Social Dissent, Coercive Capacity, and Redistribution: Evidence from Authoritarian Mexico * Horacio Larreguy † Juan Felipe Riaño ‡ Mariano Sánchez-Talanquer § December, 2019 The extent to which authoritarian regimes use coercive, relative to redistributive, strategies to manage social dissent exhibit significant variation across the territory they govern. We argue that the incidence of different authoritarian tactics to deal with dissent depends on the coercive capacity of the state, which autocrats often inherit from the past. Where autocrats facing increasing discontent can rely on their capacity to coerce regime dissidents, they are more likely to eschew redistributive strategies. In contrast, dissent increases the likelihood of redistribution where autocrats lack readily- available tools for coercion. We provide empirical support for this argument primarily using a difference-in-differences identification strategy that exploits three sources of variation. First, we use a land reform that between 1910 and 1992 redistributed more than 50% of Mexico’s agricultural land. Second, we exploit a wave of dissent around the 1960s. Finally, we use municipal data on the availability of loyal semi-formal militias to coerce dissidents. Our results indicate that, when confronted with dissent, the PRI regime redistributed relatively less land in municipalities with more rural militia presence. We also show that, in those municipalities, events expressing social discontent were more successfully deterred. The study sheds light on how state coercive capacity shapes authoritarian strategies. Keywords: Social dissent, state coercive capacity, and land allocation JEL: D72, D73 ∗ We thank Florian Hollenbach, Vinicius Peçanha and conference participants at SPSA for their helpful comments. We are very grateful with Melissa Dell, who shared the Cadaster and History of Agrarian Nuclei (PHINA) she scrapped from the Mexican Agrarian National Registry (RAN). María José Villaseñor and her team working at Mexican National Archives provided superb research assistance. Financial support from CAF-Development Bank of Latin America is gratefully acknowledged. † Harvard University, Department of Government, 1737 Cambridge St Cambridge, MA, hlarreguy@fas.harvard.edu ‡ University of British Columbia, Vancouver School of Economics, 6000 Iona Drive, Vancouver, BC, jf.riano@almuni.ubc.ca § CIDE, Department of Politics, Carretera Mexico Toluca 3655, Distrito Federal, m.sancheztalanquer@cide.edu