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The Politics of Property Rights

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Kathryn Firmin-Sellers
Kathryn Firmin-Sellers
Affiliation:
Indiana University
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Abstract

The study of land tenure polarizes the field of development. Neoclassical scholars lobby for a move toward private property rights, while other economists and historians defend the maintenance of customary land tenure. I argue that the development scholars' focus on the structure of property rights obscures a more fundamental problem of land reform—that of enforcement. Property rights will not inspire individual investment and economic growth unless political institutions give the ruler of a local community or nation-state sufficient coercive authority to silence those who advocate an alternative, more distributionally favorable property rights system. At the same time, political institutions must force the ruler to establish a credible commitment to that property rights system. I illustrate this theoretical argument through an analysis of property rights institutions in Akyem Abuakwa, a traditional state in colonial Ghana.

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Articles
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 89 , Issue 4 , December 1995 , pp. 867 - 881
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1995

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