Indigenous Inclusion in Latin American Constitutions: Legitimacy Deficits, Legitimating Audiences, and Social Movement Strength

Why did almost every Latin American state embrace the norm of Indigenous constitutional inclusion over the past five decades? Established sociological answers focus on the spread of global norms or on bottom-up pressure from social movements. However, these accounts are incomplete, overlooking the core political logic within the state that drives Indigenous inclusion – namely, legitimacy. In this article, I present a historical analysis of every instance of constitutional Indigenous inclusion in Latin America between 1970 and 2023, documenting significant variation in the timing (chronology) of norm adoption. In addition, I introduce a novel index of inclusion, shedding light on another significant source of variation: the degree of inclusion. Using comparative-historical analysis, I argue that these sources of variation largely reflect instances of legitimacy deficits : situations in which governments face pressure to demonstrate their legitimacy to specific legitimacy audiences . The cases analyzed show that policymakers enacted inclusionary policies in order to bolster state legitimacy in the eyes of domestic or international audiences and that domestic stakeholders generally achieved stronger forms of inclusion than international actors. Indigenous groups usually gained much less when governments pursued reforms mainly in order to appease eternal audiences.