Abstract
This article analyzes the evolution of state capacity in Peru during the recent commodity boom. Peru’s economic growth happened in a context in which inclusive democratic institutions were at play for the longest period ever registered in the country and at a time when political elites decided to invest considerable resources in developing state capacity (not the prototypical predatory elites usually identified in the literature). This case illustrates how boom-led economic growth can lead to the (unilateral) institutional strengthening of a weak state. However, (net) state capacity continues to be low in Peru. The causal mechanism that yields such continuity differs from those entertained in classic path-dependent explanations of state capacity in Latin America. The article identifies a novel mechanism that helped reproduce the Peruvian path intertemporally. This relational mechanism suggests that state capacity remains low because of the relatively enhanced capacities of state challengers to locally fend off and contest an otherwise much stronger state apparatus. The article argues, on that basis, the need to employ a relational analysis that gauges net state strength with respect to the power acquired by relevant non-state actors who might challenge state authority across different local arenas. Classic conceptualizations of state capacity are indeed relational, but conventional applications are predominantly unilateral and, thus, misleading. Unilateral notions of state capacity are those that focus on either state efforts and investments to assert state capacity or, alternatively, on the presence of challenges that curtail the levels of actually observed state capacity.
Picture a country that during twelve years grows at an annual rate of 7 percent. Assume that governing elites in that country are fiscally responsible, and allocate windfall revenue to develop state capacity. As a result of those efforts, in less than a decade the country markedly increases the supply of public schools, health clinics, prosecutor offices, and police stations throughout its territory. Likewise, it more than doubles its paved road network and also nearly universalizes access to potable water. One might view this trajectory as a successful instance of state capacity building during boom times. Yet if we look closer, particularly in economically booming localities, a very different picture emerges. In these areas, criminality exhibits distressing peaks while the number of registered social conflicts more than doubles that observed before the boom. In other words, when analyzed from a stateness perspective, our generic example points in contradictory directions. The narrative thus resembles the trajectory of several developing nations in which commodity booms contributed to an important overhaul of the state and the development of the state’s capacity, but in which this newfound power and prosperity have not necessarily translated into greater levels of stateness (i.e., state success in asserting sovereignty and governing capacity at the local level).
Contemporary Peru, the case we analyze in this article, neatly illustrates the counterintuitive dynamic described above. This country constitutes a case in which astonishing economic growth rates greatly boosted state capacity on several fronts. During the last fifteen years, state elites sought to—and did—invest the massive financial resources yielded by the boom in developing state capacity. Intriguingly, however, the strengthening of the state was met by an equally strong growth of state challengers that benefited from the very same boom that buttressed state capacity. The Peruvian booming economy provided incentives for the unlawful practices of legal businesses seeking to assert control over lucrative economic sectors. Similarly, a thriving economy and the concomitant resources it created has enabled the emergence or strengthening of informal or illegal agents. These social forces, which include peasants, miners, companies, and organized crime rackets, have successfully challenged or escaped state power even against the backdrop of growing levels of state coercive capacity. The tensions created by rapid economic growth thus have prompted or rekindled violent social unrest.
Contradictory outcomes such as those currently observed in Peru can only be explained by eschewing unilateral interpretations of state capacity (i.e., capabilities approaches and those solely focused on coercive capacity). Instead, we must employ a relational analysis that gauges net state strength with respect to the power acquired by relevant non-state actors who might challenge state authority across different local arenas. Net state strength shapes the levels of stateness observed in different local arenas. 1 Henceforth, we advocate the adoption of an explicit relational perspective on state capacity. To be sure, classic conceptualizations of state capacity are indeed relational, but conventional applications of the concept are predominantly unilateral. Unilateral notions of state capacity are those that focus on either state efforts and investments to assert state capacity or, alternatively, on the presence of challenges that curtail the levels of actually observed state capacity. Our work thus outlines our relational approach to state capacity and explores its lineage in the theoretical literature on the topic.
The relational account of state capacity that we defend in this article offers a causal narrative that is at odds with the extant literatures that deal with developmental trajectories and state building. We propose a new causal mechanism that explains the persistence of weak state institutions in the context of commodity booms, a mechanism that defies conventional explanations (e.g., the resource curse). Before arguing the analytical leverage and empirical plausibility of a relational framework in the Peruvian context, we explore below the implications of our argument for a set of causal mechanisms that figure prominently in classic and new political economy approaches to the role that state elites and institutions play in fostering development.
The case and general argument we present in this piece posits that the combination of institutionally fragile states and positive external shocks prompted by regional and global forces yield counterintuitive results, whereby economic growth and prosperity might lead to decreasing levels of (net) state capacity and stateness. 2 From a political-economy perspective, Evans distinguishes “developmental” states from “predatory” states, with the former promoting successful industrialization in the global periphery. 3 In this respect, the Peruvian state we discuss in this article is neither predatory nor developmental. Rather, it is a state challenged and evaded by competing agents that at the local level are better able to capture the rents created by a booming economy.
Since at least 1997, the development community has embraced the motto “institutions matter.” In this literature, strong state institutions play a key role in providing incentives for economic investment and development. 4 Different authors conceptualize these incentives in different ways. 5 For instance, in a recent and widely acclaimed work, Acemoglu and Robinson 6 focus on regime institutions. Where democratic and pluralistic institutions were present, societies prospered. Where rent-seeking autocrats or oligarchies ruled, development simply failed to materialize. 7 Relatedly, rent seeking is often theorized as a pivotal mechanism in the so-called resource-curse literature, which advances the hypothesis that resource extraction may have a negative impact for state capacity, economic development, and democracy. 8 Rent seeking associated with natural resource booms is also linked to a greater likelihood of internal conflicts. 9 However, Saylor has recently argued that the effect of commodity-boom rents on state-making outcomes is not constant, but, rather, contingent on the social roots of political coalitions that rule during the boom. In certain contexts, the boom might lead to substantial gains in state capacity. 10
Against this backdrop, we introduce a novel narrative about the institutional underpinnings of developmental failures. As predicted by the resource-curse literature, Peru’s vertiginous economic growth has coincided with renewed corruption, an increase in criminal activity (particularly of extortion rackets), and rising political and social tensions—which often turn violent—that arise from disagreements over the distribution of rents. Yet, the causal mechanisms driving these outcomes differ from those theorized by the above mentioned literatures. Peru’s economic growth happened in a context in which inclusive democratic institutions were at play for the longest period ever registered in the country and at a time when political elites decided to invest considerable resources in developing state capacity (not the prototypical predatory elites identified in the literature). This is a case that illustrates how boom-led economic growth can lead to the (unilateral) institutional strengthening of a weak state.
