergusson, Universidad de los Andes; Natalia Garbiras-Díaz, Harvard Business School; Juana García Duque, Universidad de los Andes; Michael Lee Weintraub, Universidad de los Andes

• Slavery, Mistrust, and the Origins of Poor Government Information - Jorge G Mangonnet, Vanderbilt University

• Balancing Bossism: Education Expansion in the Face of Elite Capture - Anna Firestone Callis, Tulane University

• Does Bureaucratic Embeddedness Improve Legibility? Evidence from Peru - Luis García, Temple University

Chair

• Jenny Guardado Georgetown University

Discussants

• Noam Lupu Vanderbilt University

• Emily A. Sellars Yale University