Doctoral Dissertation Research: Traditional Institutions and the Modern State

拉丁美洲一些农村城市的市长只有有限的收入来开展基础设施项目，但他们有时可以通过与公共土地持有机构或在分区一级运作的社区的领导人合作来弥补这种资源匮乏。社区领导人可以通过被称为“劳工护送队”的传统机构动员社区成员无偿劳动。通过与这些领导者的合作，市长可以更有效地提供公共工程，避免基础设施项目劳动力的最高投入成本，社区领导者可以利用市政资源为他们的社区提供更高质量的公共工程。尽管对双方都有潜在的好处，但这种合作已经越来越罕见了。本项目审查这些合作安排产生的条件，特别侧重于社区领导人和市长之间的战略互动。这项拟议的研究有助于解决政治学中一个长期存在的争论，即传统制度和国家制度是相互替代还是互补。本研究发展了一个理论框架，调和了这两种方法，显示了国家和传统制度是互补而不是替代的条件。与此主题的许多现有文献相比，这些文献严重依赖于定性和观测数据，该工作使用实地实验和自然实验来评估该理论。更广泛地说，这项研究的结果将揭示地区内不平等的原因。社区与地方政府及其资源的接触程度各不相同，该项目将揭示这种不平等的重要根源。对这些动态的更深入了解可能有助于全球中央政府将项目和资源定向到通常不被地方政府官员优先考虑或无法获得的地区。本项目考察国家加强或破坏传统制度的条件。关于这一主题的早期文献认为，国家机构要么会排挤传统机构，要么会在很大程度上扰乱传统机构。最近的另一篇文献认为，传统机构和国家机构是互补的，通过合作或授权，国家官员可以利用传统机构提供的机会。该项目开发了一个理论框架，试图通过研究国家官员和传统机构领导人之间何时出现合作关系来调和这两种方法。为了探索这个问题，该研究使用了两种主要策略。首先，它利用了20世纪初秘鲁的一个自然实验，以测试最初接触国家机构的变化如何影响传统无偿劳动制度的长期存在。其次，该研究使用回归扭结设计和当代数据来检验市长何时将国家资源直接用于传统的无偿劳动机构。为了补充这些主要效果的分析并检验其机制，作者采用了一种多方法策略，包括档案研究、对州政府官员和社区领导人的访谈、对100多位市长的实地实验，以及对300多位现任和前任社区主席的联合实验和行为游戏。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Mayors of some rural municipalities in Latin America have only limited revenue to produce infrastructural projects, but they can sometimes compensate for this dearth of resources by partnering with leaders of communal landholding institutions, or communities which operate at the sub-district level. Community leaders can mobilize unpaid labor from community members through traditional institutions called "labor corvees." Through collaboration with these leaders, mayors can provide public works more efficiently by avoiding the highest input cost for infrastructure projects' labor, and using the resources of the municipality, community leaders can provide higher quality public works for their communities. Despite the potential benefits for both sides, such cooperation has become increasingly rare. This project examines the conditions under which these cooperative arrangements emerge, focusing specifically on the strategic interaction between community leaders and mayors. The proposed research contributes to a long-standing debate in political science on whether traditional and state institutions substitute for or complement one another. This research develops a theoretical framework that reconciles these two approaches, showing the conditions under which states and traditional institutions are complements as opposed to substitutes. In contrast to much of the existing literature on this topic, which relies heavily on qualitative and observational data, the work uses field experiments and natural experiments to evaluate the theory. More broadly, the results of this research will shed light on causes of intra-district inequality. Communities have varying levels of access to the local government and its resources, and this project will shed light on important sources of this inequality. A deeper understanding of these dynamics may assist central governments globally in targeting programs and resources to areas that are not normally prioritized by, or accessible to, local state officials.This project examines the conditions under which states reinforce or undermine traditional institutions. An early literature on the subject argued that state institutions would either crowd out or mostly disrupt traditional institutions. A separate literature, which is more recent, has argued that traditional and state institutions are complementary, and that through cooperation or delegation, state officials can take advantage of opportunities presented by traditional institutions. This project develops a theoretical framework that attempts to reconcile these two approaches by examining when cooperative relationships emerge between state officials and leaders of traditional institutions. To explore this question, the study uses two main strategies. First, it exploits a natural experiment from early twentieth century in Peru to test how variation in initial exposure to state institutions affected the long-term persistence of traditional institutions of unpaid labor. Second, the study uses a regression kink design with contemporary data to examine when mayors direct state resources to traditional institutions of unpaid labor. To supplement these analyses of main effects and to test for mechanisms, the author relies on a multi-method strategy, which includes archival research, interviews with state officials and community leaders, a field experiment with over 100 mayors, and a conjoint experiment and behavioral game with over 300 current and former community presidents.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.