In addition, although we agree with Saylor’s emphasis on the need to analyze the social embeddedness of political coalitions ruling over the boom, our relational perspective seeks to broaden the conceptualization of society beyond the social bases of alternative elite coalitions. From this perspective, we argue that the negative outcomes observed in Peru result from the strengthening of non-state (and non-elite) challengers to the state, who profited from business endeavors in the informal and illegal sectors of the economy. The commodity boom made those endeavors incredibly lucrative, enabling challengers to successfully contest and avoid regulatory and coercive efforts by an otherwise strengthening state in different Peruvian localities.
The relational perspective on state capacity and institutional strength that we advocate here offers a novel theoretical narrative about the specific sequence of events triggered by a booming economy in the context of a (ex ante) weak state. The scope condition of a formerly weak state is relevant for our argument, as one expects different dynamics to ensue when greater levels of state territorial reach co-occur with the expansion of illegal economies. 11 In this regard, we echo Huntington 12 and Fukuyama 13 in claiming that the key to development is neither political regime nor state scope, but rather state strength (before the boom). Regarding this point, our argument does not contest conventional assessments of Peru’s historically limited state infrastructural capacity. 14 The established literature on state making in Latin America successfully explains, on the basis of path-dependent accounts, why state capacity is lower in Peru than in, say, Chile or Argentina. This literature might also explain why states with relatively higher capacities can profit more efficiently from positive economic cycles, reinforcing the different historical trajectories that set weak and strong states apart.
The previous literature on state making in Latin America is less successful, however, in identifying the “challenger-based” causal mechanism that explains why the contemporary Peruvian state was able to improve its capacity across localities and across a wide range of functional arenas, while remaining incapable of increasing stateness (i.e., regulating social interactions and exercising a coercive monopoly in economically booming localities.) In sum, our perspective underscores the relevance of short-term and relational mechanisms for reproducing historical paths and for contributing to developmental failures. 15 It also complements recent work on states’ forbearance decisions at the local level in reaction to processes that hinge on the presence of active challengers to state authority. 16
Last, but not least, our argument also has implications for conventional measurement strategies deployed to assess state capacity. Most measurement efforts start, at least implicitly, from a relational conceptualization. 17 Operationally, however, most measurements of state capacity either unilaterally look at state efforts to build their infrastructural capacities or at substantive results theoretically associated to such capacities. 18 There are sound methodological reasons to opt for either “input” or “output” indicators of state capacity. 19 However, our case shows that “unilateral” measures might be missing a critical counterpart; that is, how investments in state capacity (input) or alleged products of state capacity (output) are co-produced by what the state does (or decides not to do) and by what those who challenge or evade the state do or do not do when relating to state agents or bureaucracies in different local arenas. A logical extension of this argument concerning measurement is that state-capacity assessments still need improvement at describing state-capacity heterogeneity along geographical and functional dimensions in order to yield more effective case descriptions. 20 For such a description, we also need to combine assessments of input and output.
The remainder of this article proceeds as follows. The first section introduces our proposed framework, contrasts it with existing theoretical arguments advanced in the literature and discusses important methodological points derived from it. Subsequently, we discuss at length our case study, Peru. The section starts by providing a brief outline of relevant recent events in the country and describes the evolution of indicators of the state’s infrastructural and coercive capacity. In addition to common indicators relied on by conventional wisdom accounts, the section presents a series of alternative indicators (social conflicts, crime and victimization, informality) that suggest that the Peruvian state has not necessarily increased its capacity to regulate crucial social interactions in ways that are commensurable with the dynamic of state strengthening it has experienced. To be sure, we do not claim that the Peruvian state is weaker today than it was in the 1980s; rather, we claim that, from a relational perspective, the Peruvian state has not really strengthened stateness despite having allocated massive resources to state building efforts. Subsequently, we present two qualitative vignettes, illegal gold mining and extortion, that illustrate how state challengers whose economic and coercive power has been partly fueled by the economic boom are increasingly contesting state power in economically dynamic localities. We conclude by drawing theoretical and methodological implications and a research agenda.
Relational State Capacity and State Challengers
Some classical depictions of the nature of modern states have underscored that conceptually state power ought to be understood as relational and not static. Stepan, for example, asserts:
At the grossest level of abstraction, there are four possibilities. . . . The growth of state power may be accompanied in a zero-sum fashion by a diminution of the power of civil society. It also is possible for the power relations between the state and civil society to be positive-sum. The interaction may also prove to be negative-sum. The state’s capacity to structure outcomes may decline while the opposition’s capacity to act in concert also declines. Finally, of course, there is the possibility that the power of actors operating outside the state apparatus may grow while that of those working within the state declines.
21
Scott’s depiction of Zoomia provides further testimony of this insight:
Upland groups have, then, a large bandwidth of possible locations as well as social and agro-ecological [i.e., productive] configurations available to them. They run the gamut all the way from, say, taking up padi cultivation on the plains and inviting incorporation as peasants into the valley state to the other extreme of foraging and swiddening in remote, fortified, ridge-top settlements while cultivating a reputation for killing intruders. Between these stark polar opposites lie a host of hybrid possibilities.
22
Relational conceptualizations of power are ubiquitous in political theory, comparative politics and international relations. With respect to state power, Michael Mann’s now classical conceptualization 23 incorporates a relational component as one of its two central traits. According to Mann, a state’s infrastructural power comprises two dimensions: territorial and social. The former is the one that provides the state the capacity to control the territory that is demarcated by its designated borders. The latter entails a relational notion, which, according to Soifer and vom Hau, is "grounded in the organizational entwining between state and non-state actors," and is also "shaped by the relationships among different state agencies themselves." 24
The seminal work by Joel Migdal arguably represents the most influential and complete study of state capacity from a relational perspective. According to him, scholarly work often presents a too stylized version of states’ real ability to impose themselves upon social forces resisting its power. Migdal posits that, far from imposing its will on social forces, states share and dispute power in dialectical ways. Thus, power and the order deriving from it are constantly being (re)shaped between a state that wishes to impose a certain type of hegemony and social forces that contest and resist its power.
