Why are some democratically elected incumbents able to use their democratic mandate to increase their powers at the expense of the legislature, the judiciary and of citizens’ rights to the point of taking over the regime? I argue that the organizational features of the ruling party play a critical role in facilitating incumbent’s aggrandizement and, as a result, contribute to democratic backsliding.

This paper uses evidence on long-gone historical district boundaries and capitals from the 16th to the late 18th centuries to trace the long-run impact of the colonial state on contemporary ethnic segregation in Mexico. Despite massive administrative reorganization and rural-urban migration since independence in 1821, results show that localities farther from colonial officials at the time hold a disproportionate share of indigenous population today relative to localities that were closer.

Andrew Lambert is Laughton Professor of Naval History in the Department of War Studies at King's College. After completing research at KCL, he taught at Bristol Polytechnic,(now the University of West of England), the Royal Naval Staff College, Greenwich, and the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and also Director of the Laughton Naval Unit KCL. In 2020 he was made a Fellow of Kings College London (FKC).

The following seminars will take place at 1pm unless otherwise stated. All welcome to join via Zoom, but registration required: https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/calendar.

Dominic Johnson received a DPhil from Oxford University in evolutionary biology, and a PhD from Geneva University in political science. Drawing on both disciplines, he is interested in how new research on evolution, biology and human nature is challenging theories of international relations, conflict, and cooperation.

A large conventional wisdom has maintained that economic downturns, which drastically reduce grain prices and the returns to agricultural labor, foment peasant resistance against landowners and state officials. Yet, recent waves of peasant resistance in the developing world have occurred in a prosperous time of extraordinarily high prices. We reconcile these findings by theorizing about the spatial dimensions of peasant unrest.