Nina McMurry

From Recognition to Representation: Collective Self-Determination and Democratic Citizenship in the Philippines (Dissertation Project Summary)

In recent decades, states around the world have adopted policies recognizing distinct indigenous identities and devolving control over land and local governance functions to indigenous authorities. My book-length dissertation project explores how such policies affect the process of state-building and the quality of representation in modern democratic states. The recognition of collective self-determination rights for indigenous communities finds support in current international human rights law. Yet prominent literatures in political science suggest that the granting of such rights has the potential to both encourage state weakness and fragmentation and undermine democratic accountability.

In contrast, I argue that given underlying conditions of state weakness, collective recognition offers a viable approach to incorporating peripheral populations into the state and creates opportunities for effective claim-making on the state through the democratic process. First, recognition allows the state to extend its reach in a way that is compatible with the incentives of local elites. Second, it facilitates the establishment of a political identity among groups defined by a history of marginalization, encouraging and enabling them to channel demands through the formal political system.

I illustrate and evaluate this argument primarily in the context of the Philippines, which has one of the most robust frameworks for indigenous recognition in Southeast Asia. Drawing on more than two years of fieldwork in the country, I combine observational analysis of historical and contemporary administrative data, original survey data and survey experiments, and in-depth qualitative interviews with indigenous leaders and policymakers. I find evidence that recognition through the granting of collective land titles is associated with increased indigenous self-identification, but also with greater national identity and multiple indicators of voluntary compliance and state integration. In addition, I find that recognition increases electoral mobilization directed toward obtaining public goods from the state. I corroborate my argument using cross-national data, original analysis of administrative data from Brazil, and secondary literature from additional country contexts, including the United States.