25
Recent works on state capacity also introduce an explicitly relational perspective. Centeno, Kolhi, and Yashar differentiate between state capacity and state performance in ways that accommodate a relational perspective. They claim:
we take state capacity to mean the organizational and bureaucratic ability to implement governing projects. State performance, however, cannot be understood as capacity alone; it requires an analysis of state capacity alongside political actors and social forces.
26
Similarly, when arguing that “outcome” measures of state capacity might be co-produced by societal forces, drawing on Migdal’s work, Fukuyama emphasizes that: “a government’s ability to penetrate and regulate society depends on the ratio of two factors, state capacity and the self-organization of the underlying society.” 27
As indicated above, the analytic framework we propose is based on an explicitly relational notion of state capacity. Instead of looking at society at large, however, we conceptualize stateness in different localities as resulting from the interaction of two opposing forces; state actions (inactions) to claim sovereign power and the actions (inactions) of local challengers that adapt, resist, cajole, buy, or seek to eschew state authority in an area under a state’s de jure jurisdiction. In other words, we depart from more general notions of “society” (those present, e.g., in Stepan’s, Migdal’s, and Mann’s relational conceptualizations) and focus on actors that, in a given locality, muster enough resources to evade, displace, compete, or co-opt state officials. Our work is thus in line with recent approaches examining the relationship between contemporary states and territorial challengers. 28 We draw on work by Eaton, who, in discussing the existing context confronted by Latin American States, defines challengers broadly as actors that contest the state’s “monopoly on the legitimate use of violence or [to] seek to prevent or escape the implementation of its laws and policies.” 29 He underscores that challengers may take a variety of forms depending on their identities and interests (e.g., some take the form of rightful protestors whereas others adopt deviant, violent forms) and, following Mann’s conceptualization, may challenge the state territorially or organizationally. 30
Let us now outline a set of additional traits that characterize these challengers and their actions. In contrast to more traditional challengers to the state (e.g., guerrilla or insurgent movements; indigenous groups or ethnic minorities seeking autonomy or outright independence), the type of challengers we analyze here are motivated by economic gains to be extracted from the pursuit of informal or illegal pursuits. As a result, they do not necessarily contest the state actively or directly. These challengers can also function as state avoidants, seeking to escape or minimize state regulation. In this sense, the pursuit of economic profit over alternative aims such as political power or secession provides challengers that organize around illegal economic activities with greater degrees of freedom. The type of state challenger that interests us can move from one locality to another as well as across national borders. They may organize around one type of economic activity but eventually, if conditions change, switch to a different sector or zone. Territorial and functional mobility enables challengers to more efficiently avoid or compete with the state in given local arenas. Moreover, they often display the ability to penetrate the state through mechanisms including bribing, coercion and electoral manipulation. Observed stateness in specific local arenas is thus highly contextual, as well as contingent on the interaction between state agents and challengers.
The abilities described above make it very difficult to neutralize challengers. The state has to allocate scarce resources to effectively claim its sovereignty homogeneously across its territory. The operations that such effort entails are plagued by logistic and organizational complications (e.g., multiple principal-agent dilemmas ensue). If state capacity increases in a given locality, challengers can relocate operations to areas where the state is less effective, or where state officials can be more easily co-opted. Moreover, even when the state is able to control and eventually to shut down illegal operations in one economic sector, challengers may move on to a new industry in which state regulation or oversight is relatively weaker. Once an organization develops, it has incentives to diversify its activities to at least ensure the survival and protection of its members. 31 In other words, reactive, functionally targeted strategies deployed by the state to thwart challengers have often foundered given challengers’ almost protean ability to mutate and adapt. 32
The territorial dynamics of this type of challenger also differ from those of traditional insurgencies. Criminal groups in particular thrive where business opportunities emerge including racketeering and extortion; illegal harvesting, mining, or lumbering; smuggling and the trafficking of people, forbidden goods, or protected species; the fabrication of pirate goods; retailing in black or illegal markets. Given the centrality of economic profit for their organizations, illegal market operators do not necessarily confront the state in the periphery as traditional insurgencies usually do, seeking to establish an operational base in areas where state capacity is comparatively lower. Although some illegal activities thrive in the periphery (e.g., harvesting, mining, extraction), others flourish in metropolitan areas (e.g., extortion, illegal retailing) or in border areas (e.g. smuggling and trafficking). 33 In the latter two cases, local state capacity might be stronger than in other areas. Yet, the type of challenger we analyze here has the resources (especially during economic booms) to avoid or contest the state even in localities where capacity is relatively strong.
In this article, we analyze two specific state challengers active in contemporary Peru: on the one hand, gold miners, a group that acts in a decentralized fashion in peripheral areas and that appropriate boom-related resources by direct extraction; on the other, construction mafias, more hierarchically organized actors especially active in dynamic and wealthy urban areas where the Peruvian state is more actively present. Construction mafias profit by extorting those that benefit from economic growth. Both examples refer to agents that lack strong organizational dimensions and can be better described as individuals, firms, or actors than as movements or organizations. The two case studies we present below also illustrate how both types of challengers adapted over time to cope with state’s attempts at regulation and control. The trajectory of both challengers also suggests how, once in place, these actors can diversify their primary economic activity and eventually switch to more profitable (and less state-controlled) sectors.
The Mammoth Confronts the Cheetahs: Unforeseen Outcomes of the Peruvian Boom
Peru recently has been portrayed as one of the most important success stories in Latin America. The country and its economy began a massive transformation under President Alberto Fujimori (1990–2000), who initiated a dismantling of the state-driven economic model implemented during the presidency of Velasco Alvarado (1968–75) and replaced it with a pro-market economy shaped by the policies advocated by the Washington Consensus. 34 This economic liberalization produced notable achievements in growth and the development of infrastructure—during the 1990s, the country grew on average 3.2 percent per year, but political instability, massive corruption and tensions brought on by privatization and deregulation ended up tainting Fujimori’s economic legacy. Greater political stability, attributable both to the return of democracy and to favorable international conditions derived from a sharp rise in the global demand for commodities from 2002 onward (i.e., the “commodity boom”) ushered in an era of prosperity in a country long considered a perennial economic underachiever. During the 2000s, Peru grew on average a remarkable 6.4 percent per year. In the last four years, the economy has continued to expand, although at a slower pace as a result of a global slump in demand for commodities. For instance, Peru grew 4.8 percent and 3.1 percent in 2014 and 2015, respectively. 35
Economic growth has affected several development indicators. According to the World Bank, gross national income adjusted for purchasing power (PPP) reached US$ 11,160 in 2013 from US$ 3,420 in 1990. 36 Peru’s accelerated economic growth allowed it to reduce the percentage of Peruvians living in poverty from 59 percent to 24 percent in the last decade. Likewise, from 1990 to 2014, the percentage of the population living on the equivalent of one US dollar a day decreased from 15.9 percent to 3 percent. 37 Several other social indicators, including infant mortality, life expectancy, access to water and sanitation, and years of schooling, also improved markedly. These advances have lifted the country’s ranking in the World Human Development Index (WHDI), situating it in the high human development segment of the WHDI (the country’s current rank is 82). 38 Peru, indeed, has converged with other countries in the region that used to have a higher development score, including Brazil and Costa Rica.
