Why are land reforms granting complete property rights politically risky? Electoral outcomes of Mexico's certification program

Alain de Janvry (), Marco Gonzalez-Navarro and Elisabeth Sadoulet ()

Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley, Working Paper Series from Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley

Abstract: We analyze the impact on voting behavior of strengthening property rights over rural land. We use the 14 year nationwide rollout of a land certification program in Mexico (Procede) and match affected communities (ejidos) before and after the change in property rights with voting outcomes in corresponding electoral sections across six federal election cycles. We find that, in accordance with the investor class theory, granting complete property rights induced a conservative shift toward the pro-market party. This shift was strongest where vested interests created larger expected benefits from market-oriented policies as opposed to public-transfer policies. We also find that beneficiaries failed to reciprocate through votes to the benefactor party. We conclude that engaging in a land reform that grants complete property rights is only politically advantageous for a right-wing party, thus providing a rationale as to why so many land reforms done by autocratic governments remain incomplete.

Keywords: Life Sciences; Social and Behavioral Sciences; land reform; property rights; voting; Mexico (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012-08-22
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/54p345fx.pdf;origin=repeccitec (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:cdl:agrebk:qt54p345fx

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley, Working Paper Series from Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Lisa Schiff ().