Out of Communal Land: Clientelism through Delegation of Agricultural Tenancy Contracts

Takashi Kurosaki (), Saumik Paul () and Firman Witoelar
Additional contact information
Takashi Kurosaki: Hitotsubashi University
Saumik Paul: University of Manchester

No 14263, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Do local institutions influence the nature of political clientelist exchange? We find a positive answer in the context of a village institution prevalent in Java since the Dutch colonial rule, where democratically elected village heads receive usufruct rights over a piece of communal village land (bengkok land) as a compensation for their service in lieu of salary. To formulate how limited-term private ownership of bengkok land promotes clientelism, we model a timely delegation of agricultural tenancy contracts to villagers-cum-voters as an incumbent re-election strategy. Based on a household survey fielded in 2018 across 130 villages in Java, Indonesia, we find that the chances of a bengkok plot being rented out increase by 6 percentage points as the time of the next election becomes closer by one year, and sharecropping is preferred to a fixed-rental contract as the election approaches. The empirical results are statistically significant and remain largely unchanged against a series of robustness checks. We also find suggestive evidence of short-term efficiency loss from clientelist politics over bengkok land.

Keywords: electoral competition; agricultural tenancy; clientelism; political budget cycle; tanah bengkok; Indonesia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 H77 H83 O17 O18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 52 pages
Date: 2021-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-cdm, nep-dev, nep-pol and nep-sea
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Published - published as 'In pursuit of power: Land tenancy contracts and local political business cycles in Indonesia' in: Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 2024, 227, 106764

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Working Paper: Out of communal land: Clientelism through delegation of agricultural tenancy contracts (2021)
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