IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/hal-04038044.html

Political Competition and State Capacity: Evidence from a Land Allocation Program in Mexico

Author

Listed:
  • Leopoldo Fergusson

    (UNIANDES - Universidad de los Andes [Bogota])

  • Horacio Larreguy

    (TSE-R - Toulouse School of Economics - UT Capitole - Université Toulouse Capitole - Comue de Toulouse - Communauté d'universités et établissements de Toulouse - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement)

  • Juan Felipe Riano

Abstract

We develop a model of the politics of state capacity building undertaken by incumbent parties that have a comparative advantage in clientelism rather than in public goods provision. The model predicts that, when challenged by opponents, clientelistic incumbents have the incentive to prevent investments in state capacity. We provide empirical support for the model's implications by studying policy decisions by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) that affected local state capacity across Mexican municipalities and over time. Our difference-in-differences and instrumental variable identification strategies exploit a national shock that threatened the Mexican government's hegemony in the early 1960s. The intensity of this shock, which varied across municipalities, was partly explained by severe droughts that occurred during the 1950s.

Suggested Citation

  • Leopoldo Fergusson & Horacio Larreguy & Juan Felipe Riano, 2022. "Political Competition and State Capacity: Evidence from a Land Allocation Program in Mexico," Post-Print hal-04038044, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-04038044
    DOI: 10.1093/ej/ueac041
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a
    for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Elizalde, Aldo, 2020. "On the economic effects of Indigenous institutions: Evidence from Mexico," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 147(C).
    2. Adrian Nicholas Gachet, 2022. "Help Me Help You? Populism and Distributive Politics in Ecuador," Economics Discussion Paper Series 2205, Economics, The University of Manchester.
    3. Eslava Saenz, Francisco & Valencia Caicedo, Felipe, 2023. "Origins of Latin American Inequality," CEPR Discussion Papers 18263, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    4. Esteban Muñoz-Sobrado & Amedeo Piolatto & Antoine Zerbini & Federica Braccioli, 2024. "The taxing challenges of the state: Unveiling the role of fiscal & administrative capacity in development," Working Papers 2024/05, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).
    5. Canen, Nathan & Ch, Rafael & Wantchekon, Leonard, 2023. "Political uncertainty and the forms of state capture," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 160(C).
    6. Francesco Amodio & Giorgio Chiovelli & Sebastian Hohmann, 2024. "The Employment Effects of Ethnic Politics," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 16(2), pages 456-491, April.
    7. Maxime Menuet & Hugo Oriola & Patrick Villieu, 2024. "Do conservative central bankers weaken the chances of conservative politicians?," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 62(4), pages 681-738, June.
    8. Leopoldo Fergusson, 2019. "Who wants violence? The political economy of conflict and state building in Colombia," Revista Cuadernos de Economia, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, FCE, CID, vol. 38(78), pages 671-700.
    9. Derek P. Mitchell, 2024. "Indigenous autonomy and decentralization in Colombia's quest for peace," Global Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 15(S3), pages 14-25, June.
    10. De La O, Ana L., 2024. "How clientelism undermines state capacity: Evidence from Mexican municipalities," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 173(C).
    11. Artem Kochnev, 2021. "Marching to Good Laws: The Impact of War, Politics, and International Credit on Reforms in Ukraine," wiiw Working Papers 192, The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw.
    12. Ana L. De La O, 2021. "How clientelism undermines state capacity: Evidence from Mexican municipalities," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2021-169, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    13. Kustov, Alexander & Pardelli, Giuliana, 2024. "Beyond Diversity: The Role of State Capacity in Fostering Social Cohesion in Brazil," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 180(C).
    14. Mizuno, Nobuhiro & Okazawa, Ryosuke, 2025. "A dynamic theory on clientelism and bureaucratic development," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 174(C).
    15. Klaus W. Deininger & Thea Hilhorst & Zevenbergen,Jaap & Nkurunziza,Emmanuel, 2025. "Capitalizing on Digital Transformation to Enhance the Effectiveness of Property Institutions : Conceptual Background and Evidence from 85 Countries," Policy Research Working Paper Series 11100, The World Bank.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • D73 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Bureaucracy; Administrative Processes in Public Organizations; Corruption

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-04038044. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.