‘The Institutional Origins of State Infrastructural Power: Historical Evidence from Latin
America’
Abstract:
Variation in the ability of Latin American states to exercise control over society and
territory displays significant long-term continuities. This suggests that the roots of the
divergence between strong and weak states in the region lie in historical rather than
contemporary factors; that the roots of contemporary state crisis can be found in the
nineteenth century. This paper argues that institutions of local rule played a primary role
in determining the outcomes of the efforts of state leaders to develop the power of their
states, and thus explain why state strength varies . Specifically, when state leaders
delegated local and regional administration to local elites, their efforts to increase state
power foundered. On the other hand, where they deployed bureaucrats to the provinces,
their efforts were more successful. Historical evidence from Peru and Chile about the
development of military capacity and public primary education supports the power of the
institutional explanation against alternatives such as war and ethnic diversity.
The paper also identifies the origins of variation in administrative institutions in
the contingent choices made by state leaders in response to the perceived threats of
indigenous revolt. Finally, I suggest a potential mechanism of reproduction by which the
initial divergence between strong and weak states has remained consistent over time.
Hillel Soifer
Lecturer, Department of Politics
Princeton University
hsoifer [at] princeton [dot] edu
1
The Pinochet regime in Chile implemented perhaps the most effective repression in the
history of South America. Far more efficiently than other military regimes, it compiled
lists of those identified as enemies, and located, arrested, tortured, and killed them. Those
who heard their names read over the radio in the days after Pinochet’s 1973 coup turned
themselves in to the authorities, knowing that there was no escape.1 In short, the Pinochet
regime successfully mobilized the coercive and administrative capacity of the Chilean
state in a strikingly short period of time to effectively control civil society.
The Peruvian state of the 1980s provides a stark contrast to the Chilean case. It
failed to repress the Shining Path insurgency, which quickly established control over a
large portion of the national territory. In response to the absence of state coercive power
in the Peruvian highlands, local communities began to defend themselves in peasant
patrols called rondas campesinas.2 Armed with ancient firearms, residents of small
communities patrolled their villages and field to ward off guerrillas. The state merely
provided legal legitimacy, ceremonial recognition, and a few guns to these self-defense
patrols, thus accepting a societal solution to Shining Path’s threat to the existence of the
Peruvian state. In so doing, it failed to undertake even its most central function – the
provision of security – in a large swath of Peru’s national territory. Rondas campesinas
operated in over half of Peru’s departments.
These brief anecdotes demonstrate the striking variation in state capacity in
contemporary Latin America. But the bulk of recent scholarship on the developing world
1
Pamela Constable and Arturo Valenzuela A Nation of Enemies: Chile Under Pinochet (Norton, 1981) and
Thomas C. Wright and Rody Oñate Flight from Chile: Voices of Exile (University of New Mexico Press,
1998).
2
On Shining Path, see Steve Stern, ed. Shining and Other Paths (Duke University Press, 1998) and Cynthia
McClintock Revolutionary Movements in Latin America: El Salvador’s FMLN and Peru’s Shining Path
(US Institute of Peace, 1998). On the rondas campesinas see Orin Starn Nightwatch: The Politics of Protest
in the Andes (Duke University Press, 1998) and Philip Mauceri State Under Siege: State Development and
Policymaking in Peru (Westview Press, 1996).
2
has ignored this variation in the ability of state to effectively exercise coercive force
across its territory – and thus to implement a range of other policies.3 In much of the
developing world, governments fail to exercise the Weberian monopoly of force which
characterizes developed states. Since the process of war and bureaucratic development
that characterized European states did not unfold in Africa or Latin America, we should
not be surprised that post-colonial states are weaker than their European counterparts.4
But how did divergence within the post-colonial world come about? This paper proposes
a new explanation for this variation, by tracing the sources of the divergent strength of
two Latin American states, Peru and Chile.
Why choose Peru and Chile to study state strength? Holding the regional context
constant controls for patterns of colonial rule and economic integration, and provides a
common historical and cultural background across country cases.5 Thus, some potential
explanations for divergence in state strength can be ruled out because they are similar
across cases with divergent outcomes. The cases vary on other factors which could
potentially account for the divergence in state strength. But examination of the historical
3
Two recent exceptions are Fernando López-Alves State Formation and Democracy in Latin America
1810-1900 (Duke University Press, 2000) and Dan Slater Ordering Power: Contentious Politics, State
Building, and Authoritarian Durability in Southeast Asia (Ph.D. Dissertation, Emory University, 2005).
While López-Alves focuses on the centralization of state power and attendant regime outcomes, I focus on
the ‘outward’ face of the state: the extent of its authority over society. Like this article, Slater highlights the
perceived threat of rural mobilization in shaping institutional choice.
4
Jeffrey Herbst States and Power in Africa: Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control (Princeton
University Press, 2000) and Miguel Centeno Blood and Debt: War and the Nation State in Latin America
(Penn State University Press, 2002).
5
Although James Mahoney argues (in ‘Long-Run Development and the Legacy of Spanish Colonialism in
Spanish America’ American Journal of Sociology vol. 109 #1 (2003) pp.51-106) that the varied economic
and social development across Latin America derives from the varied intensity of Spanish colonial rule,
this argument cannot be extended to political development. The first several decades of the republican era
saw a struggle by state leaders to re-assert the control over society and territory erased in the independence
conflicts. This involved the construction of new political institutions and new sources of legitimacy, wiping
away the political (as opposed to the social and economic) legacies of colonial rule. Tulio Halperín Donghi,
in The Aftermath of Revolution in Latin America (Harper and Row, 1973), and López-Alves (See Footnote
3)
3
record of state development reveals that none of these differences caused the divergent
outcomes. Instead, I propose a new account of the sources of state strength focused on the
institutions of local rule.
State ‘strength’ and ‘weakness’ are general terms which capture many dimensions
of the state’s power. power, defined by Michael Mann as the ability of the state to
exercise effective control of society and territory, captures the extent to which state
leaders and their agents can reach across society and territory to create compliance.6 This
aspect of the state’s strength has been shown to be central to the study of a variety of
central questions in political science, including insurgency and civil war, economic
development, the origins of political institutions, and democracy.7 States with lower
infrastructural power are likely to be characterized by what Guillermo O’Donnell has
called ‘brown areas’ or regions where the state does not effectively exercise authority. 8
The Peruvian anecdote that opened this paper is a clear example of the weakness of the
state.9 The Chilean state, on the other hand, eerily mirrored Mann’s description of life
Michael Mann ‘The Autonomous Power of the State: Its Origins, Mechanisms, and Results’ European
Journal of Sociology vol. 25 #2 (1984) pp.185-213.
7
On insurgency, see James Fearon and David Laitin ‘Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War’ American
Political Science Review vol. 97 #1 (2003) pp.91-106 and Jeff Goodwin No Other Way Out: States and
Revolutionary Movements 1945-1991 (Cambridge University Press, 2001). On civil war, see Stathis
Kalyvas The Logic Of Violence in Civil War (Cambridge University Press, 2006). On democracy, see
Guillermo O’Donnell ‘On the State, Democratization, and Some Conceptual Problems: A Latin American
View with some Glances at Post-Communist Countries’ World Development vol. 21 #8 (1993) pp.1355-69.
