IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/wdevel/v37y2009i8p1307-1316.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Limits of State-Led Land Reform: An Introduction

Author

Listed:
  • Sikor, Thomas
  • Müller, Daniel

Abstract

Summary This essay introduces a collection of papers that examine the effects of contemporary land reforms in practice. This essay focuses on the roles of state and community in land reform. It argues that state-led strategies encounter significant problems on the ground due to their reliance on "top-down" initiatives and bureaucratic implementation. Empirical and conceptual insights suggest the benefits of a shift in emphasis from state to community in land reform. Emphasis on community calls for a state that is more reactive to political demands originating "from below" and more responsive to variation in local institutions and practices.

Suggested Citation

  • Sikor, Thomas & Müller, Daniel, 2009. "The Limits of State-Led Land Reform: An Introduction," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 37(8), pages 1307-1316, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:wdevel:v:37:y:2009:i:8:p:1307-1316
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305-750X(09)00046-1
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Agrawal, Arun & Gibson, Clark C., 1999. "Enchantment and Disenchantment: The Role of Community in Natural Resource Conservation," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 27(4), pages 629-649, April.
    2. Deininger, Klaus & Binswanger, Hans, 1999. "The Evolution of the World Bank's Land Policy: Principles, Experience, and Future Challenges," The World Bank Research Observer, World Bank, vol. 14(2), pages 247-276, August.
    3. Leach, Melissa & Mearns, Robin & Scoones, Ian, 1999. "Environmental Entitlements: Dynamics and Institutions in Community-Based Natural Resource Management," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 225-247, February.
    4. Liu, Shouying & Carter, Michael R. & Yao, Yang, 1998. "Dimensions and diversity of property rights in rural China: Dilemmas on the road to further reform," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 26(10), pages 1789-1806, October.
    5. Ka, Chih-Ming & Selden, Mark, 1986. "Original accumulation, equity and late industrialization: The cases of socialist China and capitalist Taiwan," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 14(10-11), pages 1293-1310.
    6. Klaus Deininger, 2003. "Land Policies for Growth and Poverty Reduction," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 15125, December.
    7. Boucher, Stephen R. & Barham, Bradford L. & Carter, Michael R., 2005. "The Impact of "Market-Friendly" Reforms on Credit and Land Markets in Honduras and Nicaragua," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 107-128, January.
    8. Michael R. Carter & Pedro Olinto, 2003. "Getting Institutions “Right” for Whom? Credit Constraints and the Impact of Property Rights on the Quantity and Composition of Investment," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 85(1), pages 173-186.
    9. Lipton, Michael, 1993. "Land reform as commenced business: The evidence against stopping," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 21(4), pages 641-657, April.
    10. Weyerhaeuser, Horst & Kahrl, Fredrich & Yufang, Su, 2006. "Ensuring a future for collective forestry in China's southwest: Adding human and social capital to policy reforms," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 8(4), pages 375-385, June.
    11. Binswanger, Hans P & McIntire, John, 1987. "Behavioral and Material Determinants of Production Relations in Land-Abundant Tropical Agriculture," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 36(1), pages 73-99, October.
    12. Migot-Adholla, Shem, et al, 1991. "Indigenous Land Rights Systems in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Constraint on Productivity?," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 5(1), pages 155-175, January.
    13. Jean‐Philippe Platteau, 1996. "The Evolutionary Theory of Land Rights as Applied to Sub‐Saharan Africa: A Critical Assessment," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 27(1), pages 29-86, January.
    14. Tania Murray Li, 1996. "Images of Community: Discourse and Strategy in Property Relations," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 27(3), pages 501-527, July.
    15. Patrick McAuslan, 1998. "Making Law Work: Restructuring Land Relations in Africa," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 29(3), pages 525-552, July.
    16. Bradstock, Alastair, 2005. "Changing livelihoods and land reform: Evidence from the Northern Cape province of South Africa," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 33(11), pages 1979-1992, November.
    17. Sikor, Thomas, 2006. "Analyzing community-based forestry: Local, political and agrarian perspectives," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 8(4), pages 339-349, June.
    18. Kung, James Kai-sing, 2000. "Common Property Rights and Land Reallocations in Rural China: Evidence from a Village Survey," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 28(4), pages 701-719, April.
