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The politics of land property rights

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2019

Meina Cai ,
Ilia Murtazashvili  and
Jennifer Murtazashvili
Meina Cai
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, University of Connecticut, USA
Ilia Murtazashvili*
Affiliation:
Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, USA
Jennifer Murtazashvili
Affiliation:
Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, USA
*
*Corresponding author: [email protected]
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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.

Keywords

Contract theory of the statepredatory theory of the stateprivate property rightspolitical institutionspolitical constraintsanarchyself-governance
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Institutional Economics , Volume 16 , Special Issue 2: Honour of Yoram Barzel , April 2020 , pp. 151 - 167
Copyright
Copyright © Millennium Economics Ltd 2019

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