The impact of effective enforcement of property rights on economic development is explored in Douglass
C. North Structure and Change in Economic History (Norton, 1981). The role of infrastructural power in
the development of political institutions is explored by Daniel Ziblatt Structuring the State (Princeton
University Press, 2006). Hillel Soifer and Matthias vom Hau provide a review of these literatures which
identifies the centrality of infrastructural power in the introduction to a forthcoming special issue of Studies
in Comparative International Development focused on Mann’s concept of infrastructural power.
8
See footnote 7.
9
The uneven reach of the Peruvian state is also noted by Deborah Yashar Contesting Citizenship in Latin
America: The Rise of Indigenous Movements and the Post-liberal Challenge (Cambridge University Press,
2005).
6
4
under an infrastructurally powerful repressive state.10 Infrastructural power can be seen in
the reach of the state through society and territory in terms of the three fundamental
dimensions of state power: coercion, extraction, and regulation.11 The argument
presented in this article is illustrated with evidence about military and educational
development drawn from a broader database of the development over time of the state’s
infrastructural power in Chile and Peru, two countries selected because they vary sharply
on this outcome.12
Part I considers some alternative explanations and sets out a new argument about
the sources of state strength in institutions of local rule, as well as the empirical strategy
to be used in the remainder of the paper. Part II tests two of these possible explanations
against the historical record of the development of conscription and primary education in
Chile and Peru, showing that their proposed causal mechanisms cannot explain the
observed patterns. Instead, the evidence better fits a new explanation centered on the
institutions of local rule. Part III shifts from the effects of these institutions to their
origins. I show that the origins of distinct institutions of local rule derive from the
perceived threat of indigenous revolt, ideological factors, and the nature of political
coalitions. The paper concludes by raising the issue of the persistence of state power
Mann (See footnote 6) wrote that “If there were a Red Queen, we should all quail at her words – from
Alaska to Florida, from the Shetlands to Cornwall, there is no hiding place from the infrastructural reach of
the modern state.” (p.189) This omnipresence (and omnipotence) of the state quite accurately describes the
terror that Chileans faced under the Pinochet regime.
11
These three aspects of the state were distinguished by Charles Tilly ‘Reflections on the History of
European State Making’ in Charles Tilly, ed. The Formation of National States in Western Europe
(Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975), p.50. Ziblatt (2006) applies a similar framework. (see
footnote 7, p.86).
12
In the broader database on which this paper draws, the spread of coercive power is assessed by
examining the size and territorial spread of police and military units and available evidence on banditry,
insurgency, and challenges to the state’s monopoly of force. The reach of extractive institutions is
measured by the types of taxes imposed, the assessment and collection mechanisms, and the extent of
collections. Regulatory power is measured by the spread of public primary education, and by the expansion
of state oversight over the classroom through curriculum standardization, teacher training, and school
inspection. [CITATION REDACTED FOR ANONYMITY]
10
5
outcomes over time by suggesting an explanation for why strong states remain strong
while weak states fail to close the gap on their neighbors.
Before proceeding with this agenda, an examination of variation across Latin American
states is necessary for the task of developing a set of plausible explanations to be
examined in more detail. Figures One and Two below present data on two simple proxies
for the state’s ability to penetrate society and territory. Railroad density and literacy
represent crude measures of the territorial reach of the state, and of its ability to penetrate
society and to implement policies. The density of railroads (presented in Figure One)
facilitates the territorial reach of the state by enabling the penetration of state agents and
troops as far as the network reaches. As Jeffrey Herbst has argued about roads, railroads
allow the state to “broadcast power.”13 Literacy (shown in Figure Two) proxies for the
ability of the state to educate its population and thus inculcate national values and create
a national community.14
Trends in literacy and railroad development for eleven major Latin American
countries show that already by the early 20th century, countries can essentially be divided
into two groups. On both indicators, Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay are the clear leaders,
while other countries lag far behind.15 The gaps between leaders and laggards which
emerge before 1900 have remained salient ever since. For this reason, present-day factors
can not entirely account for contemporary cross-national differences in state power.
13
See footnote 4, pp. 84-87.
Eugen Weber Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France 1870-1914 (Stanford
University Press, 1976).
15
Mexico joins the leaders in terms of railroad density.
14
6
Instead, we must explain why some states became stronger than others before 1900, as
well as why strong states have remained strong and weak states weak over the succeeding
century. This paper explains the initial gap in state power. In the conclusion, however, I
briefly sketch some reasons for its continued salience.
INSERT FIGURES ONE AND TWO HERE
I. Explaining Cross-National Variation in State Power
Most explanations of state power emphasize the structural factors which underlie the
decision by state leaders to extend their control over society and territory. Against these
structural accounts, I propose a new type of explanation for state development which
rests on the institutions of local rule created by state leaders as they seek to extend their
reach. To show that this new explanation better accounts for the variation across Latin
America, I rely on a variety of analytical strategies: control via case selection, and
examination of the historical record for evidence linking cause to effect.
To begin, several potential explanations can be eliminated because the cases
investigated in this study control for them. There is no variation in these proposed
explanatory factors across the cases despite variation in the outcome of state power.
Thus, despite their potential relevance, these factors – resource dependence and
geographic costs – cannot account for the divergent state development outcomes in Chile
and Peru.
Scholars argue that states will develop less control over society – and in particular
less extractive power – when a commodity boom dominates the national economy. States
7
rich in natural resources can easily extract revenues from one sector of the economy.
They are thus reluctant to incur the costly task of extending the reach of the state.16
Peru’s 19th century guano boom drove up government revenues by 700% between 1850
and 1870 without requiring any extension whatsoever of the state’s reach.17 A similar
experience took place in Chile, where nitrate duties caused government revenues to
double between 1886 and 1890, and dominated the Chilean economy for the next several
decades.18 Thus the similar experience of resource booms in the two countries – their
parallel patterns of economic development – cannot explain the divergence in state
power.
A second factor often cited to explain variation in state power is political
geography.19 Given constant levels of expected benefits, state leaders will be less likely
to extend their reach where geography creates greater challenges. But leaders in both
Peru and Chile faced imposing geographic costs, since both countries include large
swaths of territory inaccesible from the national capital and other urban centers.
To reach these areas, both states faced significant and costly challenges. The railroads
built over the Andes from Lima to the mining areas of the Sierra Central were at the time
the most expensive in world history on a per-kilometer basis, and the railroad bridges
built over the massive rivers of Chile’s southern frontier were among the most ambitious
16
Terry Lynn Karl The Paradox of Plenty: Oil Booms and Petro-States (University of California Press,
1997) and Kiren Aziz Chaudhry The Price of Wealth: Economies and Institutions in the Middle East
(Cornell University Press, 1997).
17
Carlos Contreras and Marcos Cueto El Aprendizaje del Capitalismo: Estudios de Historia Económica y
Social del Perú Republicano (Lima: IEP, 1999) p.105
18
Michael Monteón argues that the nitrate boom created a rentier state in Chile. See his Chile in the Nitrate
Era: The Evolution of Economic Dependence 1880-1930 (University of Wisconsin Press, 1982). The guano
and nitrate booms are compared in Rory Miller and Robert Greenhill ‘The Fertilizer Commodity Chains:
Guano and Nitrate 1840-1930’ in Steven Topik, Carlos Marichal and Zephyr Frank, eds. From Silver to
Cocaine: Latin American Commodity Chains and the Building of the World Economy (Duke University
Press, 2006) pp.228-270.
