The Politics of Land: Comparative Development in Two States of Malaysia

Abstract

HE WAY A GOVERNMENT opens land to development has short-run political 1 consequences and long-run economic results.* Farsighted and fortunate is the government which can maximize both the political support to be derived from allocating land and the economic benefit from increased production on it. Malaysia ranks high among nations with undeveloped agricultural potential, having more arable land uncultivated than is in production. Expanding agriculture is a particularly attractive means for combatting unemployment in Malaysia since the capital-labor ratio for land development is estimated at one-third the ratio for industry.' The dominant use of land in Malaysia is for agriculture, on which this article focuses, with only passing notice to alternative uses of land such as forestry, mining, and urban development. Land can be used as a reward in any type of political system, being given preferentially to the landless in Communist China, to soldiers in nineteenth century Argentina, and to railway magnates and homesteaders in the United States. The mere quality of available land does not determine the rate of development. Rather, the political forces at work inside a state determine the pace and character of land alienation (its transfer from the public domain) and also strongly influence the subsequent agricultural development of land. The central hypothesis of this article is that the rate of land development can best be explained by three distinct but interrelated variables: (i) the proportion of land which is distributed on the basis of political criteria; (2) the degree of concentration of decision-making power within the state system; (3) the degree of administrative rigidity in interpreting regulations. In general, the higher a state scores on these variables, the lower the rate of land development.