Major Land Reform Research Articles

The Persistence of Rural Underdevelopment: Evidence from Land Reform in Italy

Patchiness in rural development remains a salient feature of many developed and developing countries that have struggled historically to overcome enormous national disparities in economic structure and well-being. This paper examines how one major, explicit rural policy ostensibly aimed at rural advancement—land reform—can impact uneven development in the countryside. It does so in Italy, where a major land reform redistributed large landholdings to individual peasant families after World War II. Based on original fine-grained data on land redistribution and a geographical regression discontinuity analysis that takes advantage of Italy’s zonal land reform approach, I find that greater land reform fueled comparative underdevelopment and precarity locally over the long term. Several related mechanisms delayed development in land reform zones: a slower transition out of agriculture, lower labor mobility, and an aging demographic. These are generalizable mechanisms that could operate in other cases of land reform beyond Italy.

The Electoral Impact of Wealth Redistribution: Evidence from the Italian Land Reform

Governments often implement large-scale redistribution policies to gain enduring political support. However, little is known on whether such policies generate sizable gains, whether these gains are persistent, and why. We study the political consequences of a major land reform in Italy. A panel spatial regression discontinuity design shows that the reform generated large electoral gains for the incumbent Christian Democratic party, and similarly large losses for the Communist party. The electoral effects persist over four decades. Farmers’ grassroots organizations and continued political investment in reform areas (i.e. fiscal transfers and public sector employment) are plausible mechanisms for this persistence. We find less support for other potential explanations, including migration, voters' beliefs, and patterns of economic development.

The Persistence of Rural Underdevelopment: Evidence from Land Reform in Italy

Patchiness in rural development remains a salient feature of many developed and developing countries that have struggled historically to overcome enormous national disparities in economic structure and well-being. This paper examines how one major, explicit rural policy ostensibly aimed at rural advancement – land reform – can impact uneven development in the countryside. It does so in Italy, where a major land reform redistributed large landholdings to individual peasant families after World War II. Based on original fine-grained data on land redistribution and a geographical regression discontinuity analysis that takes advantage of Italy’s zonal approach to land reform, I find that greater land reform fueled underdevelopment and precarity locally over the long term. Several related mechanisms delayed development in land reform zones: a slower transition out of agriculture, lower labor mobility, and an ageing demographic. These are generalizable mechanisms that could operate in other cases of land reform aside from Italy.

The political economy of land reform enactments: New cross-national evidence (1900–2010)

We construct a unique, extensive dataset that codifies 372 major land reform enactments in 165 countries during the period 1900–2010 and classifies them as those with several different motives. Exploiting the geographic and time variation in land reforms and political transitions across the globe over more than a century, we find that democratic transitions are linked with a greater likelihood of land reforms of the pro-poor type as well as those with different inequality-reducing motives. These results are robust to adding important controls, changing variable definitions, using alternative data, addressing endogeneity to the extent possible, and moving from enactments to implementations. We also estimate a positive impact of autocratic transitions on pro-poor and some inequality-reducing land reforms, but these results emerge mainly with instrumental-variables estimation. We also show that a leftward shift in the political ideology of the chief executive is associated with a higher likelihood of pro-poor land reforms as well as a few types of inequality-reducing ones.

The Electoral Impact of Wealth Redistribution. Evidence from the Italian Land Reform

Governments often implement large-scale redistribution policies to gain enduring political support. However, little is known on whether such policies generate sizable gains, whether these gains are persistent, and why. We study the political consequences of a major land reform in Italy. A panel spatial regression discontinuity design shows that the reform generated large electoral gains for the incumbent Christian Democratic party, and similarly large losses for the Communist party. The electoral effects persist over four decades. Farmers' grassroots organizations and continued political investment in reform areas (i.e. fiscal transfers and public sector employment) are plausible mechanisms for this persistence. We find less support for other potential explanations, including migration, voters' beliefs, and patterns of economic development.