19
See Jeffrey Herbst (footnote 4).
8
engineering projects undertaken in the western hemisphere in the 19th century.20 Thus like
explanations based on resource booms, those based on geographic factors cannot account
for the variation between Chile and Peru.21
Two other alternative explanations – war and ethnic diversity – are tested against
the historical record, employing the methodology of process tracing, which considers
evidence of the causal mechanisms linking proposed cause to effect. Using process
tracing to discard alternative explanations is particularly powerful because these
alternatives are assessed precisely in the context where they are most expected to hold.
Disproving alternative explanations in cases where they are expected to hold confronts
them on their strongest ground, biasing the investigation in their favor. Because Chile
was more successful in war, and is more ethnically homogeneous than Peru, we might
expect that these factors underlie its more effective state. The historical evidence
examined in Part II, however, shows that this was not the case; that the causes of the
stronger Chilean state, and of state weakness in Peru, do not lie in these structural factors.
Rather than explaining state development with reference to structural factors, I argue that
that outcomes of the efforts of state leaders to assert their control over society and
territory depend on the institutions of local rule they established in this effort. Here I
20
On the cost of Peruvian railroads, see Paul Gootenberg Imagining Development: Economic Ideas in
Peru’s Fictional Prosperity of Guano 1840-1880 (University of California Press, 1993) pp. 108-111. On
Chilean railroads, see Ian Thomson and Dietrich Angerstein Historia del Ferrocarril en Chile (Santiago:
DIBAM, 2000).
21
Unlike the similar challenges posed by geography in Chile and Peru, Colombian state leaders ruled the
only South American country without a primary urban center. This drove regional competition on relatively
equal grounds rather than the center-periphery dynamic in other cases. This geographic factor may underlie
the distinct pattern of state development in Colombia, where national leaders never sought to extend the
reach of the state until the 20th century. Thus, while geographic factors can not explain the difference in
state power between Peru and Chile, they remain relevant for explaining the complete range of Latin
American variation.
9
develop in schematic form the causal mechanisms underlying this new institutional
explanation, which are tested against the historical record in Part II.
To implement state policies, including state development efforts, leaders must
establish institutions of local rule throughout the national territory. They depend on local
and regional representatives as they seek to extend the reach of the state. But the choice
of representatives is crucial. Where state leaders rely on local elites – on delegated rule –
I argue that their efforts are more likely to founder. Conversely, where state agents are
deployed from the capital to the communities in which they served – where deployed rule
was implemented, state leaders should be more able to assert their authority.
The two kinds of local representatives of the state – deployed bureaucrats and
local elites – face distinct incentives, which derive from their relationships with local
communities and the central state.22 These incentives shape their willingness to pursue
the policies sought by state leaders. Under deployed rule, state agents owe their job, and
therefore their principal source of income, to the government. This gives the central state
leverage to induce their cooperation with the efforts to expand the reach of the state. On
the other hand, local elites serving as agents in the state bureaucracy generate most of
their income from landholdings or other aspects of their status in the local community
and not their state salaries, making them less responsive to central state pressures. Thus
the proportion of their income derived from government positions shapes the likelihood
of cooperation by local state agents.
22
Thomas Ertman Birth of the Leviathan (Cambridge University Press, 1997) and David Waldner State
Building and Late Development (Cornell University Press, 1999) show that distinct forms of bureaucratic
organization shape state power outcomes via the mechanism of professionalization. In contrast, my
argument rests on how institutions shape the incentives of state agents independent of their level of
professionalism.
10
The second type of incentive is perhaps more important. State agents from outside
the community – those operating under deployed rule – depend on the effectiveness of
the state infrastructure at their disposal for power within the community. This induces
them to extend and deepen that infrastructure. Local elites who serve as state agents
under delegated rule, on the other hand, depend less on the reach of the national state.
They rely mainly on traditional authority and private power to pursue their goals. Thus
they have a much weaker interest in the expanded reach of the state.
These stylized facts about the two forms of rule create an incentive structure
which shapes the participation of local state agents in the assertion of state power in their
communities. Under deployed rule, the collaboration of local representatives in extending
the reach of the state is much more likely than under delegated rule. For this reason, the
choice of local state institutions plays a crucial role in shaping the success and failure of
state development efforts. The primacy of this institutional explanation is supported, as
the subsequent section shows, by the historical record of state development in Chile and
Peru.
II. Historical Evidence
While the Chilean state developed a system of deployed rule by the 1840s as it sought to
extend its reach over the national territory, Peruvian leaders delegated administrative
positions to local elites as they undertook the same effort.23 This paper contends that this
institutional factor is crucial in accounting for the Chilean state’s strength and the
23
No organized records of administrative appointments exist in either country, but primary and secondary
evidence supports the finding that local and regional elites populated the Peruvian bureaucracy while
Chilean bureaucrats were not drawn from the population of elites. Officials ranging from subprefects to
school inspectors were delegated to local elites in Peru, while in Chile these administrators were deployed
from the capital.
11
Peruvian state’s weakness by century’s end. But the countries also diverge in terms of the
indigenous share of the population and their experience with war. To arbitrate between
these alternatives, I turn to the historical record of state development in the two cases.
First, I examine the effects of war in Chile and Peru. Drawing observable
implications from scholarship linking war to state development, I examine the historical
record of the two countries. Finding that patterns of interstate conflict cannot explain the
divergent development of their states, I show instead that the more successful military
development of the Chilean state (operationalized in terms of its ability to conscript) can
be traced to the institutions of local administration it adopted. In Peru, conscription
efforts faltered due to reliance on delegated rule. Thus, I argue that while stronger states
can more effectively make war, state strength is rooted in institutions of local rule.
Second, I investigate a moment of institutional change in educational
administration in Peru. The move from delegated to deployed administration of education
around 1900 provides a test of the effect of institutions of local rule. I find that
institutional change sharply transformed educational development, suggesting that the
weakness of this aspect of the Peruvian state cannot be explained, as others have
suggested, by elite preferences determined by ethnic diversity. Instead, I argue that the
institutions of local rule mediate the extent to which elite preferences can influence
educational development; institutions rather than demographic factors are central to the
success and failure of state development efforts.
A. Local Institutions, Conscription, and Military Development
12
The European experience of state development was driven by a ‘bellic’ cycle. States
strengthened in the context of war as they mobilized troops and raised taxes, and because
conflict created national unity which facilitated societal collaboration with these state
undertakings. War is thus a crucible in which strong states are forged.24 Miguel Centeno
argues that this cycle did not emerge in Latin America because wars in the region were
not large enough to drive the bureaucratic and fiscal expansion of state development.25
Absent the need to mobilize vast resources for combat, state leaders have not established
effective control over Latin American society and territory. The small wars of Latin
America, he argues, have left only blood and debt as their legacies. But the sharp contrast
in military fortune between Chile and Peru suggests that war might underlie the distinct
state development outcomes. The two countries fought two wars against one another, and
in both cases Chile inflicted defeats on the Peruvian army. Could Chile’s victory have
created a strong state in that country? And did defeat underlie Peruvian state weakness?
