Land Formalization
When indigenous groups hold communal property informally, they invest in traditional institutions for collective action and electoral success.
Interviews & Experiments
Our multi-method approach included interviews with three-hundred Peruvian indigenous leaders and designed experiments to test the influence of land tenure.
Historical Analysis
Using historical land-title data, we tracked how formalizing collective property rights affects political mobilization over time.
Digital Scrutiny
We complemented this with scraping candidate CVs from local elections, revealing shifts in coethnic representation.
The findings suggest that while communal land is often praised for development benefits, its formal recognition can inadvertently weaken the systems needed to secure indigenous political power.
