Canonical theories of state-building suggest that 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 extend their rule over peripheries with valuable assets, they might instead seek to preserve local patrimonial bastions when those areas offer clientelistic support. In turn, these strategies lead to broad subnational heterogeneity in the reach of the state. This paper focuses on regions’ ecological, military, and clientelistic features to explain local trajectories of state capacity. Using original data from censuses, budgets, and other primary sources, I show that Chile’s ruling coalition modernized the country’s peripheries while deepening its traditionalism. These results challenge prevailing narratives about the projection of political authority and Chile’s territorial uniformity.

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When do economic elites support democracy, and how do they ensure their assets against its redistributive effects? This paper re-evaluates the role of landlords in democratization. Conventional wisdom suggests that landowning elites resist democratization due to the perceived risk of land expropriation that results from enfranchisement and competition. This association is particularly prevalent in high land inequality and labor-dependent agriculture contexts, where empowered peasants will likely demand land redistribution. Contrary to this consensus, this paper suggests that their country’s predominant agrarian structure significantly affects landlords’ regime preferences. Landowners may support competitive politics under manorialism, a structure characterized by self-sufficient estates and strong clientelistic bonds between lords and peasants. Under these circumstances, landowners can leverage their patron-client ties with peasants to create an electoral bastion, leading to their support of competitive politics.

Current research attributes bureaucratic capacity to sustained geopolitical pressures or economic development. Instead, this paper proposes an alternative mechanism: the expansion of the agricultural frontier. I argue that efforts to disrupt, exploit, and govern hard-to-reach locations prompt investments in coercive, technocratic, and bureaucratic resources to read and transform adverse environments, ultimately producing state capacity. I examine this mechanism through case studies of Chile's Araucanía, the U.S. Great Plains, and Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula.