All of Scioteca
Communities & Collections By Issue Date Authors Titles Subjects Country / Region
Profiles
Our Authors
My Account
Login

Political constraints and state capacity: Evidence from a land allocation program in Mexico

In this paper we contribute to the understanding of the politics of state building. We emphasize that incumbent clientelistic parties might have incentives to sustain state fragility when politically challenged. We develop a theoretical model of the politics of state strengthening, and test its implications exploiting a unique policy program from Mexico. Incumbent clientelistic parties have a comparative advantage in clientelism as opposed to in public good provision. Investments in state capacity –conceived as a reduction of the cost of providing public goods– consequently undermine their comparative advantage. Therefore, when politically challenged by opponents, clientelistic incumbents may oppose to invest in state capacity. To test this hypothesis, we exploit a unique land allocation program in Mexico. When granting land to communities, the government decided whether to locate them close or far from municipality heads, thus affecting its future ability to provide public goods. Our empirical design uses the distance of the newly allocated land from municipality heads as a measure of local state capacity choice, and exploits a national shock that threatened the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI)’s hegemony in the early 1960s but had different intensity across the various Mexican municipalities. Our difference-in-differences estimates corroborate that the PRI allocated land farther away from municipality heads in places where it expected more political contestation.

Abstract

Description

Subject

Investigación socioeconómica | Políticas públicas | Recursos naturales | Sector público | Servicios públicos | Vivienda

País / Región

México

URI

https://scioteca.caf.com/handle/123456789/764

Date

2015-07-20

Cite from this publication

Collections

6.1 Documentos de trabajo en investigación socioeconómica

Endorsement

Review

Supplemented By

Referenced By

Creative Commons license

CC-BY-NC
Except where otherwised noted, this item's license is described as CC-BY-NC
Thumbnail Image

Files

Paper Ferguson Final.pdf (2.42 MB)

Authors

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

CAF

Related Items

Thumbnail Image
Endogenous Taxation in Ongoing Internal Conflict: The Case of Colombia

Recent empirical evidence at the cross-country and subnational levels suggests that internal conflicts harm state capacity and tax performance. On the face of it this...

Thumbnail Image
Political Alignment and Inter-jurisdictional Cooperation in a Fragmented Political Landscape: Evidence from Mexico

We investigate the relationship between neighboring municipal authorities’ shared party affiliation and inter-jurisdictional cooperation agreements in Mexico. Exploiting a Regression Discontinuity Design in close municipal...

Thumbnail Image
Urban Planning and Local Development: Evidence from Brazil

This paper studies the effects of mandated urban planning introduced by Brazil’s 2001 City Statute, which required municipalities with at least 20,000 inhabitants to adopt...

Thumbnail Image
State Capabilities in Colombian Municipalities: Measurements and Determinants

This paper constructs a comprehensive set of State Capacity indicators for Colombian municipalities, focusing in four basic governmental capabilities: fiscal, financial, physical and operational. First,...

Thumbnail Image
20 years | CAF Conference: 1997-2016

When in 1997 CAF -Development Bank of Latin America- held its first Annual Conference, an event organized in Washington D.C. in partnership with the Inter-American...

Thumbnail Image
The structure of local bureaucracies in Mexico

This paper provides a systematic characterization of the organizational architecture of municipal governments in Mexico and how it varies with municipal size. Using detailed data...