When State Building Backfires: Elite Coordination and Popular Grievance in Rebellion

Abstract

We examine the complementary influence of elite politics, popular grievances, and central government weakness on rebellion. Efforts to strengthen the central state often come at the expense of the elite intermediaries charged with maintaining local political control. By driving a wedge between local elites and the central government, centralizing reforms can reduce intermediaries' willingness to repress mobilization, providing an opening for popular rebellion during both localized and national crises. For a given level of commoner grievance, revolts from below are thus more likely to be attempted and more likely to spread where elites' incentives to enforce order have been diminished. We formalize these ideas and provide supportive evidence using subnational data on rebellion, tax centralization, and drought in colonial Mexico from the late seventeenth century to the War of Independence.

Indirect rule and mass threat: Two paths to direct rule

“…In comparison, local populations faced major challenges in organizing resistance, which were difficult to overcome without at least tacit elite support. Garfias and Sellars (2021b) note that ‘peasant revolts in Mexico tended to coincide with conflicts between local elites and central or higher-level authorities’, precisely because such conflicts reduced the likelihood that local authorities would crack down on a rebellion. The tacit support of local elites mattered, given the formidable coordination problems that would-be rebels faced.…”

“…The case also provides evidence for another of the model's key claims. Elsewhere, Garfias and Sellars (2021b) show that peasant resistance in colonial Mexico was more intense in regions that experienced political centralization. The cause of centralization in that case is distinct from the demographic collapse that drove the initial transition to direct rule, but it is consistent with my argument here.…”

Elite murder and popular resistance: Evidence from post-World War II Poland

“…Examples include US-Shia collaboration during the US occupation of Iraq (Cordesman and Davies 2008) and Social Democrats working together with Nazi occupiers in Denmark (Mazower 2009). More generally, local elites are typically averse to revolutions (Garfias and Sellars 2022;Moore 1966) and may prefer to resist foreign regimes in a covert fashion, if at all. Co-optation thus becomes a feasible option.…”

Access to justice in revenue-seeking legal institutions

“…These results add to our understanding of the determinants of property rights and the rule of law in general (for a comprehensive review of the literature on these issues, see Haggard et al, 2008), and of access to justice in particular (Galanter, 1974; Rhode, 2004), by suggesting that an important element of both is the profitability of justice provision in a given economic and institutional setting. They also contribute to the vast literature on state formation and capacity, with regard to both the state's establishment and maintenance of a monopoly on law and order and its fiscal capacity and revenue needs (Tilly, 1990; North, 1990; more recently, Abramson, 2017; Garfias and Sellars, 2021; Queralt, 2015; McAlexander and Ricart-Huguet, 2021) by suggesting new ways in which the provision of justice by emerging states might be both profitable and critical for survival.…”