Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures, Tables and Maps
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction
- Part I Property Rights and the Structure of Politics
- 2 Land Tenure Regimes and Political Order in Rural Africa
- 3 Rising Competition for Land
- Part II
- Part III
- Part IV
- Appendix Land Politics Cases and Sources
- References
- Index
3 - Rising Competition for Land
Redistribution and Its Varied Political Effects
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2014
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures, Tables and Maps
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction
- Part I Property Rights and the Structure of Politics
- 2 Land Tenure Regimes and Political Order in Rural Africa
- 3 Rising Competition for Land
- Part II
- Part III
- Part IV
- Appendix Land Politics Cases and Sources
- References
- Index
Summary
Property arrangements vary a great deal in the way they tie peasants to the prevailing society and hence in their political effects.
(B. Moore Jr., 1966, 476)In most of sub-Saharan Africa for most of the twentieth century, land was not the scarce factor of production. Labor scarcity was considered the most important factor in shaping patterns of land use and agricultural practice, and it was a key factor in shaping land tenure regimes and the organization of rural society. As land has become scarcer relative to labor (or has gained in commercial value for other reasons), sociopolitical arrangements institutionalized in the statist and neocustomary land regimes have come under great strain. Actors’ interests and incentives, and balances of power among actors, are shifting. These changes find social and political expression in struggles over social obligations and entitlements. They also give rise to challenges to existing forms of authority over land.
Part I of this chapter discusses the phenomenon of rising pressure on the land. Part II traces social science debates about the expected effects of growing land scarcity for smallholders, identifying puzzles that become tractable, I argue, when land conflict is viewed as redistributive conflict. Part III proposes a model of African land tenure regimes and how they vary. Part IV deduces hypotheses that have to do with how land tenure institutions structure the social and political pressures arising from redistributive conflict over land.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Property and Political Order in AfricaLand Rights and the Structure of Politics, pp. 52 - 90Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014