To address these questions, I trace the mechanisms by which war might cause
state development. First, I show that the first war between the two countries (1836-9) did
not create a strong state in the Chilean victor: this war neither involved military and fiscal
development, nor fostered national unity. Second, I show that the distinct forms of rule
adopted in the two countries shaped their states’ divergent ability to conscript in the
interwar period. The relative success of Chilean conscription, and its failure in Peru,
shaped the outcome of the second War of the Pacific (1879-83) in which Chile soundly
24
The literature tracing state strength to international conflict includes Tilly (1975) (See footnote 11),
Thomas Ertman (See footnote 22) Michael Mann The Sources of Social Power Volume 2: The Rise of
Classes and Nation-States 1760-1914 (Cambridge University Press, 1993) and Charles Tilly Coercion,
Capital and European States Ad 990-1992 (Blackwell Publishers, 1992).
25
See footnote 4.
13
defeated the forces of Peru and Bolivia. Institutions of local rule thus made the Chilean
state, which was then able to make war more effectively than its Peruvian counterpart.
Several characteristics of the Chilean victory in the war with the Peru-Bolivian
Confederation (1836-9) show that it could not have built a strong Chilean state. First,
Chile’s improbable victory was not due to a superior military –it came after Chilean
troops were forced to sue for peace on two occasions, and resulted from a “risky cavalry
charge” undertaken when Chilean troops “faced the choice of surrendering” once again.26
Second, the nine months required to raise each of Chile’s two forces reflect the difficulty
of mobilizing even these small forces, as major delays were caused, for example, by the
challenge of providing shoes and guns to conscripts.27 Third, forces were cut sharply after
victory, falling below pre-war levels in 1840. Military equipment and ships were sold at
auction. Thus the war had no lasting effects on Chilean military development.28
It also failed to stimulate extractive power. Treasury records show that the war
was fought without resort to extraordinary revenues, while salaries continued to be paid
and state activities such as public building construction continued during the conflict.29
Indeed, state revenues stagnated during wartime, and only two percent of state revenues
in 1840 were generated from internal taxation.30 The failure of the conflict to drive
extractive power is exemplified by the catastro real estate tax. New rolls of liable
26
Simon Collier and William F. Sater A History of Chile, 1808-1994 (Cambridge University Press, 1996)
pp.67-8.
27
Robert N. Burr By Reason or Force: Chile and the Balancing of Power in South America, 1830-1905
(University of California Press, 1965), p.47.
28
Arturo Valenzuela Political Brokers in Chile: Local Government in a Centralized Polity (Duke
University Press, 1977) p.180.
29
Memoria del Ministro de Hacienda 1839, p.16
30
Data from Markos J. Mamalakis The Growth and Structure of the Chilean Economy: From Independence
to Allende (Yale University Press, 1976) Volume Six.
14
landowners were authorized in 1836 as hostilities began, but these were not completed by
war’s end.31
Despite victory, the war failed to generate national unity in Chile. Opposition to
the conflict was so widespread that the government declared a state of siege one month
after it began, allowing the government to exile political opponents, which remained in
effect throughout the war. A decree ordered that exiles returning without permission were
to be shot within twenty four hours.32 A series of conspiracies against the government
culminated in the assassination of its most prominent leader, General Portales, in June
1837. Although Portales became a mythical figure several decades later, even his death
failed to create national unity.33
Thus, victory failed to create a strong state in Chile. The war did not have a
lasting effect on military development, it had not effect on taxation, and there was no
‘rally around the flag’ effect of national unity. The emergence of a strong Chilean state
over the mid 19th century must have its roots elsewhere. Instead of war, the historical
record suggests that successful state development in Chile resulted from reliance on
deployed rule. This can be seen in the development of effective conscription and a
unified military over subsequent decades, compared to their absence in Peru.
Divergent forms of local administration shape the ability of states to conscript
because deployed and delegated officials are differentially likely to collaborate with
conscription efforts. Conscription – particularly in its more coercive forms as practiced
throughout Latin America – inflicts costs at the local level by causing discontent among
new recruits and their families, while generating a public good of security at the national
31
Memoria del Ministro de Hacienda (See footnote 29), and ibid), p.213.
Simon Collier Chile: The Making of a Republic 1830-1865 (Cambridge University Press) p.65
33
Collier and Sater, p.66. (See footnote 26)
32
15
level. Therefore, the willingness of state agents to participate in conscription reflects their
responsiveness to local and national interests. Delegated rule, because it increases the
salience of local interests, diluted state efforts at conscription and military development
in Peru. On the other hand, deployed rule facilitated effective conscription in Chile.
Conscription is a fundamental demonstration of state power over society.34 It also
has a second-order effect on the state’s power since the army serves as a ‘school for the
fatherland’ in which soldiers are inculcated with national values.35 Thus, conscription is
central element of state building. The effective statebuilding of the interwar years
allowed Chile, despite its smaller population and resource base, to build and army that
could defeat Peru and Bolivia in the second War of the Pacific (1879-1883). On the other
hand, the efforts of Peruvian state leaders to build an effective army in that country were
hampered because conscription (like many aspects of state administration) was delegated
to local elites. The weakness of the Peruvian state – highlighted by its failure in this war
against Chile – was a result of its reliance on delegated rule.
Conscription Under Deployed Rule: Chile
In the early years after independence, and during the first war with Peru, Chile relied on
conscription by force.36 By the 1840s, however, the army was populated with a
combination of volunteers and those sentenced to military service by local judicial
officials. Although judicial conscription engendered significant resistance, Chilean state
agents were willing to overcome this opposition. Their willingness to enforce judicial
34
Margaret Levi Consent, Dissent, and Patriotism (Cambridge University Press, 1997)
Eugen Weber (1976) (See footnote 14).
36
Recruitment by force was banned in both 1826 and 1832, suggesting that it survived despite legal
changes. Estado Mayor General del Ejercito (1981) Historia del Ejercito de Chile (Santiago) vol. 3,
pp.174-7 (abbreviated below as HEC)
35
16
conscription was driven by the fact that they relied on the military to maintain order in
the regions in which they served, and to keep themselves in power: each provincial
intendant commanded the forces in his region.37 Lacking ties in the local community,
Chilean state agents relied on the army for security. This encouraged collaboration with
conscription requirements mandated from the capital. Local authorities were willing to
designate young (predominantly poor) men for service, and the army no longer had to fill
its ranks by forcible conscription.38
Because local state agents oversaw conscription in Chile, it took place with a
veneer of legality which legitimized and routinized military service. This quasi-voluntary,
compliance with military service both reflected the greater ability of the state to penetrate
local society and improved its military effectiveness.39 The greater cohesion of the
Chilean military can be seen in the low levels of desertion from its army. For example,
during the second War of the Pacific, only 103 of a force of nearly four thousand soldiers
involved in a year-long campaign in the Peruvian highlands deserted.40 The only
significant wave of desertion from the Chilean army after 1840 took place during the
Civil War of 1891, in which troops in President Balmaceda’s army were recruited by
force in a departure from standard Chilean practice.41
Since soldiers were selected for service by local authorities and not recruited
directly by military units, units mixed soldiers from across the country. This helped to
create a unified and national army. Beginning in 1862, the army began the practice of
37
ibid., vol.4 p.16
Frederick Nunn The Military in Chilean History: Essays on Civil-Military Relations, 1810-1973
(University of New Mexico Press, 1976)
39
Levi (1997) (See footnote 34)
40
HEC vol.6 pp.295-6 (See footnote 36)
41
ibid., vol.7, pp.128ff
38
17
rotating units through the country, which severed any remaining connection between a
particular unit and a ‘home region.’ In these ways, the willingness of local state agents to
bear the costs of conscription allowed the Chilean state to build a unified army. The
effective conscription apparatus developed in the inter-war years underlay the state’s
ability to mobilize a massive army when hostilities once again broke out, and thus to win
the second War of the Pacific.
