The forthcoming article “Balancing bossism: State expansion in the face of elite capture” by Anna F. Callis and Christopher L. Carter is summarized by the author(s) below.
Central governments often rely on local elites to implement policies in distant regions. While this can extend state influence, it can also lead to a single elite (a political boss) dominating local politics and obstructing state initiatives. Our research examines how weak states can counter this challenge through balancing—creating new local positions with distinct appointment rules that offset the power of local bosses. We analyze turn-of-the-20th-century Peru, where local bosses often captured justices of the peace, key positions of local authority, to create and reinforce their monopoly on local power. We leverage a natural experiment in population-based appointment rules to show that—in areas with a justice of the peace—the Peruvian government introduced lieutenant governors, who operated under different appointment criteria and were thus autonomous from local bosses. We show that this balancing strategy allowed the central state to implement policies that bosses frequently opposed, including an important education census.
The implications of elite capture for state capacity extend far beyond historical Latin America. In peripheral areas across the Global South today, figures such as mining companies, warlords, drug gangs, and political brokers exert considerable control, often shaping state capacity to serve their interests. Our findings suggest that instead of directly confronting powerful elites—an option that may be infeasible for weak states—governments can strategically reconfigure local authority to foster competition among elites. This approach presents a potentially viable strategy for policymakers seeking to implement reforms in regions where entrenched interests have long resisted state intervention.
About the Author(s): Anna F. Callis is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Government and Law at Lafayette College and Christopher L. Carter is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Politics and John L. Nau III Assistant Professor of the History and Principles of Democracy at the University of Virginia. Their research “Balancing bossism: State expansion in the face of elite capture” is now available in Early View and will appear in a forthcoming issue of the American Journal of Political Science.