The resources produced by the commodity boom have also enhanced the public infrastructure and coercive capacity of the Peruvian state. These enhancements did not by any means happen “automatically.” Rather, they reflect a conscious strategy to expand the reach of the state and its institutions across the territory. To be clear, this case does not conform to a typical instance of elite rentism and predation on state resources under a commodity boom. However, if we analyze the evolution of crime, extortion, and social conflicts in Peru, a much less positive picture emerges. The series of indicators and maps we introduce below show that the development of state capabilities and challengers’ strengthening ran in parallel across the Peruvian territory. The nature of “challenges” to the state varies, however, according to the types of local economic activities buttressed by the boom. Where economic growth produced massive investments in infrastructure and construction (e.g., in Lima and the northern coast), extortion rackets prospered. In mining zones, on the other hand, crimes related to illegal mining rocketed. These new industries, fueled by commodity-boom resources, provided emergent organized crime groups significant economic resources to reduce the state’s coercive capacity, either via violent means or through the investment of a fraction of their revenue to buy the acquiescence and protection of local state officials.
Increased State Capacity
An analysis of state input indicators makes clear that in the last decade and a half the Peruvian state gained considerable capacity. For example, the state budget, arguably one of the most relevant indicators of growing state power, rose between 2000 and 2015 from US$ 369 million to US$ 1.1 billion; a threefold increase. This massive upsurge led to a remarkable investment in public goods (infrastructure) and service provision (e.g., health, education, security). Regarding the former, the size of the paved road network more than doubled between 2000 and 2014 from 78,215 kilometers to 165,466 kilometers. 39 In the last fifteen years, Peru has built more roads than in all its previous history. In addition, as Figure 1 shows, the state has significantly increased citizens’ access to potable water and electricity and, as a result, the current coverage is almost universal.
Coverage of Services (Percentage of Population Covered).
Internet coverage also shows positive signs, although it has been promoted mostly by private actors—rising from 31.1 percent of the population in 2007 to 40.2 percent in 2014. 40 Since 2011, moreover, the government initiated an ambitious program to provide broadband that purportedly will connect all Peruvian regions and provinces by 2017. 41
Social service provision similarly expanded. During the last decade the Peruvian state invested heavily in areas such as health and education, which manifested in a marked rise in infrastructure and personnel throughout the territory. Between 2004 and 2013, the number of schools increased 25 percent from 83,361 to 104,467; between 2007 and 2013 per capita expenditure on education more than doubled from US$ 325 to US$ 713; and per capita expenditure on secondary education over the same period increased from US$ 399 to US$ 752. 42 Per capita health expenditure similarly increased from US$ 53 in 2000 to US$ 208 in 2013. 43 The number of hospitals and health centers increased 17 percent from 7,048 in 2004 to 8,252 in 2013. 44 Public personnel servicing these sectors saw a major increase too. Between 2004 and 2013 the number of state teachers grew 17 percent from 436,249 to 510,474 in 2013. In the same period the number of doctors working the public sector rose 58 percent from 41,266 to 65,110; as a result, the ratio of doctors per inhabitants in Peru surged from 1/665 in 2004 to 1/476 in 2014. 45 The number of public sector employees working in these sectors also saw a major increase. As Figures 2 and 3 show, between 2004 and 2013 the number of state teachers and doctors grew impressively in all Peruvian regions, with a more than 100 percent increase in the number of doctors.
Relative Expansion of Number of Doctors across the Peruvian Territory (2007–14).
Relative Expansion of Number of Teachers across the Peruvian Territory (2007–14).
Indicators of the state’s coercive capacity also display a robust, upward surge. As shown in Figure 4, the budget allocated to the ministry of the interior, and the proportion of that budget appropriated by the Peruvian National Police (PNP) exhibit a significant and consistent positive trend. The number of police stations increased from 1,397 in 2012 to 1,459 in 2014. 46 The number of judges and prosecutors, likewise, increased considerably from 1,698 in 2005 to 5,258 in 2014. 47 Similarly, the number of prosecutor offices rose 73 percent between 2005 and 2014 from 734 to 1,277. 48 It is interesting that the number of police agents does not show a major growth: between 2003 and 2013, it increased 8.5 percent as 8,428 agents were incorporated to the forces, leaving the total number at 98,598 in 2013. The police/per inhabitant ratio thus actually shrank for the period from 3,331/100,000 in 2003 to 3,246/100,000 in 2013. 49 The budget appropriated by the PNP was thus allocated to significant hikes in policemen wages, and to equipment investments. Even more impressive, the number of judges and prosecutors working in these offices increased more than 100 percent in most Peruvian regions (see Figure 5).
Domestic Security Sectorial Budget.
Relative Expansion of Number of Prosecutors across the Peruvian Territory (2008–14).
In sum, when looking at indicators that reflect state efforts to build state capacity across the territory, it is possible to observe empirically a significant advance. As these indicators clearly reveal, during the last fifteen years the Peruvian state considerably strengthened its bureaucratic capacity, infrastructure, and territorial reach.
A Stronger State Meets Challengers “Running on Steroids”
Outcome indicators of state capacity, conversely, tell a very different story, one of a state whose capacity seems increasingly challenged by externalities that derive from the very same boom that fueled the state’s own vigorous growth. As indicated above, access to the massive resource inflow derived from the boom either created new actors or emboldened existing ones whose activities clash with the state’s efforts to impose authority over the society and territory. Despite the fact that the Peruvian state gained new power and resources, it has seemed unable to neutralize its challengers. This suggests that, from the perspective of a state output function, Peru’s recent success story may be interpreted in a different light.