Conscription Under Delegated Rule: Peru
For most of the 19th century, conscription in Peru was overseen by local elites appointed
as subprefects. These officials gained nothing from conscription, while it inflicted several
kinds of costs on them. It created a national army that posed a threat to their local power,
and removed economically vital Indian labor from their estates. In addition, since they
were able to draw on their connections and local power to raise private security forces,
local officials in Peru did not rely exclusively on the national army to protect them
against threats to their power. Finally, conscription was an unpopular imposition on the
population. In one instance, “following the recruitment of nearly ten soldiers in Cuzco, an
anonymous group raided and laid waste to the house of the subprefect responsible for the
measure.”42 As a result of these incentives, local officials in Peru often shirked the
conscription duties assigned to them and ignored regulations governing military
recruitment. For example, not a single provincial leader complied with the military
service law of 1872, which set a quota of recruits for each province based on population.
42
Ulrich Muecke Political Culture in Nineteenth Century Peru: The Rise of the Partido Civil (University of
Pittsburgh Press, 2004) p.175.
18
Because local officials were reluctant to participate in conscription, military units
had to fill their own ranks from the populations of the regions in which they were
located.43 Conscription by military units operated by force and extra-legally, and thus it
lacked the legitimacy of the legal recruitment of soldiers in Chile. It also led to a
concentration of recruiting in the heavily indigenous southern highlands region of Peru,
which saw “systematic annual recruitment drives, during which the army scoured the
countryside of the altiplano from one end to another.”44 Due to their recruitment by force
and by “notoriously cruel methods”, Peruvian conscripts were not loyal to their army.45
Desertion by these impressed soldiers was consistently high, even during the transport of
troops to the front in the second war with Chile.46 Officers were occupied just as much
with policing new recruits for desertion as with battlefield training.
Forceful recruitment by individual units also limited the army’s role in nation
building. Unlike the regional heterogeneity of Chilean army units, the Peruvian army was
not a place where recruits came into contact with a cross-section of the nation. Instead
they encountered their fellow poor from the province where the unit was most recently
based. For example, the Dos de Mayo regiment in 1878 recruited 343 soldiers – a sizable
percentage of its ranks - from the single department of Ayacucho, where it was deployed
to put down a revolt.47 Thus, the reluctance of local state agents to participate in
conscription affected many aspects of the Peruvian army. Impressed troops were more
likely to desert, more poorly trained, and less nationally representative than they were in
43
See for example Memoria del Ministro del Estado, Guerra, y Marina 1845, p.4.
Nils Jacobsen Mirages of Transition: The Peruvian Altiplano 1780-1940 (University of California Press,
1993) pp.132-3.
45
Cecilia Méndez The Plebeian Republic: the Huanta Rebellion and the Making of the Peruvian State
1820-1850 (Duke University Press, 2005) p.243.
46
Contreras and Cueto 1999 p.137. (See footnote 17)
47
Memoria que presenta el Ministro del Estado en el Despacho de Gobierno, Policía y Obras Públicas al
Congreso 1878, p.77.
44
19
Chile. The Peruvian army was much further from the ideal of a ‘nation under arms’, had
many more discipline problems, and was less effective on the battlefield than its Chilean
counterpart.
When war broke out in 1879, pitting Peru (and Bolivia) against Chile, mobilization
efforts began. Chile was able to triple its force in six months (and increase its army size
ten-fold to over forty thousand) in eighteen months after hostilities began. Peru, on the
other hand, despite having the largest population of the three combatants, was able to
raise the smallest army (only seven thousand troops) for the first engagements of the
war.48 After the defeat of this first force, Peru struggled to organize a second army to
defend its capital. Despite the decreed mobilization of every male aged 16 to 60, Lima
was defended by a “poorly equipped and led 19,000 man improvised militia” – a force no
larger than that mobilized for wars Peru fought in the first decades after independence.49
As a result of its defeat, Peru lost substantial territory including the nitrate fields which
underlay Chile’s economic boom in subsequent decades.
If we believed that war made the Chilean state stronger than the Peruvian state,
we would have to trace the growth of state power to the effects of war. War would have
to lead to increased army size, increased extractive capacity, and increased national unity.
But as described above, the first war between Chile and Peru had none of these effects in
Chile despite its victory. And the outcome of the second war, in which Chile also
emerged victorious, reflected and reinforced a pre-existing gap in the power of the two
48
Data on the sizes of the armies of both countries during this war are assembled from the Historia del
Ejército Chileno (see footnote 36)and the Peruvian Memorias del Ministerio de Guerra from various years.
49
Peter Klarén Peru: Society and Nationhood in the Andes (Oxford University Press, 2000) p.189.
Comparative data on the forces mobilized for Peru’s various wars from Carlos Dellepiane Historia Militar
del Perú (Lima: Imprenta del Ministerio de Guerra, 1943)
20
states rather than creating that gap. While the Chilean state could mobilize thousands of
trained troops and deliver them to the battlefield, Peruvian army leaders had to rely on
less effective methods of conscription, and were unable to mobilize a sizable army in the
war. To attribute Chilean state strength to its victory in this war ignores the fact that the
seeds of its victory were sown over the preceding decades in the development of effective
legal conscription. To attribute Peruvian state weakness to its defeat in this war is to
ignore the ineffective state-building of the preceding decades, which prevented the largest
country in the conflict from raising an effective fighting force. Thus, war is not the root
of Chilean state strength and Peruvian state weakness. The strength of the two states
underlay their ability to make war, but institutions of local rule, rather than war, was the
source of the initial variation in infrastructural power between the Chilean and Peruvian
states.
B. Peruvian Educational Development: Institutions or Social Preferences?
At first glance, it would be reasonable to attribute the variation in state strength in Latin
America to variation in ethnic diversity. As reflected in Figures One and Two above,
countries with large indigenous populations, such as Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia, have
weaker states than their neighbors.50 This finding is consonant with a current of research
that explores the effects of ethnic diversity on governance. Alesina and his colleagues
found in a study of cities in the United States that as ethnic heterogeneity increases, the
proportion of government spending devoted to public goods (including education)
50
As discussed in detail below, Mexico is an exception to this pattern.
21
declines.51 The mechanisms by which this effect is produced remain contested. Alesina
et. al. suggest two possibilities: variation in preferences about public good provision
across ethnic groups, and the possibility that each group’s utility derived from the public
goods declines as other groups use them. Mariscal and Sokoloff, arguing in a similar
vein, find that economic inequality shapes public good provision by limiting suffrage to
those disinclined to promote redistribution. Thus, they find that economic inequality and
suffrage restrictions underlie variation in educational development in the Americas. 52
Thus we see a range of ways in which the striking social inequalities of Latin American
countries with large indigenous populations might account for the weakness of their
states. But can these arguments about how diversity and inequality shape preferences
explain why Peruvian education failed to develop in the 19th century?53 This section
compares the evidence for a preference-based explanation for the failure of educational
development in Peru with evidence for an institutional explanation, and finds that the
latter better fits the historical record.54
Many Peruvian elites believed, as preference-based arguments would predict, that
the indigenous population could not be educated or effectively integrated into a ‘modern’
Peru. For example, Alejandro Deustua wrote that the indigenous “lacked all culture, and
had no notion of nationality.” He wondered what effect education could have on those
Alberto Alesina, Reza Baqir, and William Easterly ‘Public Goods and Ethnic Divisions’ Quarterly
Journal of Economics vol.114 #4 (November 1999) pp.1243-1284.
