Aliz Toth - Roads of Resistance: Theory and Evidence on Eminent Domain Conflict from India

Building large-scale infrastructure can improve development and state capacity, yet states often encounter opposition to these projects. Conflict around the state’s power to acquire private land is a frequent barrier and the most common source of environmental conflict today. Prior work suggests that bureaucrats with local ties are better at extracting resources. When are bureaucrats able to appropriate land? While I theorize that bureaucrats’ local ties matter, I argue this is because bureaucrats with ties to other bureaucrats and politicians are better at coercing landowners into compliance with land acquisition. Using information on over 20,000 infrastructure projects requiring land appropriation in India, I demonstrate that projects heighten the risk of protests and litigation against the state by 10-30 percent. When bureaucrats are embedded in local networks, they erase the risk of protest, increase project-affected landowners’ experience with threats and attacks, and reduce landowners’ confidence in the police. I offer suggestive evidence for bureaucrats’ rent-seeking motivation and eliminate the main alternative explanation: information-sharing between bureaucrats and citizens. The findings have implications for how bureaucrats’ networks shape compliance with the state.