Autocratic State-Building and Elite Splits: Education in Revolutionary Mexico

• In Event: Poster Session: Comparative Politics of Developing Countries II, African Politics & Middle East and North Africa Politics
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Comparative Politics of Developing Countries II

Abstract

Why do autocrats provide public goods to their populations? I argue that elite splits explain the comprehensive provision of public services such as access to primary education, even in the absence of popular demand. In the early, most vulnerable years of tenure, autocrats have incentives to universalize public education to replace and control alternative providers outside their political coalition that threat their survival. In this way, autocrats weaken the bases of power of their challengers, both material (e.g. bureaucratic patronage) and symbolic (e.g. religion), and are able to mobilize mass actors into their coalition with the help of community-level bureaucracy (i.e. teachers). My explanation departs from contemporary models of political economy that emphasize the power of electoral politics. It also departs from recent state-building approaches that rely on ideology and social control in reaction to civil unrest by focusing on the elite level and in national-subnational conflict. I also theorize the limits of state-building, departing from explanations based on fiscal and technical capacity. While elite splits explain the incentives of the autocrat, the initial cohesion or factionalism of subnational powerholders explain the failure or success of the state. I test my theory with an original dataset of primary education in Mexico after the 1910 revolution, when the national state centralized the service in detriment of subnational and private providers. My data makes the novel distinction between urban and rural public schools, and private education, which sheds light on the relationship between different kinds of political elites: national, subnational and religious.

Author

• Manuel Cabal, University of Chicago