52
Elisa Mariscal and Kenneth L. Sokoloff ‘Schooling, Suffrage, and the Persistence of Inequality in the
Americas 1800-1945’ in Political Institutions and Economic Growth in Latin America ed. by Stephen
Haber (Hoover Institution Press, 2000) pp.159-218. Although much of this article focuses on economic
inequality and political access, the authors repeatedly refer to ‘homogeneity’ in ethnic terms.
53
Social capital represents a distinct mechanism by which diversity affects public good provision. See
Robert D. Putnam ‘E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the 21 st Century’ Scandinavian Political
Studies vol.30 #2 (June 2007) pp.137-174.
54
A similar argument to that made in this section can be found in Daniel Ziblatt ‘Why Some Cities Provide
More Public Goods than Others: Infrastructural Power, Preferences, and the Provision of Public Goods in
German Cities in 1900’ (unpublished manuscript, Harvard University, 2007)
51
22
who, to him, “were not yet people, did not know how to live like people, and had not
managed to differentiate themselves from the animals.”55 In his view, the focus of
education should be on the middle and upper class citizens of Lima. Similar views were
prominently expressed, for example in the pages of El Comercio, and in congressional
debates.56 This evidence from Peru, along with the cross-national evidence of a negative
correlation between the indigenous composition of the population and the provision of
education in the Americas, might satisfy us about the origins of this aspect of state
weakness.57
However, elite preferences about educational development only matter if elites
have control over educational policy. This control can emerge at two points in the process
of policymaking. First, at the level of policy formation, these preferences may inform the
choices made by education bureaucrats. In other words, the policy choices of state
bureaucrats may not be autonomous from social actors. If elite preferences affect policy
by this channel, we should see evidence that policymakers choose not to expand the reach
of the educational apparatus of the state. Second, elites may be able to affect policies in
the implementation stage. At this second stage, the extent to which elites can act on their
preferences for limiting the spread of education is shaped by the institutional framework
of educational administration. When the institutions of local rule place local and regional
elites in the position of implementing educational policy, they can act on their
preferences and limit the spread of education to rural areas and to lower classes. But
Alejandro Deustua ‘El Problema Pedagógica Nacional’ (1904), reprinted in Carmen Montero, ed. La
Escuela Rural: Variaciones sobre un Tema (Lima: FAO, 1990) pp.85-7.
56
Muecke 2004, p.181. (See footnote 42)
57
Mariscal and Sokoloff (2000) (See footnote 52)
55
23
when education is administered by bureaucrats deployed from the capital, local and
regional elites are excluded from decisions about this aspect of state development.
Thus, the content of elite preferences is not sufficient to explain outcomes of
educational development. To convincingly attribute outcomes to elite preferences,
evidence must be provided about the policy choices made by high-level bureaucrats, and
about the institutions of local administration – the two channels by which preferences can
shape policy. When this type of evidence is collected, it becomes clear that patterns of
educational development in Peru cannot be explained by elite preference alone. Instead,
institutions structure the influence of local elites over educational administration: while
delegated rule allows local elites to act on their preferences and dilute efforts to develop
education, deployed rule cuts them out of policymaking and allows educational
development to override their opposition. This section demonstrates the importance of
forms of local rule in mediating the effect of elite preferences on the outcome of
educational development. Thus, it supports the overall argument that institutional factors
are central to explaining the emergence of variation in state development in Latin
America.
Change over time in institutional structure provides a propitious context for
testing the effects of those institutions. In the case of educational development, Peru saw
a change from delegated to deployed rule during the first two decades of the twentieth
century, even as many elites continued to speak in favor of limiting educational
development. An examination of educational development before and after this change
controls for other factors across the two periods and bolsters the claim that institutions of
local rule shape the success of state efforts to assert control over society and territory.
24
Even as many Peruvian elites continued to hold the views described above,
national education officials came by about 1900 to believe in the value of increasing
educational provision. For example, the Minister of Education, Jorge Polar, wrote in 1905
that “happily, it has been proven that there is no uneducable race – certainly not ours,
even in the most remote parts of the country.”58 This belief was part of a general sense
that significant change was necessary for recovery from the chaos of the preceding
decade. Nicolas de Piérola, Civilista party leader and president of Peru beginning in
1895, led a broad coalition which came to power with this intent in mind. The preceding
Cáceres administration had increased administrative reliance on delegated rule, which
contributed to economic collapse and massive social conflict in rural areas.59 The degree
of turmoil in the country highlighted the inability of a state reliant on delegated rule to
fulfill basic state functions. Chastened by the experience of the preceding decade, the
Civilista governments of the period 1895-1919 turned away from delegation and began to
deploy state representatives to the national periphery. The move away from delegated to
deployed rule was particularly striking in the realm of education, where it produced
markedly increased state power, as shown below, as well as a backlash from local elites
which limited the extent of state development despite the institutional change.
The failure of state development in earlier decades, combined with the devastation
of the War of the Pacific (1879-1883), left the interior of Peru without schools. The
Civilista governments of the post-1895 period prioritized education as a crucial
component of their efforts to bring ‘progress’ and ‘development’ to the country by
58
Memoria del Ministerio de Justicia, Instrucción Pública, Beneficiencia, y Culto (Henceforth cited as
MIP) (1905, p.xxxviii)
59
Florencia Mallon The Defense of Community in Peru’s Central Highlands: Peasant Struggle and
Capitalist Transition 1860-1940 (Princeton University Press, 1983)
25
extending “the presence of the state to the length and breadth of its rural society.”60 The
first steps taken by Piérola were a series of national education inspections ordered in
1897 and 1898. For the first time, inspectors were deployed from Lima to the provinces.
The difference from earlier inspections was dramatic: inspectors began to file reports that
highlighted the shortcomings of the education system and criticized the actions of local
government in the realm of education. Most strikingly for the central government,
inspectors noted that many communities lacked schools altogether: for example, the
inspector found that children in the border town of Desaguadero crossed into Bolivia to
attend school there.61 A commission on school hygiene, formed in 1899, also delivered
stark findings, describing the conditions in rural schools as not only ‘unhealthy’ but
‘homicidal.’62 The complete disarray of schooling, revealed in these overwhelmingly
negative reports, led the national government to take control of educational development.
As a prelude to a major effort at educational development, Piérola’s government
undertook an educational census in 1902, the first assessment of education at a national
level since the 1876 census.63 Despite some resistance from local officials, over 90% of
the population and 75% of the national territory were covered by this census.64 The
results showed no progress in education since 1876. In response, the Piérola government
and its successors undertook massive efforts to expand education. From 1897 to 1920, the
60
Contreras and Cueto 2004, p.218. (See footnote 17)
This anecdote appears in the MIP 1898, p.424. The general claims in this paragraph about the content of
this new wave of inspectors’ reports is based on a comparison of the reports appearing in all 29 available
annual ministerial Memorias over the period 1864-1919, as well as various reports of regional officials
from the same time period.
