Representing rural interests: poverty, policy choice, and institutional incentives in Latin America

Public investment in collectivistic goods in rural areas in the developing world has been shown to be far more effective than particularistic investment in private goods for rural poverty alleviation. However, governments in Latin America generally prioritize private goods. Given that political institutions create varying incentives for democratically elected political actors to cater to the interests of different constituencies, this thesis asks whether the choice to pursue particularistic rather than public policies in rural areas can be systematically explained by political institutions. Specifically, I perform quantitative, cross-national tests to determine whether variance in decentralization, in the use of closed-list proportional representation, and in mean district magnitude correlate with lower levels of rural poverty and urban-rural poverty disparity. I provide qualitative case studies of Uruguay and Peru, to illustrate the ways in which political institutions create incentives for rural investment. I find that different aspects of decentralization and closed-list proportional representation impact rural poverty in different ways across different democratic and demographic contexts. The results of this analysis also suggest that the interactive effects of these institutional variables mediate their impact on the representation of rural interests in government.