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Why do nations have the institutions they have? The thesis contributes to this academic subject by studying why and how resource-rich Chile and Peru joined in the international trend of good green governance. The "green state" comprises ministries of the environment, transsectoral regulatory agencies, national standards of environmental quality, systems of protected areas, and citizen participation schemes. The emerging formal institutional apparatuses have developed country-specific forms displaying a sharp contrast: a relatively strong and autonomous green state in Chile and a relatively weak and captured green state in Peru. Behind formal governance convergence hides effective institutional divergence. Inquiring why policy-entrepreneurs happened to take the decisions they undertook, the dissertation unveils why and how history mattered for the evolution of green states in Chile and Peru. I conclude that legacy, opportunity, and agency shape institutional change.
How do institutions matter for the wealth of nations? Institutions shape the development arena. This study shows that state institutions matter for the wealth of nations through two broad channels: (i) establishing the rules of development, which includes both the structure of political and economic incentives and the distribution of endowments and power, and (ii) molding the cultural criteria under which "wealth" and "nations" are to be understood, fostered, and evaluated. Chapter 1 situates the dissertation in the debate of institutional change and the wealth of (resource-rich) nations. Chapter 2 presents a comparative historical account of resource-based development and the evolution of state actions toward the "natural environment" in Chile and Peru. The following three chapters present the core of the study. Chapter 3 analyzes why and how both countries joined in the international trend of green state structures. Chapter 4 compares the development of the green states in the regulation of the mining industry. Then, Chapter 5 explains why state legacies mattered for the contrasting rise and reach of green state schemes. Chapter 6 unpacks how the structure of political opportunities contingent to the rise of the green state played. Lastly, Chapter 7 summarizes findings and draws general conclusions on how institutions evolve and why and how they matter for sustainable development.