Collaboration between Government and Civil Society: Evidence from the Implementation of Land Reform Program in Bangladesh

Abstract

Land reform is a pivotal mechanism in order to improve the livelihood of underprivileged people of developing countries in the world. But the implementation of land reform programs is always a complicated issue for these countries. The reason is, in most of the cases, the governments of the third world countries more or less lack the capacity to manage the resistance created by various social groups against land reform. Moreover, the prospective recipients of land reform are not generally aware about their rights to land as land related laws and regulations in developing countries are complicated and most of the potential beneficiaries are illiterate. This study shows that in Bangladesh, public agencies can remove the above mentioned barriers and execute land reform program effectively when they work closely with civil society organizations or vice versa. The main lesson of this study is that in the developing countries, the state-society driven approach can initiate and implement distributive reform programs effectively. Furthermore, this approach promotes participatory development as well as good governance in the developing countries of the world.