62
The report of this commission appears in the MIP 1900.
63
The full education census document is available in the Archivo General de la Nación, Fondo Ministerio
de Hacienda, Document Number H-6-0375.
64
Ibid and Carlos Contreras El Aprendizaje del Capitalismo (Lima: IEP, 2004) p.243.
61
26
number of primary schools in the country nearly quadrupled from 852 to 3,338.65
Education doubled as well, reaching over one hundred twenty thousand. This growth far
outpaced the growth of population, and was truly national, as schools per capita increased
throughout the country, unlike earlier periods where school construction was focused in
Lima.
The Pardo government (1904-9) continued the process of educational
development by focusing on the content of textbooks. A contest opened on May 9, 1905
to write a reader for primary school students which would be ‘truly Peruvian’, and by
1907 over one hundred fifty thousand copies of the winner were printed and distributed.66
In all, the education ministry distributed over twenty two books per thousand residents
natiowide in 1908, and implemented a curriculum designed to inclucate students with
knowledge of Peruvian geography and history (including the Inca heritage, the colonial
period, the independence conflict, and the republican era) as well as moral, physical, and
military education. Moral education was designed to transmit the “principal duties” of
man to students: cleanliness, work, temperance, school attendance, honor, honesty,
courage, savings, payment of taxes, electoral duties, and military service.67 These efforts
to use schooling to unify the population under the national banner represented a direct
response to the chaos of the 1880s and early 1890s, and were seen as the means to the
“civilization of the indigenous and by that route their incorporation into the Peruvian
nation.”68
65
The figures which appear here are collected from various annual ministerial reports.
MIP 1905, pp.xlvi, 877-8, 904ff, MIP 1906, xxxii, MIP 1907, 644-9
67
MIP 1902, 670-1, MIP 1905, 905-6.
68
1901 statement by Pedro Cisneros, president of the Supreme Court of the Department of Ancash, cited in
Carlos Contreras Maestros, Mistis y Campesinso en el Perú rural del siglo XX (Lima: IEP) p.9
66
27
The Civilista governments were pioneers in the deployment of education officials
from Lima to the nation’s interior. The effects of this new policy were dramatic in terms
of increased education provision and state oversight. Local elites, however, remained
hostile to educational development. But the shift to deployed rule eliminated the
opportunity they had to dilute its implementation. Instead, their hostility revealed itself in
active resistance to education officials deployed to their communities, which at times
turned violent.69 A more sweeping limitation of educational development turned on the
fact that “despite its increased authority and reach, the central government nevertheless
continued to rely on the regional power of the gamonales [rural elites] to keep order in
the provinces.”70 With increased rural unrest after 1915, national governments developed
closer ties with local elites, and ceded much more ground on education. This can be seen
in the disappearance of systematic inspection reports from the archives of the Ministry of
Education after this time, and in the return of annual ministerial reports to their old focus
on policy design rather than the shortcomings of implementation. Despite this retreat, the
Civilista governments’ shift to deployed rule underlay a dramatic increase in the state’s
provision of education, oversight of its quality, and control of its content. Thus, the form
of rule shaped both the gains and the limitations in educational development during the
Aristocratic Republic (1895-1919) in Peru. Despite the fact that elite preferences did not
change during this period, their influence varied with the institutional design of local
administration. While delegated rule allowed elites to dilute educational development, the
deployed rule implemented during this period limited their ability to do so and allowed
the central state to substantially increase this aspect of the state’s power.
69
70
See for example Jacobsen 1993, p.211 (See footnote 44)
Klarén 2000, p.218 (See footnote 49)
28
III. From Institutional Effects to Institutional Origins
Institutions only play an independent causal role if they are not simply reflections of
underlying structural conditions. Thus, the question of institutional origins must be
addressed as part of an explanation of institutional effects. In this case, the choice of
deployed or delegated rule was influenced by underlying societal conditions, but not
determined by them. Where leaders confronted a large indigenous population – or, more
precisely, the perceived threat of an indigenous revolt – they chose institutions of local
rule based on a distinct decision calculus. Thus the perceived threat of indigenous revolt
acted as what Slater and Simmons call a critical antecedent: a factor which predisposes
the outcome of a critical juncture without determining it.71
Where there was no threat of indigenous revolt, leaders saw no benefit to
choosing delegated rule, and chose deployed rule in order to maximize the spread of their
authority. But where the threat of indigenous revolt was high, state leaders saw
advantages to both deployed and delegated rule. Although delegated rule implied a lower
risk of rural unrest by maintaining traditional social hierarchies, deployed rule would
allow them to maximize the spread of their authority. In this context, the choice was less
clear. A brief comparison of Mexico and Peru, where leaders confronted similar
structural conditions but made different choices, demonstrates the dynamics of this
institutional choice.
The 19th century in both Mexico and Peru was characterized by high levels of
indigenous unrest. Both countries saw significant revolts by indigenous communities as
Dan Slater and Erica Simmons ‘Informative Regress: Critical Antecedents in Comparative Historical
Analysis’ (Paper presented at APSA 2007, Chicago IL)
71
29
colonial authority waned. The independence struggles in both countries were as much
domestic conflict between political elites and indigenous forces as between colonial and
Spanish imperial forces. In Peru, this struggle represented a continuation of the Tupac
Amaru revolt of 1780, which swept the indigenous highlands of the country for several
decades. As republican rule was consolidated in both countries, indigenous revolts
continued. The Caste War of the Yucatan in the 1840s made the threat of national
destabilization salient in Mexico as well.72 In Peru, this fear led elites to engage in careful
observation of popular participation in festivals in Cuzco because authorities “worried
about the lower class’ cultural autonomy and its subversive potential.”73 Upsurges of
protest from below seemed to emerge whenever gaps opened in the stability of the
national state. Most dramatically, the War of the Pacific in Peru (1879-83) sparked
indigenous revolt in the Central Highlands against the occupying Chilean troops and
regional and national Peruvian elites who cooperated with them.74
But beyond actual revolt, the threat of revolt was crucial in shaping the thinking
of state elites. It was the memory of earlier revolts that made national elites constantly
wary of the threat of future upheaval.75 The salience of the threat of unrest from below
dampened conflict between rival camps of elites, which emerged again when “social
Friedrich Katz ‘The Liberal Republic and the Porfiriato 1867-1910’ in Leslie Bethell, ed. Mexico Since
Independence (Cambridge University Press, 1991) pp.49-124.
73
Charles Walker Smoldering Ashes: Cuzco and the Creation of Republican Peru, 1780-1840 (Duke
University Press, 1999) p.170
74
The motivations of indigenous communities in these revolts have been the subject of extensive debate
among Peruvian historians. Nevertheless, among their effects was to raise the fear of indigenous unrest
among state leaders after the reconsolidation of the state in the 1890s. This increased fear, as discussed
above, underlay the move from delegated to deployed rule in Peru in the early 20 th century.
75
John Lynch The Spanish-American Revolutions 1808-1826 (Norton, 1986) p.171, and Heraclio Bonilla
and Karen Spalding ‘La independencia en el Perú: Las palabras y los hechos’ in Heraclio Bonilla Metáfora
y realidad de la Independencia en el Perú (Lima: IEP) p.67-8.
