The Emergence of de facto Bureaucratic Priorities: Extending Urban Citizenship in fin-de-millénaire Lima, Peru

ABSTRACT I outline an underappreciated explanation for states’ de facto policy-implementation priorities, contrast it with existing explanations, and apply it to the Peruvian state’s extension of “urban citizenship” (squatter residence legalization) in late-twentieth century Lima. Bureaucratic priorities emerge from both the intervention of the bureaucracy tasked with policy implementation and local-level actors found in the policy-implementation arena it targets. Qualitative evidence shows that the legalization bureaucracy encountered neighborhood elites who tried to obstruct the extension of urban citizenship. Quantitative evidence suggests that these actors were unevenly distributed across space and that the state prioritized settlements according to their relative absence.