When: Wednesday, April 15th
Where: Ellison Hall, Lane Room (3824)
Time: 2:30-4:00pm
Title of Talk: Indigenous Welfare and Identity: Theory and Evidence from Chile's Indigenous Development Zones
Michael Albertus is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. He studies how countries allocate opportunity and well-being among their citizens and the consequences this has for society, why some countries are democratic and others aren't, and why some societies fall into civil conflict. His newest book, Land Power: Who Has It, Who Doesn't, and How That Determines the Fate of Societies (Basic Books, 2025), examines how land became power, how it shapes power, and how who holds that power determines the fundamental social problems that societies grapple with.
Abstract: Countries around the world have recognized indigenous communities in recent decades and created development policies tailored to them. How do these policies shape indigenous welfare and identity? I examine this in Chile, where the government delineated a series of indigenous development zones and channeled resources into them. Using a geographic regression discontinuity that takes advantage of the fact that some but not all Mapuche communities are located within these zones even when they are proximate and otherwise similar to each other, as well as a series of waves of detailed social, economic, and demographic data, I find that these policies produced limited development gains and a considerable positive shift in Mapuche self-identification. I attribute the findings to organization within and among communities to take advantage of this program.