72
30
subversion” was no longer an imminent danger.76 Only when they faced international
threat were state leaders willing to call on the lower classes to join their struggles, as
Mexican leaders did in their war against France and a sector of Peruvian leaders did in
the War of the Pacific.77
Despite the similar perceived fear of revolt, state leaders in Mexico and Peru
established different institutions of local rule. But while delegated rule emerged in Peru,
19th century Mexican leaders deployed state administrators to the provinces and thus
undercut the power of regional elites.78 The fact that similar structural conditions led to
sharply divergent institutional choice highlights the need to understand the choice in
terms of tradeoffs constructed by structural factors rather than as an outcome determined
by them. State leaders in Mexico and Peru faced a tradeoff between effective
implementation of their policies, and the possibility of unrest as they sought to expand
the reach of the state while confronting the threat of revolt. Relying on traditional
regional elites to implement policies would buttress against revolt, but dilute the
implementation of policies designed to increase state power. Mexican and Peruvian
leaders weighed these factors differently as a result of ideological and institutional
factors, and therefore made distinct choices about the institutions of local rule.
Mexican Liberals, in power in the mid-19th century, were particularly radical.
Unlike their Peruvian counterparts (or indeed, any other Latin American contemporaries)
Jean Bazant ‘Mexico from Independence to 1867’ in Bethell, ed. Mexico Since Independence
(Cambridge University Press, 1991)., p.27
77
Local elites, unlike national leaders, were often willing to mobilize indigenous populations when they
saw fit. Cecilia Méndez The Plebeian Republic: The Huanta Rebellion and the Making of the Peruvian
State, 1820-1850 (Duke University Press, 2005), especially pp.60-1.
78
The latter part of the rule of Porfirio Díaz in Mexico was an exception to the pattern of deployed rule,
which characterized the Liberal period of mid-century, the early Porfiriato, and the post-revolutionary party
dictatorship.
76
31
Mexican liberals leveraged the power of the state to drastically transform their society.
The Liberal Reforms of the 1850s included sweeping anti-clerical laws in Latin America,
and an opening for attacks on the communal landholding of indigenous communities.79 In
implementing these reforms, Liberal leaders weakened regional caudillos, which allowed
major unrest to erupt in many parts of the country. Peruvian leaders were more moderate,
which allowed allowed a compromise with regional elites. Thus, the varied nature of
Liberal ideology partially explains why divergent forms of rule were established in the
two countries.
The character of electoral patronage in the two countries was also relevant. Party
leaders in both countries relied on regional elites to deliver votes from the provinces to a
party organization centered in the capital. Regional elites delivered votes in exchange for
patronage, but the nature of patronage varied. While Peruvian elites delivered votes in
exchange for positions in the regional bureaucracy, Mexican elites sought elected office
at the national level in return for their votes. Peruvian leaders needed delegated rule to
gain the support of regional elites, while Mexican leaders could build political coalitions
through a distinct pattern of patronage.80 In the short run, the choice of deployed rule
prompted major upheaval in Mexico. In the longer run, however, it underlay the
establishment of a powerful state.
Similar structural conditions produced distinct state development outcomes in
Mexico and Peru, which align with distinct institutional choices. Similar institutional
choices (in very different structural contexts) in Mexico and Chile produced similarly
powerful states, which reinforces the paramount causal role of institutions. Where
79
Charles A. Hale The Transformation of Liberalism in late Nineteenth Century Mexico (Princeton
University Press, 1989)
80
Muecke 2004 (See footnote 42)
32
deployed rule was used as state leaders sought to extend their reach, strong states
emerged. Weak states emerged where state leaders sought to extend their reach while
relying on delegated rule, as in Peru, and where state leaders did not seek to extend their
reach, as in Colombia.81
IV. From Origins to Long-Term Trends
This paper has shown that divergent forms of local administration in Chile and Peru
determined the success and failure of efforts by 19th century state leaders to assert control
over society and territory. As a result the Chilean state was by 1900 much stronger than
its Peruvian counterpart. This initial divergence has been sustained over time: as the
anecdotes at the beginning of this paper showed, the Chilean state has remained strong
while the Peruvian state is weak. I conclude with a suggestion of the mechanisms of
reproduction which, resulting from the initial variation, keep outcomes ‘locked in’ over
time.82
An examination of patterns of social conflict in twentieth century Latin America
reveals two distinct modes of state-society relations, which have emerged as a result of
earlier state development outcomes. Past levels of state infrastructural power shape the
extent to which societal actors rely on the state in conflict and contestation. Where the
state has successfully asserted its power, as in Chile, societal actors rely on it, and the
state continues to accrue more power as it is called on to intervene in a wide range of
81
Thus, I identify two necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for the emergence of strong states: (1) an
explicit project of state development, which is (2) administered through deployed rule. Where either of
these conditions is absent, state weakness results. In Peru, condition (1) is present, but condition (2) is
absent. In Colombia, both are absent, while both are present in Chile and Mexico.
82
James Mahoney The Legacies of Liberalism: Path Dependence and Political Regimes in Central
America (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001) and Paul Pierson Politics in Time: History, Institutions,
and Political Analysis (Princeton University Press, 2004), Chapter One.
33
conflict. But where state development failed, as in Peru, societal actors develop
independent strategies of improving their conditions rather than drawing the state into
their communities.
These patterns can be seen by comparing the strategies of contention in arenas of
social conflict such as housing crises engendered by rural-urban migration, rural land
conflict, and security provision. Across all these issue areas, societal actors from across
the socio-economic spectrum in Chile sought the expanded reach of state institutions far
more often than their Peruvian counterparts, who were more likely to resolve conflicts
without relying on the state. A striking example of this was the formation of rondas
campesinas as a means by which Peruvian peasants resisted the Shining Path insurgency
in the absence of the state. This outcome, often attributed to contemporary ineffective
governance, should instead be traced to the historical failure of the Peruvian state’s
efforts to extend its reach through the national territory. The success of the analogous
effort of state development in Chile, on the other hand, was reinforced over time by
societal actors who saw a powerful state as a means to achieve their ends. This created
the powerful state that allowed the Pinochet government to sow terror after the 1973 coup
in that country.
Beginning by showing that the contemporary variation in Latin American state strength
has historical roots, this paper has tied the origins of that divergence to the design of
institutions of local rule. Thus broader theories of institutional emergence and change are
relevant to the study of state power. Existing explanations for state strength too often
focus on structural conditions such as war and ethnic diversity. As the comparison of
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Peru and Chile in this paper has shown, variation in state power is determined by the
institutional choices made in response to these structural conditions. Explanations of
institutional choice and institutional effects, central to the institutional turn in
comparative politics, will thus be of great utility as the study of state strength and
weakness continues to unfold.
The study of state development, in turn, can also inform contemporary debates in
comparative politics. The institutional turn in comparative politics is premised on an
unspoken assumption that the state can implement its chosen policies. Formal institutions
shape expectations, strategies, and actions only where state power reaches. Recognizing
the varied power of states forces scholars to move beyond the assumption that states can
enforce policies to investigating the effects of policies where the reach of the state is
limited. But despite recent scholarly attention to failed and collapsed states, the many
intermediate cases where the reach of the state is limited and uneven remain
understudied. A focus on these intermediate cases can shed light on both the origins and
the effects of state development and state collapse.
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