The next section presents an in-depth discussion of two of those challenges and the state-society dynamics they illustrate: criminal extortion and illegal gold mining. Figures 6 and 7 show the growth of prosecutorial investigations (denuncias) related to extortion and illegal gold mining and the territorial dynamics behind these phenomena. Both maps also identify the Peruvian departments that exhibited greater than average local economic growth in 2014 and 2015. As is evident in both maps, the relationship between economic growth and criminal activity is a nuanced one. In particular, it is important to note how economically dynamic departments (e.g., in the northern coast) also exhibit a rise on criminal activities.
Average Number of Mining Crimes in relation to Local GDP Growth (2014–15).
Average Number of Extortion Crimes in relation to Local GDP Growth (2014–15).
The cases of extortion and illegal mining are neither exceptional nor exhaustive. Similar narratives could be developed for the cases of smuggling activities, car theft, irregular land sales and land grabbing, drug trafficking, and illegal lumbering, among others. Before presenting our case studies, we briefly discuss the nature and development of local challenges and challengers to the state that also are nurtured by the commodity boom.
In Peru, as in many other booming economies, the sudden opening of business opportunities created by the rise of commodity prices fueled a host of illegal activities such as mining (especially gold) and logging. Although these phenomena were common in Peru, in the last decade they turned into major problems. High prices attracted citizens to these activities, and reinforced the power of mafias that profit from illegally extracting and exporting these resources. In several areas in the country, the actors that coalesced around these illegal economic activities not only began to challenge state authority but also undermined it, bribing state officials and tampering with the electoral processes by supporting and funding sympathetic candidates’ campaigns.
Likewise, against the backdrop of rising demand for consumer goods propelled by economic growth, contraband has reached unprecedented levels, particularly around border areas. 50 Arguably one of the most afflicted areas is the border region of Puno. Although smuggling in the border town of Puno and commercial city of Juliaca have been known and tolerated, the practice has been exacerbated by the economic boom. In what has become a routine practice, long, informal motor caravans—the so-called culebra (snake)—carry merchandise from La Paz, Bolivia, to Juliaca, Peru, where they are redistributed to the rest of the country through flea markets (mercadillos) on a daily basis. Corruption within the police and among customs officers has also stymied attempts to neutralize this practice. More stunning, groups of enraged peasants have attacked the police and customs agents trying to stop operations. 51
In a similar vein, violence in contemporary Peru seems strongly associated with economic dynamism, which can be readily observed in the analysis of regional statistics. Although in 2014 the aggregate rate of homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in Peru was of 6.6 percent, northern cities of the country that currently benefit from agriculture and construction booms show far more impressive figures: Tumbes (37.1 percent) Barranca (25.1 percent), Trujillo (19.3 percent), and Chimbote (18.2 percent). 52 Southern cities that benefit from economic growth led by agriculture also show high numbers: San Vicente de Cañete (30.0 percent) and Pisco (19.7 percent). 53 These numbers resemble those of countries with medium to high homicide rates in Latin America (e.g., Colombia). 54
Peru’s economic boom is correlated with a worrisome spike in social conflicts as well. The Peruvian Ombudsman Office documents since 2005 the number of social conflicts in the country. 55 As shown in Figure 8, during the commodity boom these conflicts tripled. and they remain considerably high. A majority of them are related to extractive activities: sometimes a sharp price increase fuels local demands for a better redistribution of resources; alternatively, communities and social groups organize to oppose mining and oil projects that would affect other economic activities (e.g., agriculture or fishing) or the environment. As can be seen, social conflicts arise from a conflictive relation between communities and private agents exploiting a given economic activity. Local communities often criticize authorities, accusing them of partiality toward private investors, while the latter blame the state for its inability to protect them, maintain order, and enforce contracts. 56
Number of Social Conflicts per Year.
The next two sections present two case studies in depth that illustrate how the Peruvian state has seemed impotent to prevent, let alone control these problems. In each case we document these dynamics to illustrate our general argument. The first describes the evolution of informal gold mining, and the second describes a surge in a cottage extortion industry. Our narrative sheds light on how favorable economic conditions derived from the commodity boom elicited unexpected, negative externalities. Prosperity brought by a booming economy not only nourished the state but also the emergence of different sorts of state challengers that began to dispute and weaken its authority. Caught off guard by the emergence of these problems and actors, the state reacted slowly and with rather limited success. Challengers, conversely, have shown an astonishing ability to block the state’s efforts to enforce policies and regulations and neutralize its actions. Indeed, one of their most salient characteristics is their capacity to adapt and respond to state attempts to (re)impose its authority. Paradoxically then, a stronger state appears similar to a weak one because it is incapable of curbing stronger challengers.
In sum, no matter how much the state invested in developing its infrastructural and coercive capacity in a given region, our evidence suggests that challengers emerged to profit from illegal economies that yielded massive resources, and these ill-gotten gains have been pivotal in counterbalancing the greater levels of resources deployed by the Peruvian state to build local capacity. This sequence illustrates the need to theorize and observe state capacity as a relational concept.
Although we do not tackle this issue directly in what follows, our evidence also suggests there is a temporal gap between the deployment of economic resources and the creation of state capacity at the local level. This gap results both from the presence of principal-agent problems, as well as from the long-term nature of institution-building efforts. As one of our interviewees put it, the state moves as a mammoth. Challengers, in turn, operate locally and can mutate quite rapidly, switching strategies, locations, industries, and specific organizational forms. They behave like “cheetahs.” The resources they invest in derailing state-building efforts are relatively minor in relation to those deployed in state-building efforts. Yet they might be more effective in yielding immediate results that jeopardize state building.
Challenging State Authority I: Construction Mafias and Extortion
A worrisome manifestation of the commodity boom’s dark side concerns the increase in criminal violence, especially new forms of violence. Practices that previously were unknown or very rare, including contract killings (sicariato), extortion, and racketeering schemes, have gradually become common occurrences in the last decade. The Latin American Public opinion Project (LAPOP) reports that in 2012, 7.2 percent of all Peruvian crime victims suffered some kind of extortion. This makes Peru the Latin American country with the fourth highest incidence of extortion after Mexico, El Salvador, and Guatemala. 57 Gino Costa, a seasoned Peruvian security expert and former minister of the interior, considers this development the most serious challenge to the Peruvian state in the realm of public security. 58
Although extortionists have targeted a wide array of businesses that benefit from booming economic conditions, including small shopkeepers, transportation entrepreneurs, restaurant owners, and educational facilities, their main target has been the construction sector. Construction is arguably one of the industries that benefited most from Peru’s rapid economic growth. Between 2002 and 2008, the construction sector grew annually 6.8 percent, transforming it into the fastest growing in Latin America barring Panama. Following a slump prompted in 2007–8 by the global economic crisis, construction regained its vigor growing 61 percent between 2009 and 2013—more than 10 percent annually. 59 Such rapid growth was triggered by feverish demand for private housing at every level of the social spectrum. The construction boom was also propelled by aggressive state policies in the area of public housing.
