IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/apsrev/v112y2018i02p339-357_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Elite Competition and State Capacity Development: Theory and Evidence from Post-Revolutionary Mexico

Author

Listed:
  • GARFIAS, FRANCISCO

Abstract

International wars and interstate rivalry have been at the center of our understanding of the origin and expansion of state capacity. This article describes an alternative path to the development of state capacity rooted in domestic political conflict. Under conditions of intra-elite conflict, political rulers seize upon the temporary weakness of their rivals, expropriate their assets, and consolidate authority. Because this political consolidation increases rulers’ chances of surviving an economic elite’s challenge, it enhances their incentives to develop state capacity. These ideas are evaluated in post-revolutionary Mexico, where commodity price shocks induced by the Great Depression affected the local economic elite differentially. Negative shocks lead to increased asset expropriation and substantially higher investments in state capacity, which persist to the present.

Suggested Citation

  • Garfias, Francisco, 2018. "Elite Competition and State Capacity Development: Theory and Evidence from Post-Revolutionary Mexico," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 112(2), pages 339-357, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:112:y:2018:i:02:p:339-357_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0003055417000715/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Cornelius Christian, 2019. "The Political and Economic Role of Elites in Persecution: Evidence from Witchcraft Trials in Early Modern Scotland," Review of Economics and Institutions, Università di Perugia, vol. 10(2).
    2. Leopoldo Fergusson & Horacio Larreguy & Juan Felipe Riaño, 2022. "Political Competition and State Capacity: Evidence from a Land Allocation Program in Mexico," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 132(648), pages 2815-2834.
    3. Goldstein, Daniel A. N., 2022. "Reversals of State Capacity: Norms and Political Disruption," OSF Preprints ypshr, Center for Open Science.
    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 1432, Barcelona School of Economics.
    5. Dasgupta, Aditya & Kapur, Devesh, 2021. "The Political Economy of Bureaucratic Overload: Evidence from Rural Development Officials in India," SocArXiv 2qvwb, Center for Open Science.
    6. Monroy-Gómez-Franco, Luis Angel, 2022. "Regional comparisons of intergenerational social mobility: the importance of positional mobility," SocArXiv zgfvk, Center for Open Science.
    7. Benjamin Broman, 2023. "Indirect rule and mass threat: Two paths to direct rule," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 35(3), pages 232-256, July.
    8. Paniagua, Victoria & Vogler, Jan P., 2022. "Economic elites and the constitutional design of sharing political power," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 110926, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    9. Kustov, Alexander & Pardelli, Giuliana, 2024. "Beyond Diversity: The Role of State Capacity in Fostering Social Cohesion in Brazil," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 180(C).
    10. Monroy-Gómez-Franco, Luis, 2023. "The importance of positional mobility for regional comparisons," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(3), pages 322-333.
    11. Guo, Jingyuan & Deng, Kent, 2024. "Laying off old guards to rebuild state capacity: Deng Xiaoping’s bloodless coup d’etat in post-Mao China, 1980-2000," Economic History Working Papers 126083, London School of Economics and Political Science, Department of Economic History.
    12. Victoria Paniagua & Jan P. Vogler, 2022. "Economic elites and the constitutional design of sharing political power," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 33(1), pages 25-52, March.
    13. Hector Galindo‐Silva, 2020. "External threats, political turnover, and fiscal capacity," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(3), pages 430-462, November.
    14. Liu, Feng & Liu, Fengrui & Huang, Jiqiang & Dong, Haoran, 2024. "Aid and national tax capacity: Empirical evidence from Chinese aid," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    15. Kainuma, Shuhei, 2024. "Transition to broader-based politics: The role of suffrage extension in early 20th century Japan," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).

    More about this item

    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:cup:apsrev:v:112:y:2018:i:02:p:339-357_00. 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: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/psr .

    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.