How to face the “fight of an ant against a giant”? Mobilization capacity and strategic bargaining in local ethnic conflicts in Latin America

Since democratic liberalization, local ethnic conflicts have proliferated in Latin America—often triggered by decision-making on extractive or infrastructure projects on indigenous land. This article offers new insights on how to resolve these conflicts peacefully and particularly examines the effects of consultation and territorial autonomy rights for indigenous peoples. The proposed analytical framework refines actor-centered institutionalism with network-theoretical concepts to link the institutional level of rights with interaction-based and organization-centered factors whose effects have not yet been analyzed systematically. Empirical scrutiny builds on comparative process tracing of three exemplary conflicts: the decision-making process concerning a national park in Colombia (as an ideal case with prior consultations), the conflict over a hydroelectric dam in Panama (as a deviant case resulting in ethnic violence despite indigenous autonomy) and a mining project in Chile (as another deviant case leading to a peaceful agreement despite a least-likely setting without rights). For within-case analyses, network-analytic methods are used to examine access and bargaining mechanisms. One of the study’s results—which is of particular relevance for the scholarly discussion on multicultural legal renovations—is that regular channels of interaction of indigenous groups with public authorities foster peaceful interest intermediation. These can be created by consultation and autonomy rights but also by difference-blind decentralization reforms. The empirical analysis also shows how indigenous groups can accommodate to the bargaining logic of decision-making on their land; they do have relevant power resources at their disposal and can deploy them effectively.