ERC Advanced Grant · 2021
Colonization, Early Institutions and the Origin of State Capacity and Democratization
My research project proposes studying the origin of state capacity, democracy and political dynasties using the colonial conquest of Latin America as a natural experiment. Much of the recent work on comparative politics and development uses large historical events as fruitful experimentation laboratories. However, the colonial experience looks more similar to a "bundle treatment" than a single treatment. It is difficult to disentangle the role of differences in legal origin from the influences of human capital, etc. To try to overcome this problem, past empirical approaches use a variety of methods like case studies, panel data, country-fixed effects, and instrumental variables. I will try…
From the public funding record at EU CORDIS. Describes the funded project, not the reviews below.