Quantification of landscape transformation due to the Fast Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP) in Zimbabwe using remotely sensed data

After independence, Zimbabwe adopted two major land reform programmes to address the racially skewed land ownership. Due to the perceived failure of these programmes, the country embarked on a highly politicised and forceful acquisition and re-distribution of white owned commercial farms under the Fast Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP). Whereas a large number of Zimbabweans have been allocated land under the programme, there has been a significant decline in agricultural productivity and an increase in degradation of land and associated resources. Popular opinion has even suggested the country’s current socio-economic challenges are linked to the programme. Mitigating land degradation, enhancing agricultural productivity and promoting natural resources sustainability requires an objective understanding and determination landscape transformation within relevant administrative decision making spatial extents. In this study, we adopted multi-temporal remotely sensed imagery to determine landscape transformation after the implementation of the FTLRP in Chipinge administrative district, characterised by heterogeneous land usage and natural resources. Major land-use-land-cover types were determined using the Support Vector Machine classification algorithm and accuracy established using field survey and ancillary data. Results show significant landscape transformation after the implementation of the FTLRP. Specifically, there was a decline in plantations, small farms, water bodies and forests and an increase in bare areas and settlements. This study demonstrates the value of remotely data in monitoring landscape transformation arising from a shift in policy. Furthermore, these results provide an insight into multi-temporal spatial changes in cultivated, natural and degraded lands, valuable for designing measures to improve landscape productivity and to adopt relevant rehabilitation measures. Understanding multi-temporal landscape change within an administrative boundary is particularly valuable for area specific planning, policy formulation and adoption of desired mitigation measures.

Liberalization by inertia: The politics of land reform under Zambia's movement for multiparty democracy, 1991–2011

AbstractZambian land is governed under hybrid system that includes statutory and customary tenure, and the administration of the sector has long been regarded as inadequate by a host of international and domestic stakeholders, both neoliberals and pro‐poor advocates alike. Consequently, major land reform has been on the agenda for 2 decades, particularly during the rule of the Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD) from 1991–2011, yet scant progress was made. The status quo appeared untenable, inasmuch as it left all sides unsatisfied: It was inconsistent with the country's generally neoliberal, investor‐friendly focus; it denied rural smallholders' access to collateral through title, and it simultaneously left rural voters potentially at the mercy of unscrupulous chiefs and savvy domestic and international land investors and speculators. The government largely failed to advance land reform despite years of rhetoric to the contrary. This paper identifies 3 principal reasons for this inertia: first, the system prevented opportunities for rent extraction by unscrupulous chiefs and their counterparts in the local and national land bodies and their international beneficiaries. Second, demand for land reform among the rural poor was diffuse and weakly articulated, meaning advocacy scanty. And third, although perhaps not as incendiary as countries such as Zimbabwe or Kenya, land reform was and remains politically sensitive. As Zambian politics grew increasingly competitive, the MMD could not afford to alienate any constituency. Siding with “investors” would needlessly alienate chiefs and the main users of customary lands, the rural poor, whereas the reverse would jeopardize investment imperatives, particularly in the land‐hungry mining, agriculture, and tourism sectors. Thus, Zambia under the MMD can be seen as caught between a model of “traditional,” customary tenure, and a “modern” property rights regime: Various proposals for reforms could not mutually satisfy address poverty alleviation needs and market demand for land. The best solution politically, therefore, was inertia. Yet the result of policy inertia over time is de facto land “reform” by other means, namely, the gradual alienation of the poor from lands to which they previously enjoyed access, in favor of the investor class.

Reviving Zimbabwe's Agriculture: The Role of China and Brazil

From 2000, after Zimbabwe embarked on a major land reform programme, the country was isolated economically and diplomatically by Western countries. Agricultural financing dried up, and traditional Western donors only provided humanitarian assistance to communal farmers and refused to support any programmes in newly resettled areas. The government approached China and Brazil among other countries to help resuscitate the agricultural sector; including the newly resettled areas. While Brazilian assistance is yet to make a significant impact, as delivery modalities are still being worked out, Chinese assistance has made a significant impact particularly in the tobacco and cotton sectors. Only time will tell whether these new partnerships, as an alternative to Western aid, will become a success story of South–South cooperation.

Agricultural Status and Soils in Korea

Korea’s agriculture had many inherent problems. Korea is a mountainous country with only 22 percent farmland and less rainfall than most other neighboring rice-growing countries. A major land reform in the late 1940s and early 1950s spread ownership of land to the rural peasantry. Individual holdings, however, were too small or too spread out to provide families with much chance to produce a significant quantity of food. The enormous growth of urban areas led to a rapid decrease of available farmland, while at the same time population increases and bigger incomes meant that the demand for food greatly outstripped supply. The result of these developments was that by the late 1980s roughly half of Korea’s needs, mainly wheat and animal feed corn, was imported. Korea’s agriculture is facing a new round of difficulties from the inevitable process of market opening. Therefore, we have reviewed the agricultural status and soils in Korea how we can meet the coming issues with respect to production and prospect based on the government documents and articles published on the journals.

Are Some Planning Transactions Intrinsically Sovereign?