The massive expansion of construction sites, paradoxically, brought with it a host of problems such as the unexpected emergence of a cottage extortion industry. Coastal regions (Lambayeque, Piura, La Libertad, Lima) have been particularly hard hit by this phenomenon. According to experts, extortion arose, in large part, because of the increase in the number of construction unions, which rose from eighteen in 2005 to 115 in 2012. In most cases, unions were actually created by criminals seeking to build racketeering schemes. 60 In the mid 2000s, Peruvian law made union registration quite simple, allowing these unlawful actors to operate under a formally legal façade. These newly formed, disreputable unions gradually attained near monopoly control over construction sites and demanded payments (usually weekly) in exchange for “protection.”
Construction mafias, many of which operate from prisons, threaten owners and managers and their families. Extortion is also perpetrated against workers who are coerced to pay part of their salaries to mafias or risk being attacked. Illegal unions have used different strategies for blackmailing businessmen and rolling back adversary unions: work invasion, destruction of property, work stoppage, murder threats, and even homicides of union leaders. Street brawls among mafias disputing territory have also become a common occurrence. 61 Mafias, however, have not relied only on extortion. They have also taken by force unoccupied land, normally on the outskirts of major urban areas that they later sell to developers as part of urbanization plans. In order to do so, mafias orchestrate “spontaneous” land grabs (ocupaciones) by groups posing as squatters. 62
Despite its newly acquired resources, the Peruvian state has been hard pressed to tackle this problem. So far, some modest steps have been taken. Plans have focused on strengthening the capacity of the Peruvian National Police (PNP) and legal changes in union regulation. Concerning the former, the administration of President Alejandro Toledo implemented “Plan Ladrillo” (2005) an aggressive initiative to neutralize construction mafias. Before becoming fully operational, however, the plan was deactivated by the incoming administration of President García. He created in 2010 a specialized division for the Protection of Construction sites. The force, which has 400 operatives and is led by Colonel Ricardo Munaya, an experienced officer with an excellent record, has stepped up patrolling and investigative proceedings to try to neutralize mafias. In 2014 the Humala administration proposed new legislation that forced new construction unions to undergo a thorough assessment of their legality to obtain a state permit.
Thus far, the results of the Peruvian state’s efforts to combat extortion have been rather modest and have concentrated on larger construction firms. Lack of tangible results shows that the Peruvian state has not been able to translate its new-found power and resources into an effective policy to curb extortive mafias’ challenge to the rule of law. Although part of the problem can be traced to lack of consistent policies that derived from political dynamics, arguably the most intractable problem concerns the incapacity of state forces, in particular the PNP, to confront the challenge. Because extortion was rather unusual in Peru before the boom, the PNP was forced to build from scratch the technical know-how to confront extortion rings. Enhancing its investigative capacities and extending its territorial reach became a very tall order for an institution described by a former vice minister of the interior, Carlos Basombrio, as a demoralized force without the manpower and resources to do its job properly, an institution that is subservient to the more resourceful and politically influential army. 63 Moreover, this rigid, old-fashioned force was supposed to control a daring criminal underworld awash with money and ready to coerce or corrupt officials including police officers, prosecutors and judges. 64
As we elaborated in the theoretical section of the article, perhaps one of the most difficult challenges faced by authorities has to do with criminals’ astonishing capacity to adapt quickly to the strategies devised by Peruvian authorities to neutralize them. Hence, the few strategies that proved successful, particularly in Lima, came to no avail as criminals migrated to other regions where the state lacked similar enforcement capacity (Callao, La Libertad, Lambayeque, rural Lima). 65 Moreover, even in Lima, extortionists have adopted other strategies including blackmailing and directly threatening businessmen and managers and selective killing of union leaders. This, in turn, requires the state to spend more resources on intelligence to detect these actions. Interestingly, the recent fall in construction investment, due to less favorable macroeconomic conditions, did not bring an end to the extortions but, rather, a migration from construction to other activities such as transport, commerce, and education.
Challenging State Authority II: Unregulated Gold Mining
Gold mining is another interesting example of the commodity boom’s unexpected negative consequences and the difficulties these consequences pose to the state. Because gold is easier to mine than other minerals, artisanal gold mining has been fairly common in Peru, especially during boom eras. The sharp increase in gold prices, from US$ 416 an ounce in 2004 to US$ 1,657 in 2013 prompted a surge in this activity. Lured by the prospects of massive and quick financial gain, artisanal miners, typically people from low social strata, started a frantic quest for gold. This resulted in a sharp increase in the number of informal gold miners, a group that has become a powerful source of resistance to the state in peripheral regions characterized by shallow institutional presence, mainly Madre de Dios, Puno, La Libertad and some areas of Ayacucho, Ica, and Arequipa. 66 As a result, informal gold mining has become one of the largest social, criminal, and environmental challenges faced by the Peruvian state. 67
This type of informal activity, as Kuramoto reminds us, prospered in Peru due to the combination of opportunity and necessity. 68 Most informal gold miners started operations without permission: the majority lack land titles or mining permits. Irregular mining encompasses both informal and illegal mining, which are analytically distinct. Peruvian law distinguishes them in that while informal mining has the potential to become legal if it acquires or regularizes permits, illegal mining cannot become legal because it operates in forbidden zones (e.g., protected areas). 69 This distinction is often blurred, however, because most irregular miners cannot or do not want to legalize their activities. Even if they wanted to legalize their situation, legalization would still be especially complex because of the lack of effective and coordinated mechanisms of land entitlement in the country. With a limited territorial reach, the Peruvian state discovered not only the difficulty of verifying and guaranteeing land permits, but also that some of its agencies have granted in the same areas competing permits for different economic activities. 70
Along the gold value chain there are different types of challengers: small illegal and informal miners, informal owners of processing plants, and mafias that export their product either illegally (smuggling) or legally (legalizing illegal extraction). The first type includes artisanal miners (and often their families) who work in precarious conditions and organize themselves in large formal or informal mining unions with important mobilization power at the local level. There is no consensus on the exact number of irregular miners in Peru, although authors agree that the number has been increasing. 71 Damonte estimated the number to be 53,600 in 2009. 72 Other sources claim that there are between 300,000 and 500,000 irregular miners in Peru if their families are counted. 73 After a decade of high gold prices, these individuals constitute an important societal and territorial base of resistance. Miners, their families, and those profiting indirectly from this activity, defend informal and illegal mining because it has become the main economic activity in many provinces of the aforementioned regions. 74 Some informal groups have grown to constitute local and regional criminal groups, which possess capital to buy machinery and pay workers’ salaries or even dispute local elections. Moreover, these groups have also created racketeering (protection) schemes and sold land fraudulently. 75
Processors and exporters are, in contrast, few, but they control a bigger share of the illegal resources created by gold mining. Processing plants often operate at least partly in the informal economy. Many of these businesses, particularly at the beginning of the current gold rush, required documentation that was easy to forge in order to “legalize” the gold they bought—a simple declaration of legality signed by the seller sufficed. Thus, although frequently operating without permits, processors legalized their production and even paid taxes to the Peruvian state. In addition to legal exports, weakly controlled borders have fostered massive smuggling to neighboring markets where the production can be laundered.
