Freedom and the Deep State: Slavery, State Capacity, and Institutional Change in the Americas

A vast literature highlights the political, social, and economic consequences of slavery. Yet previous research – particularly in political science and particularly in work on Latin America – appears to have missed important channels through which the regulation of slavery contributed crucially to state-building. In this research in progress, Thad Dunning, Robson Professor of Political Science at UC Berkeley, argues that the regulation of slavery in imperial Brazil contributed to the construction of a bureaucracy that was autonomous in many ways of slaveholder interests and propose the hypothesis that this was driven by imperatives of political survival. He then empirically examine two main vehicles through which an autonomous state was built: responses to lawsuits for freedom brought on behalf of enslaved persons and appeals for protection in the carceral system. The argument and supporting evidence may contribute new comparative insights to the understanding of state-building in the Americas. Join us on Tuesday, October 14, 2025, from 12:30 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. ET.

Speaker:
Thad Dunning, Robson Professor of Political Science, University of California, Berkeley

For more information and to watch the livestream, visit the event website.