Individual vs. Collective Rights: Consequences for Indigenous People in Latin America, 1989-2018

Since the 1980s, the multiculturalist turn has increased the constitutional recognition of Indigenous rights in Latin America and beyond. However, such constitutional Indigenous rights need to be specified and made operational through ordinary legislation. In this process, legislators can make individuals or collectives the bearers of such rights. In turn, this decision can have different consequences as it alters the group’s relative position in the relations between the individual and the state. Derived from the normative debate on Indigenous group rights, I develop a framework of empirically testable implications of individual vs. collective group rights. I theorize that individual Indigenous rights facilitate equality within the minority, incentivize individual responsibility, and are more easily enforceable in court. In contrast, collective Indigenous group rights are theorized to strengthen group identity and communal institutions and encourage collective action within Indigenous communities. Using original data from the INDILEX dataset, I provide a first operationalization of individual and collective group rights. The INDILEX dataset covers about 1.500 laws and decrees dealing with Indigenous Peoples and their rights in 16 Latin American countries between 1989-2018. This data is used for preliminary tests of the proposed theory.