Botched attempts by Peruvian authorities to curb some of the negative effects of the mining activity shed light on the difficulties middle income states with scattered state capacity face when dealing with complex challenges. In their detailed analysis describing state policies in the realm of mining regulation, Dargent and Urteaga and Valencia 76 distinguish three periods. The first phase (2004–8) was characterized by almost total inaction. In 2002 the state promulgated Law 27651 to formalize and promote small and artisanal mining (Ley de Formalización y promoción de la pequeña minería y minería artesanal), but it has been for the most part ineffective. The administration of Alejandro Toledo (2001–6) was indecisive on the issue and preferred to remain on the sidelines. A major part of the problem was that Lima and several regional governments were at loggerheads over the distribution of the wealth being created. Disagreement led to paralysis. As a result, as Valencia underscores, the Peruvian state’s policy, both at the central and regional level, was “live and let live.” Small miners were left alone, and while the state did not interfere in their business, it did nothing to help them either—they received no support of any kind (e.g., financing, commercialization, technological transfer). 77
This second phase (2008–11) coincided with the presidency of Alan García (2006–11) and saw a gradually more attentive state. Confronted with many difficulties resulting from an unregulated informal industry, especially shocking reports and images of a devastated Amazon basin in Madre de Dios, the García administration decided to act more decisively. The existing law was modified creating Regional Directorates of Mining and Energy (Direcciones Regionales de Energía y Minas) which were charged with monitoring and coordinating duties. At the same time, President Garcia unveiled a “National Plan for the Formalization of Artisanal Mining and a Multisector Technical Commission” (Comisión Técnica Multisectorial) charged with developing and implementing the plan. The Garcia administration took steps to curb ecological devastation in Madre de Dios. The government established special ecological areas (zonificación ecológica económica, or ZEE) where mining activities were prohibited. In addition to creating these agencies and plans, the government engaged in some selective repressive moves that sought to dislodge miners working in prohibited areas. While the Garcia administration took several concrete steps to address the matter, actions were for the most part disjointed and piecemeal. Agencies were neither furnished with enough financial resources nor sufficiently endorsed politically. Repressive actions backfired as they unnecessarily increased social tension and helped to galvanize resistance on the part of miners and their families. 78
Last, in the third phase (2011–15) under president Ollanta Humala, Peru tackled the challenge in a more integral fashion, combining targeted repression and interdiction with proactive steps that would incorporate measures to help and regulate miners. Polices addressed diverse phases of the mining process including extraction, processing and exports. As part of this plan, the Humala administration created the position of High Commissioner for Mining, a senior figure that would oversee the coordination of all state entities involved with monitoring the mining industry. According to a former first minister of Peru, Salomón Lerner, illegal gold mining had become for the president a serious security issue that needed more decisive action. 79
A pivotal dimension of the High Commissioner’s task was to develop a national interdiction strategy to curb the production and commercialization of gold. As a result, the armed forces, the police, the public ministry (i.e., judiciary), and the customs and taxing agency began a more coordinated effort to prevent and prosecute illegal production. The plan had its problems, but it helped to improve the coherence of state responses by enhancing coordination and rationalizing the use of finite resources. One important step was to differentiate among illegal and informal miners and offer the latter incentives to regularize their situation. 80
State challengers have neutralized the aforementioned measures, however. Stoppages and strikes called by mining unions have been a common method of resistance each time the Executive announced deadlines for the formalization process or interdictions were carried out. In some cases, they have produced violent clashes between police and miners. The executive has been forced to put off constantly a full implementation of the formalization policy, resulting in an incredibly low number of formal artisanal miners. 81 Another mechanism used by both small and large miners has been supporting and sponsoring politicians who favor informal and illegal mining (Madre de Dios and Puno), and who in turn have blocked the enforcement of regulatory and coercive policies at the subnational level.
In the case of the production of illegal gold, we also find quick adaptation mechanisms on the part of challengers. Challengers take advantage of the state’s inability to guarantee a continued presence and surveillance. Soon after the police or the army withdraw from mining areas, groups resume operations and reoccupy the area. Interdictions and destruction of supplies and machinery disrupts operations only temporarily as challengers use vast sums of accumulated capital to replace what they have lost. Interdictions, moreover, for the most part have only targeted the department of Madre de Dios. Dante Salas, director of the regional agency in charge of the process of formalizing informal miners, stresses that effectively asserting territorial control currently challenged by diverse actors constitutes the most pressing problem for the state and its formalization strategy. 82 Another example of challengers’ adaptability can be seen in the use of alternative routes to export gold that dodge the Peruvian customs authorities.
In short, easy access to gold allowed challengers to emerge in areas of limited state presence. The possibility of certifying the appropriate use of land entitlements, of solving disputes between competing claimants to land, or maintaining permanent supervision of these areas, simply surpasses the capacity of the state, notwithstanding its new acquired power.
Conclusion
The recent trajectory of Peru defies easy classifications. Although the capacity and territorial reach of the Peruvian state has certainly improved as a result of elites’ efforts to build state capacity on the basis of resources extracted from the booming economy, economic growth has simultaneously strengthened state challengers. Those challengers profit from illegal and informal activities and have accrued significant resources that allow them to undermine stateness. This dynamic is particularly noticeable in many localities where illegal economic activities thrived, not only in the Peruvian periphery, but also in metropolitan areas such as Lima and the northern coast.