The laws, policies, customary practices and other institutions that govern a country's land development and the pattern of its spatial economy are constantly evolving. They change at the margin and by catastrophe; involving major land reform, minor statutes, economic crises, and gradual shifts in the way things are done. This article analyses the institutions of planning using qualitative models of incomplete contracting. It portrays them as fluid social constructs that adapt according to the relative costs of organizing the transactions that constitute a planning service. The focus is on the way organizational and institutional structures influence and are determined by post-contractual hazards. Post-contractual hazards are risks to the desired outcome of a transaction (for example the risk that a commissioned plan proves to be unworkable or irrelevant). Attention is specifically drawn to probity hazard (following economist Oliver Williamson, 1999). A set of core planning functions (transactions) are examined with the purpose of discovering if there are a priori arguments for retaining certain parts of a planning system within the public bureaucracy.

Ecological and Poverty Impacts of Zimbabwe’s Land Struggles: 1980 to Present

Abstract Literature on Zimbabwe’s land struggles is dominated by a particular perspective emphasizing the historical rooting of inequitable land distribution and ownership in British colonial rule from 1890 onward. This view is informed by the imperative of redressing a historical injustice wherever British people alienated prime land from, among others, the indigenous Shona, Ndebele and Tonga. The key element in this perspective has been the science of land management, and particularly the protection of wooded areas, the soil and wildlife. The discourse on ecological calamity stresses the harmful consequences of unregulated agriculture, mining and hunting, the threats posed by degradation, and the need to control methods of resource exploitation. This study examines the debates on, and processes of, land reform in Zimbabwe in the independence era (1980-present), exploring the social, economic and political contexts of perceptions of land redistribution and management. Zimbabwe’s major land reform programme was carried out between 2000 and 2002. An estimated 300,000 small-holder farmers were provided with land holdings ranging between 5 and 10 hectares. In addition, land was set aside for 54,000 black commercial farmers. Of the original 5,000 white farmers in 2000, only 600 were estimated to have remained in full production on their farms. Much of this period has been characterised by both local and global debates about land reform and environmental problems, generating in their wake politically charged and emotive argumentations about issues such as poverty, deforestation, soil erosion and threats to wildlife.

Land Reform for Peace? Rwanda's 2005 Land Law in Context

A decade ago, Rwanda embarked on a major land reform programme. The government envisaged a new land law, supported by a land policy, and claimed that the new tenure system would contribute to enhancing food production, social equity and the prevention of conflict. The Land Law was finally passed in the summer of 2005. The UK Department for International Development (DFID) has taken on significant responsibility for monitoring the reform programme. This article provides a contextualized reading of the new Law. It argues that its emphasis on the obligation to consolidate fragmented family plots and register them will exacerbate social tension, but that some of the potential for social strife may be reduced because the state will allow flexibility in how the Land Law is implemented.

Towards Reconciliation of the Land Issue in Namibia: Identifying the Possible, Assessing the Probable

ABSTRACTThis paper argues that the case against a major land reform in Namibia is overstated and inaccurate, and that, in spite of its relatively harsh climate, the country contains sufficient land of good enough quality, and a small enough population, to undertake a major land reform. The paper suggests that the reasons why there is generally a conservative estimate of possible solutions to land hunger are largely related to the prevalence of a conservative colonial intellectual legacy in spite of radical ambitions stated by the SWAPO (South West African People's Organization) government. Furthermore, many commentators and officials in Namibia are following a pattern in Africa of ignoring lessons (positive and negative) from other countries—in this case particularly from aspects of Zimbabwe's land reform. The paper explores the comparison with Zimbabwe in order to emphasize the political lessons available for Namibia's land reform, but it also highlights practical lessons which exist, in spite of the fact that most of Zimbabwe's environment is generally much better suited to agriculture than is Namibia's.

Land Reform in the Middle East

The success or failure of land reform programs in the past has been, in general, evaluated on the basis of whether agricultural output increases or decreases following their adoption and the implementation of their principal provisions. Yet this approach ignores other factors, such as the effect of prices on output, making it likely that the influence of land reform is under- or over-estimated. In this paper, we suggest that it is possible to isolate the effect of price on output from those of reform programs by using the Nerlove supply model. By applying this method to periods before and after the initiation of such programs, we can identify any change in the market responsiveness of the affected cultivators. In testing this approach, the output of major crops in Egypt, Syria and Iraq—countries which have seen major land reform efforts in the post-war era—was analyzed. Post-reform responsiveness was compared with that of earlier periods and with that of cultivators in two neighboring countries—Jordan and Lebanon—which underwent little reform.