The perversion of public land distribution by landed elites: Power, inequality and development in Colombia

Jean-Paul Faguet, Fabio Sanchez Torres and Marta Villaveces Niño ()

World Development, 2020, vol. 136, issue C

Abstract: Over two centuries, Colombia transferred vast quantities of public land into private hands. Much of this process was justified publicly in terms of giving land to the landless and reducing rural poverty. And yet Colombia retains one of the highest concentrations of land ownership in the world. Why? Analyzing the period 1960–2010, we show that the effects of public land distribution across 1100+ municipalities are highly heterogeneous. Where small and medium-sized farms dominate, land distribution increased average farm size, decreased land inequality, and accelerated local development. But where land was concentrated in the hands of a rural elite, distributed land was diverted to bigger farms, resulting in fewer small and more large farms, greater plot size dispersion, and lower levels of development. We explore whether these effects flow through voter turnout, political competition, or public expenditure and taxation. Land distribution increases turnout, makes politics more competitive, and increases public service provision. But landed elites use patron-client ties to distort local policy and decision-making to their benefit. Land distribution’s secondary, institutional effects on the distribution of power outweigh its primary effects on the distribution of land.

Keywords: Land reform; Public land distribution; Inequality; Development; Latifundia; Colombia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X20301625
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: The perversion of public land distribution by landed elites: Power, inequality and development in Colombia (2020)
Working Paper: The perversion of public land distribution by landed elites: power, inequality and development in Colombia (2020)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:wdevel:v:136:y:2020:i:c:s0305750x20301625

DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2020.105036

Access Statistics for this article

World Development is currently edited by O. T. Coomes

More articles in World Development from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().