The type of challengers we analyze here are formidable when the state is territorially bounded and has to allocate scarce resources across a large territory while confronting several logistic and organizational obstacles. The challengers’ pursuit of economic profit over alternative aims provides them greater flexibility. They can move rapidly and adapt to (eventually) more profitable endeavors. Such flexibility is pivotal in rendering innocuous state efforts to effectively increase stateness.
In line with classic appraisals of Peru’s net state capacity, we conclude that such capacity continues to be low. Yet the causal mechanism that yields such continuity differs from those entertained in classic path-dependent explanations of state capacity in Latin America. Our story identifies a novel relational mechanism that helped reproduce the Peruvian path intertemporally. We suggest that state capacity remains low because of the relatively enhanced capacities of state challengers to locally fend off and contest an otherwise stronger state apparatus.
The relational perspective we advocate in this article also has obvious implications for conventional measurement efforts of state capacity. Such capacity is co-produced by state actions (inactions) and their interaction with societal dynamics. Neither input nor output measures of state capacity can do the trick in isolation. More interesting, our argument also identifies another set of complications for describing the evolution of relational state capacity. Such capacity can often vary significantly across time, space, and functional dimensions as a result of the interaction between state actions (inactions) and societal dynamics. Henceforth, although inspiring, O’Donnell’s classic trichotomy 83 of “brown,” “green,” and “crystalline” state areas falls short. Seeking more precise descriptions of relational state capacity at the local level is thus a crucial pending task for this research agenda. Innovative aggregation procedures are also needed in order to construct more valid cross-national indicators of state capacity that better represent the scope of territorial and functional variance observed in each case and across time.
As indicated in the introductory section, we sought to describe and explain a counterintuitive outcome, such as the one observed in Peru, where massive investment of resources derived from the commodity boom did not translate into a higher net state capacity. Analytically our measurement strategy seeks to avoid incurring in the mistake of conventional measures of state capacity, which by concentrating on indicators such as governmental spending often fail to capture the real extent of state capacity. In this regard we believe it is problematic mechanically to equate higher investment into more state authority, because such a move fails to take into account the forces resisting the state. A state may invest sizable resources in a given area (e.g., security, environment); however, assessing net results in that sector requires a relational account that contrasts newly acquired state capacity with the capacity gained by forces challenging it. This is particularly critical at the local level. In other words, if challengers’ rate of return due to innovation, flexibility, and the like surpasses that of the state, then the latter’ s allocation of resources will not necessarily translate into higher levels of authority. Against this backdrop, we propose an approach that gauges state capacity by combining different measures (input, output) and across diverse areas (security, administration, extraction), which then are contrasted with indicators about challenger activity (smuggling, extortion, social protest, irregular commodity exploitation). Admittedly, measuring challenger’s capacity represents an empirical minefield, given their clandestine nature and in particular their convoluted links with the state as they often seek to corrupt or coerce its agents. These problems notwithstanding, we ultimately believe that our measurement efforts should be better aligned with the (relational) ontology of state capacity.
Finally, our account of recent economic growth in Peru suggests a series of general implications for future analyses of the interaction between economic growth in boom times, (state) institutions, and rent seeking. This case illustrates, as others have done, how massive economic growth can ensue in the context of weak institutions. Less conventionally, our case further suggests that in certain contexts, state elites can decide to invest resources in enhancing state capacity, instead of looting public coffers. However, the case also suggests that such efforts might fall short, even if reasonably well implemented. Such might be the case where state challengers are able to appropriate boom revenue disproportionately through increasingly profitable illegal and informal activities. In revealing this pattern, the case of Peru illustrates a new causal mechanism for explaining developmental failures in the context of booming economies.
The scope and generalizability of the mechanism identified above needs to be assessed in future works. In this regard, we analyzed a case in which the increased power of both state and social actors has the same source: a resource boom that nurtured both the state and its challengers. Nonetheless, our relational argument is also useful to analyze cases in which (a) the source of increased power feeds only one type of actor, state or social; and (b) contexts of shrinking resources, as resource busts, in which both state and social actors lose power. Therefore, we claim that while the specific dynamic observed in Peru might be unique to this case, the scope of our proposed argument is broader. As such, it can be applied to a larger set of contextual conditions. For instance, growing resources can feed social actors and not state ones. Transnational illegal economies, for example, can feed previously weak (or weaker) challengers without benefiting the state. These social actors will increase their relative strength vis-à-vis the state, consequently reducing stateness in a greater degree than in our present case. For example, since the nineties the development of alternate drug routes toward Europe through the southern cone has increased the resources and power of illegal actors in southern Peru and Bolivia. Conversely, some resources (e.g., oil) are more easily controlled by states without nurturing challengers, thus leading to an enhancement in overall stateness. Also, our relational perspective is useful to analyze how falling commodity prices may not lead to an overall change in stateness or even benefit states. States no longer have to confront rivals that can only exist while high prices make their activities profitable. A reduction in the price of gold is expected to cause a strong reduction in illegal mining, as happened in Peru in the seventies and eighties when artisanal mining became a marginal activity. In this way, commodity busts are not only a problem for weak states: they might, in certain contexts, be also a blessing.
In that last regard, the interaction between previous levels of state capacity, the economic boom, and the consolidation of state challengers that can profit when the boom strikes is also complex, and it constrains the scope of our argument. Linearly extrapolating the Peruvian experience to contexts in which state capacity and the size of the formal economy are higher, we can expect that the boom can, in those contexts, further enhance legality and relational state capacity. We suspect, however, that complex interactions between preexisting state capacity, economic booms, and the activation of local challengers to the state may also occur.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
Authors would like to express their gratitude to Kent Eaton, Hillel Soifer, Agustina Giraudy, Carla Alberti, and Rhicard Snyder for their insightful comments and suggestions on earlier versions of the piece. We also acknowledge the valuable assistance from Nicolás Palacios, Madai Urteaga, and David Schwartz.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Juan Pablo Luna and Andreas Feldmann acknowledge financial support from the Millennium Nucleus for the Study of Stateness and Democracy in Latin America (RS130002) and from FONDECYT Project 1150324. Eduardo Dargent acknowledges support from the Vicerectorado de Investigacion and the Escuela de Gobierno y Políticas Públicas, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú.