Academic Research

Why do states project authority across their territories, and why do some develop strong central bureaucracies while others remain weak? Taming Nature, Building States argues that local ecologies and the economic activities they inspire shape these outcomes more than war-making or capitalism alone. Using archival research and comparative-historical analysis of Latin America and the US during the first globalization era (c. 1870–1930), the book examines how governments governed different peripheral ecologies and the effects of these tools on bureaucratic development. Frontier ecologies that required military conquest, cadastral mapping, and legal enforcement—such as Chile’s Araucanía and the US Great Plains and Texas cotton plains—drove states outward and fostered lasting bureaucratic capacity, often despite indigenous resistance. Conversely, ecologies that thrived without state intervention, such as São Paulo’s coffee rainforests and the River Plate cattle frontier, enabled private elites to generate wealth with minimal central oversight. Coerced-labor estates—haciendas and plantations in Chile’s Central Valley, the Andes, and the US South—actively resisted state penetration, reinforcing landlord authority for generations. By viewing state formation as a combined outcome of environment, capital, and coercion, the book advances our understanding of comparative politics, environmental history, and public policy, highlighting the long-term effects of these patterns on modern governance and illicit economies worldwide.

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.

Conventional wisdom holds that state capacity must precede effective industrial policy: governments need skilled bureaucracies to work with firms and curb cronyism and corruption. Yet development projects often create the very capacities they supposedly require, reversing that causal order. Supporting industries and firms compels governments to build specialized agencies, hire technical staff, professionalize the civil service, and lay down infrastructure. State capacity is frequently not a prerequisite but a product of industrial strategy. I show how industrial policy strengthens three dimensions of state capacity: fiscal, bureaucratic, and informational. Drawing on the US New Deal, Latin American import substitution, and the East Asian developmental states, I close by asking how green industrial policy is reshaping state capacity in Europe and East Asia.

Why do governments launch ambitious industrial policies precisely when the international order is in turmoil? I argue that geopolitical disruption is a systematic foreign source of industrial policy, not an incidental one: when shifts in the global order threaten a state’s access to markets, capital, or technology, governments turn to building domestic industry. Disruption works through three triggers. Involuntary shocks like blockades, wars, and depressions compel industrialization by necessity; systemic shifts like hegemonic transitions and decolonization permit it by widening the policy space for follower states; and deliberate pressure like tariff wars, sanctions, and technological rivalry drives it as defense. I trace each across two centuries, from the Napoleonic blockade to today’s contest over clean energy and semiconductors, and ask why some triggers leave durable industrial capacity while others do not.

The current wave of industrial policy is often framed as a story about national governments. However, in federal systems, this view is increasingly outdated. Today, subnational governments develop sector-specific strategies, manage development agencies, attract foreign investments, form cross-regional alliances, and play a substantial role in federal industrial policies—either supporting or opposing them. We identify two key ways in which subnational industrial policies differ from those at the country level: first, the way state governments coordinate with federal strategies—whether through collaboration, replacement, or conflict—and second, how state governors forge alliances based on ideology, sectoral strategies, or patronage. Using a new dataset of Mexican states from 2015 to 2026, we document the rise of subnational industrial policies. All 32 states pursue independent policies amidst intense geoeconomic competition driven by US–China tensions and USMCA renegotiation, illustrating how multi-level industrial policy has become a defining feature of federal systems.

When do economic elites support democracy, and how do they protect their assets from its redistributive effects? Conventional wisdom holds that landed elites oppose democratization because they fear expropriation after enfranchisement. This association is stronger in contexts of high land inequality and labor-dependent agriculture, where empowered peasants are likely to demand redistribution. This paper challenges that view by examining nineteenth-century Chile. Landowners from the Central Valley—the country’s main agricultural region—supported peasant enfranchisement and helped shape Chile’s emerging competitive regime. Landlords incorporated peasants into the franchise because Chile’s manorial agrarian structure provided the clientelistic ties necessary for voter mobilization and oversight. We also examine whether these elites kept the state’s regulatory capacity away from manorial localities. Using a unique panel dataset of Chilean departments from 1862 to 1920 and a two-way fixed-effects difference-in-differences approach, we find strong support for the first claim and no support for the second: the franchise expanded more in hacienda-heavy departments after 1874, but bureaucratic growth was similar across all departments. Although the quantitative results do not support the second claim, qualitative evidence suggests that landowners captured local political institutions rather than excluding the state from their localities. Landlords’ control over peasant votes ended in 1958 with the introduction of the secret ballot. By extending voting rights to peasants and shaping electoral rules in their favor, landed elites positioned themselves for long-term electoral dominance. Our findings challenge prevailing assumptions about the dynamics of first-wave transitions to democracy and the agrarian origins of political regimes.

Every major theory of state-building claims to explain Chile’s development. Bellicists attribute it to the War of the Pacific, while fiscal scholars emphasize commodity booms. Colonial-legacies researchers focus on Chile’s peripheral position within the Spanish Empire, and legibility scholars highlight early efforts to enhance informational capacity via censuses and statistical yearbooks. This essay reevaluates Chilean state-building in light of Valenzuela and Valenzuela’s (1983) review of theories on Chilean democracy. It examines the explanatory power and limitations of each approach, questioning what is actually being measured—be it railroads, taxation, schooling, censuses, or bureaucratic data—each reflecting a different perspective and a specific theoretical stance. I argue that the bellicist explanation is overstated. The development of bureaucracy, census efforts, territorial expansion, and schooling occurred long before the War of the Pacific (1879–1883). International conflicts were just one of several shocks driving capacity-building, alongside commodity downturns and civil wars.