Land Reform In Developing Countries

Redistributing land rights is a tricky subject and one that easily becomes controversial as recent experience has shown. This new book calmly examines the strengths and weaknesses of different forms of land redistribution.

Land reform became an international issue in the aftermath of World War II, when the United States planned to dispossess the Junker in Prussia and actually participated in major land redistribution programs in Japan, the Republic of China, and Korea. It became a canon of United States foreign policy in the Philippines, Thailand, and Iran, as

Interdisciplinary research study of the theoretics and agricultural policies in respect of land reform and land tenure systems, particularly in developing countries - includes trends in agricultural development and economic development, and covers agricultural planning, income redistribution, rural area interest groups, rural cooperatives, employment opportunity in the agricultural sector, etc. Bibliography pp. 149 to 157 and statistical tables.

"Land Law Reform examines the wide-spread efforts to reform land law in developing countries and countries in transition, drawing in particular upon the experience of the World Bank and the Rural Development Institute. The book considers the role of land law reform in the development process and analyzes how the World Bank has sought to support these legal changes in client countries. It reviews the experience with reform of laws affecting land access and rights in achieving gender equity, identifies opportunities for reinforcing environmentally sustainable development through land law reform, and examines from both growth and poverty alleviation perspectives the effectiveness of reforms to formalize property rights and liberalize land markets. The concluding chapter recommends some basic priorities for land law reforms. John W. Bruce is a senior counsel in the Legal Vice-Presidency of the World Bank, and a former director of the Land Tenure Center of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has published extensively on land law and land policy in developing countries. Renee Giovarelli, David Bledsoe, Leonard Rolfes, and Robert Mitchell are staff attorneys with the Rural Development Institute of Seattle, Washington, a nonprofit organization that promotes and advises on land-related policy and legal reform in developing and transition countries. All have done fieldwork and advised extensively on land law reform and have published widely on this topic."

This open access book offers unique in-depth, comprehensive, and comparative analyses of the motivations, context, and outcomes of recent land reforms in Africa. Whereas a considerable number of land reforms have been carried out by African governments since the 1990s, no systematic analysis on their meaning has so far been conducted. In the age of land reform, Africa has seen drastic rural changes. Analysing the relationship between those reforms and change, the chapters in this book reveal not only their socio-economic outcomes, such as accelerated marketisation of land, but also their political outcomes, which have often been contrasting. Countries such as Rwanda and Mozambique have utilised land reform to strengthen state control over land, but other countries, such as Ghana and Zambia, have seen the rise in power of traditional chiefs in managing the land. The comparative perspective of this book clarifies new features of African social changes, which are carefully investigated by area experts. Providing new perspectives on recent land reform, this book will have a considerable impact on scholars as well as policymakers.

Using empirical case materials from the Philippines and referring to rich experiences from different countries historically, this book offers conceptual and practical conclusions that have far-reaching implications for land reform throughout the world. Examining land reform theory and practice, this book argues that conventional practices have excluded a significant portion of land-based production and distribution relationships, while they have inadvertently included land transfers that do not constitute real redistributive reform. By direct implication, this book is a critique of both mainstream market led agrarian reform and conventional state-led land reform. It offers an alternative perspective on how to move forward in theory and practice and opens new paths in land policy research.