    19. Chimhowu, Admos & Hulme, David, 2006. "Livelihood dynamics in planned and spontaneous resettlement in Zimbabwe: Converging and Vulnerable," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 34(4), pages 728-750, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Thomas Vendryes, 2014. "Peasants Against Private Property Rights: A Review Of The Literature," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(5), pages 971-995, December.
    2. Tankari, Mahamadou Roufahi, 2015. "Action Levers For A Sustainable Farmland Management In Niger," International Journal of Food and Agricultural Economics (IJFAEC), Alanya Alaaddin Keykubat University, Department of Economics and Finance, vol. 3(4), pages 1-12, October.
    3. Madalina Epure, 2013. "How Does the Changing Access to Resources Affect the Power and Authority of the Postsocialist Romanian State?," Journal of Economic Development, Environment and People, Alliance of Central-Eastern European Universities, vol. 2(1), pages 32-56, March.
    4. Place, Frank, 2009. "Land Tenure and Agricultural Productivity in Africa: A Comparative Analysis of the Economics Literature and Recent Policy Strategies and Reforms," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 37(8), pages 1326-1336, August.
    5. Bouquet, Emmanuelle, 2009. "State-Led Land Reform and Local Institutional Change: Land Titles, Land Markets and Tenure Security in Mexican Communities," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 37(8), pages 1390-1399, August.
    6. Smith, Robert E., 2004. "Land Tenure, Fixed Investment, and Farm Productivity: Evidence from Zambia's Southern Province," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 32(10), pages 1641-1661, October.
    7. Klaus Deininger & Daniel Ayalew Ali & Takashi Yamano, 2008. "Legal Knowledge and Economic Development: The Case of Land Rights in Uganda," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 84(4), pages 593-619.
    8. Ghebru, Hosaena, 2015. "Is There a Merit to the Continuum Tenure Approach? A Case of Demand for Land Rights Formulation in Rural Mozambique," 2015 Conference, August 9-14, 2015, Milan, Italy 211683, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    9. Boucher, Stephen R. & Barham, Bradford L. & Carter, Michael R., 2005. "The Impact of "Market-Friendly" Reforms on Credit and Land Markets in Honduras and Nicaragua," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 107-128, January.
    10. Deininger, Klaus & Jin, Songqing, 2006. "Tenure security and land-related investment: Evidence from Ethiopia," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 50(5), pages 1245-1277, July.
    11. Katleen Van den Broeck & Carol Newman & Finn Tarp, 2007. "Land Titles and Rice Production in Vietnam," Discussion Papers 07-32, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics.
    12. Saturnino M. Borras Jr, 2006. "Redistributive land reform in ‘public’ (forest) lands? Lessons from the Philippines and their implications for land reform theory and practice," Progress in Development Studies, , vol. 6(2), pages 123-145, April.
    13. Heath Henderson & Leonardo Corral & Eric Simning & Paul Winters, 2015. "Land Accumulation Dynamics in Developing Country Agriculture," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 51(6), pages 743-761, June.
    14. Petracco, Carly K. & Pender, John L., 2009. "Evaluating the Impact of Land Tenure and Titling on Access to Credit in Uganda," 2009 Conference, August 16-22, 2009, Beijing, China 51899, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    15. Klaus Deininger & Songqing Jin, 2008. "Land Sales and Rental Markets in Transition: Evidence from Rural Vietnam," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 70(1), pages 67-101, February.
    16. Kemper, Niels & Ha, Luu Viet & Klump, Rainer, 2015. "Property Rights and Consumption Volatility: Evidence from a Land Reform in Vietnam," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 107-130.
    17. Deininger, Klaus & Chamorro, Juan Sebastian, 2004. "Investment and equity effects of land regularisation: the case of Nicaragua," Agricultural Economics, Blackwell, vol. 30(2), pages 101-116, March.
    18. Ojha, Hemant R. & Ford, Rebecca & Keenan, Rodney J. & Race, Digby & Carias Vega, Dora & Baral, Himlal & Sapkota, Prativa, 2016. "Delocalizing Communities: Changing Forms of Community Engagement in Natural Resources Governance," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 274-290.
    19. Gong, Tengda, 2022. "Economic Impacts of Land Security Improvements: Investment Incentives versus Rental Incentives," 2022 Annual Meeting, July 31-August 2, Anaheim, California 322094, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    20. Ufer, Danielle & Ortega, David L., 2022. "Right on the Money? U.S. Farmers Have a Varied Understanding of Consumer Preferences and Attitudes over Animal Welfare and Biotechnology," 2022 Annual Meeting, July 31-August 2, Anaheim, California 322269, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:wdevel:v:37:y:2009:i:8:p:1307-1316. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/worlddev .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.