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My dissertation explores the consequences of private social welfare on local-level governance. More specifically, I seek to understand how mining companies shape the local population’s attitudes and protest behavior through the strategic delivery of information and public goods provision. The questions that motivate my research include:
(1) How do mining company practices of private provision shape citizens’ attitudes regarding government performance?
(2) How does information about a mining project’s costs and benefits influence the support and opposition to mining activities?
(3) Under what conditions does a mining company’s private provision of development projects improve communities’ living standards?

Methods
To answer these questions, I use a mixed-methods strategy that combines various sources of empirical evidence collected during fieldwork trips in 2019 and 2021. The data collected includes an original survey experiment of 360 households in twelve mining-affected communities, an administrative dataset of all company-sponsored projects in Peru, and interviews with community leaders, NGOs, and national and local government officials. I focus on the case of Las Bambas mine, one of the largest copper mines in the world located in the Apurimac region in Peru.

Contributions
The findings of my research contribute to two bodies of literature. First, my research contributes to the literature on non-state provision by exploring the consequences of mining companies as providers of public goods. Second, my research contributes to the literature on the political economy of natural resource extraction by exploring the role of companies and how they shape opposition and support for mining.