Browsing by Author "Alberti, Carla"

Now showing 1 - 6 of 6
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    Can Political Alignment Reduce Crime? Evidence from Chile
    (2022) Alberti, Carla; Díaz-Rioseco, Diego; Visconti, Giancarlo
    Research has shown that presidents tend to benefit local level copartisans when distributing resources, which can improve the provision of public goods, such as security. Considering that fear of crime is among the main concerns of citizens worldwide, we examine whether alignment affects criminality. Drawing on rich administrative data from Chile and a regression discontinuity design in close electoral races, we study the impact of alignment on a broad set of crimes against the person and property-related. We show that aligned municipalities experience a significant reduction in crimes that both affect property and occur in public. As a potential mechanism, we find that aligned municipalities receive more projects to improve urban infrastructure, thus making public spaces less vulnerable to crime.
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    Do fiscal transfers affect local democracy?: lessons from Chilean Municipalities
    (2023) Alberti, Carla; Díaz Rioseco, Diego; Riveros, Ignacio
    Extant literature concurs that fiscal transfers affect local democracy when they grant subnational governments nontax revenue. Yet there is nonetheless a mismatch between this concept and existing measures, which consider the whole transfers local governments receive, including both tax and nontax revenue. This article studies the Fondo Común Municipal (FCM), the most important intergovernmental grant in Chile, and provides a novel measure of nontax revenue. It uses this measure alongside the whole FCM transfer to test the rentier hypothesis. On the one hand, it shows that both measures increase the incumbent party vote share, although the effect of our measure is smaller. On the other hand, it finds that the FCM transfer has an impact on the probability of reelection and the competitiveness of elections, but this effect disappears when using our measure. Overall, the findings suggest that rents from transfers do not lead to strong electoral dominance in unitary states.
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    Gendered bureaucracies: Women mayors and the size and composition of local governments
    (WILEY, 2021) Alberti, Carla; Díaz Rioseco, Diego; Visconti, Giancarlo
    While women are underrepresented in politics, recent improvements in women's representation in legislative and executive bodies have spurred academic interest in the effects of electing women on a wide array of outcomes. Effects on bureaucracies, however, have received less attention. Do women mayors reform local bureaucracies differently than their men counterparts? We take advantage of rich administrative data from Chile to explore the effects of having a woman mayor on the size and gender composition of municipal bureaucracies. Using a regression discontinuity design in close electoral races, we find that women mayors reduce the size of local bureaucracies while simultaneously increasing the share of women public employees. Our findings thus show that women mayors' approach to bureaucratic reform once in office differs from that of their men counterparts, and contribute to existing research on the consequences of electing women.
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    Populist Multiculturalism in the Andes: Balancing Political Control and Societal Autonomy
    (2019) Alberti, Carla
    Radical populists in the Andes have combined a populist program and a multicultural agenda. However, while populism centralizes power in the hands of the leader and emphasizes the unity of the people, multiculturalism grants cultural rights that strengthen societal autonomy, generating an inherent tension between these two modes of incorporation. How are populist governments able to combine unity and fragmentation as well as centralization and autonomy? This article develops the concept of populist multiculturalism, focusing on the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) in Bolivia, which has supported autonomy rights while simultaneously curtailing their implementation. Specifically, it examines the implementation of indigenous autonomous governments and prior consultation and the relationship between indigenous organizations and the ruling party. The article also extends this concept to Ecuador and Venezuela.
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    State Responses to Autonomy Demands: Indigenous Movements and Regional Threats in Bolivia and Ecuador
    (2023) Alberti, Carla; Mattiace, Shannan
    In this paper, we examine the political factors that explain state responses to demands for indigenous territorial autonomy in Ecuador and Bolivia. Specifically, we aim to explain why the 2009 Bolivian constitution limited indigenous territorial autonomy to the departmental level, not allowing indigenous peoples to establish autonomous regions that lay beyond a single departmental jurisdiction, whereas the 2008 Ecuadorian constitution allows indigenous jurisdictions to exceed provincial boundaries. We argue that, in Bolivia, a strong conservative autonomy movement led by the country's eastern departments forced state officials to negotiate with regional elites, thus limiting the window of opportunity for indigenous movements and their allies to demand territorial autonomy. In the absence of a strong territorialized threat in Ecuador, indigenous movements and their allies had larger windows of opportunity to press their claims for territorial autonomy. This study contributes to comparative research on how states have simultaneously affirmed and limited indigenous autonomy.
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    The long memory of the land: Pre-colonial origins of Mapuche mobilization in Chile
    (2023) Alberti, Carla; Luna, Juan Pablo; Toro-Maureira, Sergio; Gayo, Eugenia
    We aim to explain the long-term territorial patterns of conflict across Mapuche communities in southern Chile. The Mapuche indigenous people have resisted external invasions by colonial settlers and the Chilean state for about five centuries. However, not all Mapuche communities have mobilized for their demands. While conflict between communities and external invaders has been a historical constant in certain areas, in others, Mapuche communities have remained largely passive. We explain subnational patterns of Mapuche mobilization by identifying path-dependent sequences -that range between conflictive and passive- that trace back to the social complexity of pre-colonial societies. Specifically, we claim that communities with stronger pre-colonial indigenous organization had a higher capacity to resist colonialism. Conversely, communities with weaker levels of organization had less capacity to mobilize to fend off colonialism. As a result, path-dependent sequences emerged, which persisted throughout the post-colonial period and explain the differing levels of conflict -or its absence- across Mapuche communities.