The politics of land property rights

Abstract

Legal reforms that improve the security of private property rights to land have characteristics of a public good with dispersed benefits. However, nothing ensures that the state will provide property protection as a public good. Some states provide property protection selectively to powerful groups. Others are unable to provide property protection. In this paper, we argue that whether the state provides property protection as a public good, selectively, or cannot establish private property rights depends on the following features of politics: political stability, government capacity to administer and enforce private property rights, constraints on political decision-makers, and the inclusivity of political and legal institutions. We illustrate the theory using evidence from reforms that increased opportunities to privately own land in the US from the late eighteenth through nineteenth centuries, selective enforcement of land property rights in China, and the absence of credible legal rights to land in Afghanistan.

Land Rights, Industrialization, and Urbanization: China in Comparative Context

“…Cai et al [ 9 ] introduce a comparison between China and the historical experience of the US. They emphasize differences rather than similarities in the historical evolution of land rights in the contemporary Chinese and US regimes; in doing so, they miss the exclusionary nature of land rights in the US.…”

“…They emphasize differences rather than similarities in the historical evolution of land rights in the contemporary Chinese and US regimes; in doing so, they miss the exclusionary nature of land rights in the US. In China, property rights in land are “selective,” because China’s “discriminatory institutions… allow the state to expropriate land from millions of farmers for the benefit of others [ 9 ]:152).” By contrast, according to Cai et al [ 9 ], in the US, property rights are a “public good.” They see restrictions on property ownership for “Blacks, Native Americans, and women” as mere caveats rather than fundamental to the dynamics of the historical development of the US, with multi-generational distributional consequences [ 9 ]:152). At the same time, they adopt a teleological perspective on the US, which “ marched toward providing property rights protection as a public good ([ 9 ]:152, emphasis added).” In broader historical perspective, similarities exist among exclusionary land and citizenship regimes.…”

Study of Peculiarities of Land Relations Through the Prism of Economic Theories

“…In the modern world economic thought in the part of land relations study the work of the scientists M. Cai, I. Murtazashvili, G. Murtazashvili [6], who put the main accent on state protection of the proprietary right for land as a social good, manifested through the effectiveness of institutions, is worth attention. Just institutions as game rules in a society, based on rules and traditions, determine development directions of land relations and are their base.…”

The Art and Science of Economic Explanation: Introduction to the Special Issue in Honor of Yoram Barzel

“…What resulted thereafter was increasing uncertainty over the security and legal definition of property rights over land, generating the conditions for regulatory capture and the Sicilian Mafia as alternative sets of means to enforce economic property rights. Cai, Murtazashvili, and Murtazashvili (2019) build upon Barzel's theory of the state to develop a framework to study the politics of property rights over land. They identify four fundamental characteristics a state must have to be able to provide an effective system of ownership over land.…”

“…However, Deng Xiaoping's reform of the Chinese economic system, with the introduction of the Household Responsibility System, created the right set of incentives for effective land use in China. Finally, Cai, Murtazashvili, and Murtazashvili (2019) provide a case of a regime on the opposite end of the spectrum. Historically, Afghanistan has lacked each one of the four characteristics required for the creation of a functional land ownership regime.…”