This dissertation consists of four essays on the Political Economy of Development. The first two essays revolve around the role of political competition and family ties in influencing the administrative capacity of the state, while the last two chapters focus on the legacies of conflict and the importance of the media for the process of democratization. Chapter 2 shows that, in contexts where clientelism is ubiquitous, incumbent parties could have the incentive to prevent investments in local and bureaucratic state capacity when politically challenged. The chapter presents a theoretical model and empirical support for this theory using administrative data from a land allocation program in Mexico from 1910 to 1992. The empirical strategy ...