Working Papers
Indigenous Politics, Identity & Behavior
Navarro-Rodríguez, Vanessa.“Extraction and Political Identity: The Effects of Chile’s Forestry Plantations on Indigenous Identity” (available upon request)
Abstract: Despite Chile’s reputation as one of Latin America’s most stable democracies and developed economies, long-standing tensions between the state and the Mapuche—the country’s largest indigenous community—have grown over time. Between 1990 and 2016, over half of the 2,619 conflict events between the Mapuche and the Chilean government have resulted in outright violence, leading to what the Chilean government now calls the “Mapuche Conflict.” Yet, these anti-state sentiments are not uniform among the Mapuche: political identification and behavior by Mapuche people is widely varied with some strongly identifying with the Chilean state just as others actively reject it. In this project, I examine the variation in identity across the Mapuche. I theorize that state support for forestry plantations and their presence in rural communities helps to account for variation in state identification among the Mapuche. I contend that forestry subsidies have increased sentiments of marginalization and reduced material benefits for Mapuche rural communities, leading to resentment and anti-state sentiment. I, therefore, hypothesize that Mapuche-inhabited municipalities where the government provided more subsidies for forestry plantations should be associated with greater anti-state sentiment. I provide descriptive evidence for this relationship utilizing unique municipal-level data on forestry subsidies that were distributed from 1978 to 1998 combined with two different waves of survey data.
Navarro-Rodríguez, Vanessa. “Extraction and Self-Determination: The Effects of Chile’s Forestry Plantations on Self-Determination Events” (available upon request)
Abstract: Why do some Indigenous communities escalate toward self-determination mobilization, while others do not? Focusing on the Mapuche in Chile, this paper examines the spatial variation in self-determination events across southern Chile and challenges dominant explanations that emphasize greed-related grievances, state exclusion, or elite incorporation. I argue that extractive governance—defined as the legal, financial, and political arrangements through which the state facilitates resource extraction—drives Indigenous mobilization. In particular, the expansion of industrial forestry, facilitated by Chile’s Decree Law 701, has intensified conflict by dispossessing Indigenous individuals, marginalizing them socially and economically, and disrupting their cosmological relationships to land. I analyze how proximity to state-subsidized forestry projects correlates with violent and nonviolent Mapuche mobilization. Using original municipal-level data on forestry subsidies and public service provision (1978–2021) combined with data on violent and non-violent events from the Mapuche Data Project, I find that municipalities with greater land approved for forestry subsidies experience significantly more secessionist events. Contrary to prevailing theories, I find that state investment in public services does not reduce conflict and may, in some contexts, amplify it. These findings suggest that developmental inclusion, when bundled with extractive expansion, can deepen ontological and territorial disputes rather than resolve them, and drive Indigenous communities to mobilize against the state.
Navarro-Rodríguez, Vanessa. “Land Subsidies, Land Back and Voter Registration among the Mapuche in Chile” (available upon request)
Abstract: In recent decades, Chile has taken significant steps to address the historical dispossession of Indigenous land through two programs, one that redistributes territory to Mapuche individuals and families and another that returns land to Mapuche communities. Yet while these efforts aim to redress material injustices, their political consequences remain under explored. To what extent do these policies bring Indigenous people into the state and increase their democratic participation? Does the return of land foster political participation, or does it simply mitigate some of the injustices faced by the Mapuche? This paper investigates how state-led land redistribution and land subsidies for Indigenous people influences political behavior, focusing specifically on Mapuche voter registration. Using a panel dataset on voting registration and a staggered difference-in-differences design, I estimate the effect of land restitution and land subsidies on the rates of Indigenous electoral registration across Chilean municipalities. The Difference-in-Differences analysis indicates that municipalities that received small-land redistribution for individuals and families led to a statistically significant increase in voter registration compared to municipalities that did not receive the subsidies. However, the analysis also indicates that communal land redistribution did not have the same effect, in fact, there was no relationship between voter registration and communal land-redistribution, indicating the complexity of policy feedback and political participation.
Gender & Security
Navarro-Rodríguez, Vanessa. “Gender Protection? Norms, Socialization, and Sexual Misconduct by UN Peacekeepers”
Abstract: A growing body of scholarship has explored the prevalence of sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) in peacekeeping missions, yet this literature has not disaggregated the two types of misconduct. In this paper, I distinguish sexual exploitation from sexual abuse and theorize that both types of misconduct arise from distinct gendered norms heightened in security institutions. First, I argue that sexual exploitation is more likely when peacekeepers come from countries where transactional sex is normalized, and this is justified through the gendered protection norm. Secondly, I argue that sexual abuse is more likely when peacekeepers belong to military institutions that have perpetrated sexual abuse as a practice or a strategy of war. Utilizing UN data on sexual exploitation and abuse from 2015 onward, my early results show that as prostitution becomes legalized there is an associated decrease in sexual exploitation. However, I also find that in missions where sex work is legal and where the troop-contributing country (TCC) has legalized selling sex but criminalized “johns” there is an associated decrease in sexual exploitation. The legalization of prostitution did not affect the prevalence of sexual abuse. I also find that while there is a positive relationship between sexual abuse and previous perpetration of sexual abuse during conflict, the relationship is not statistically significant. While these results do not perfectly support my hypotheses, the results suggest that when we disaggregate between the types of sexual misconduct, we can better trace potential causal mechanisms.