Capturing Sub-National Variation in State Capacity: A Survey-Based Approach

Abstract

Though there are many existing measures of state capacity, few capture its sub-national territorial variation in a reliable and valid way. This article proposes a novel, survey-based, measurement strategy for state capacity that is tailored to address this limitation of existing measures, and apply it to contemporary Latin America. We describe cross-national variation in state capacity based on data produced by our measure, engage in a series of validation exercises to show that it taps this concept rather than related elements of the political context, and map variation in sub-national stateness in Latin America. The article closes with an agenda for future research applying our measurement strategy to assess sub-national variation in stateness, in Latin America and beyond.