Building state capacity in political peripheries: Elite power and government repression

"Building state capacity in political peripheries: Elite power, government repression and public goods provision, and state-building in the drylands of Ethiopia, Kenya, and Uganda"

Why do some states seeking to increase their capacity to govern political peripheries rely on repression, while others provide public goods and services to such areas’ populations? I argue that government public service provision increases with elite vulnerability to societal pressure, while cooptation of local elites predicts the use of coercion. The adoption of these strategies leads to prioritization of the development of distinct types of state capacity: redistributive or coercive. To substantiate this theory, I conduct a mixed-methods study of local state capacity development in the dryland region of Ethiopia, Kenya, and Uganda. The project identifies the limits of the conventional conceptualization of state capacity, provides evidence of and explains government investment in distinct types of state capacity, and thus contributes to the literature on state capacity and state-building.