Archive Detail

Speaker:
Sven-Patrick Schmid

Sven - Patrick Schmid is researcher at the Cluster (AG Holzinger) and will present his working paper titled "Indigenous Legislation in Latin America".

Abstract:

Latin American legislation on Indigenous rights is strikingly similar in some countries - sometimes formulations even overlap word by word. I investigate if such similarities are a systematic phenomenon. Are they a case of successful policy learning or the result of external pressure? Empirically, I cover the legislation in 15 Spanish-speaking countries from 1989-2018. Using computational text analysis, I offer two measures for legislative similarity and derive indicators for policy convergence and diffusion. The preliminary findings are that Indigenous legislation in Latin America has indeed converged over time. However, the diffusion mechanisms remain unclear, which will be the next steps in the analysis.