The debate on the land question in Ethiopia has remained largely sterile, partly because it is devoid of theoretical underpinnings and it has benefited very little from experiences of other countries. Researchers have made limited efforts to bridge this glaring gap. As a result, the debate has benefited very little from the theoretical discourse and has not been enriched from lessons of experiences of other countries.

The purpose of this study is to undertake a comprehensive survey of the theory of land tenure and experiences of developing countries in implementing land reform measures. The study draws from an extended version of the theory of property rights. Previously neglected areas, such as pastoral areas, common property resources, and gender are included in the survey of the theoretical literature. More specifically, the study attempts to ascertain whether or not the following propositions hold in the African context.

i. Private property signifies an absolute right.

ii. Common property signifies a system where the free-rider problem is a major issue.

iii. Property rights can be easily classified into three neat categories: public, private and common property.

iv. Property rights systems that do not contain the right of alienation (transfer) are considered to be ill-defined.

v. Well-defined and secure property rights need to involve the right to alienation (or the right to transfer resources to others).

vi. Tenure systems that do not allow the transfer of rights are inherently inefficient.

vii. Land markets function as smoothly as markets for other factors of production.

viii. Indigenous land rights systems in sub-Saharan Africa are a constraint on agricultural productivity.

ix. Land markets can smoothly transfer land from less efficient farmers to more efficient ones.

x. There could be no effective land reform without political pluralism.

xi. Land reform alone is sufficient to bring about agricultural growth.

The rest of the paper is organized as follows. The second section presents a comprehensive survey of the latest developments in the theory of property rights. It goes beyond the discussion the standard concept of property rights and critically investigates the relevance of accepted established concepts to the conditions of sub-Saharan African countries. Moreover, the section reviews theories related to common property resources, gender issues, and issues associated with property rights in pastoral areas. The section focuses on one central theme: the complexity of property rights in land in sub-Saharan Africa. The third section critically reviews the theory of land markets in developing countries. The section discusses the limitations of conventional theories of land markets and questions commonly held views about individualization of land rights, tenure security, land titling and efficiency of land markets. The section also investigates the impacts of land market on poverty and highlights donor policies regarding land tenure in developing countries. The fourth section presents a comprehensive review of land reform policies in developing countries, with a view to drawing lessons from their experiences. The review covers the experiences of Latin American countries (where large farms dominate and wage labour is important), south Asian countries (where holding size is small and where share tenancy is important), former socialist countries of East and Central Europe (which share similar ideological backgrounds with Ethiopia of the 1980s), China and Vietnam (countries which succeeded boosting agricultural growth by putting in place conducive property right regimes without reforming the political system, i.e. one party rule), and, of course, the sub-Saharan sub-region (of which Ethiopia is a part). The review is made with an eye on what lessons and insights we can draw from the experiences of countries implementing land reform policies. The fifth section presents a summary of some of the major findings with a view to providing a framework for analyzing the land question in Ethiopia. The final section draws implications for Ethiopia and explores approaches to the debate on land tenure in the country. The section attempts to show that: (a) the debate should take into account the current situation and the historical background of land tenure in Ethiopia; (b) a multiplicity of property right regimes is more realistic than the oversimplified private versus state ownership discourse; (c) specific categories of land require specific property rights; and (d) Ethiopia needs not the narrowly conceived tenure reform but land policy reform (which includes reform of property rights along with a package of policies such as population, investment, taxation, credit, fiscal, technology policies).

2. PROPERTY RIGHTS IN LAND

Land, in particular agricultural land, has certain specific characteristics, which can be summarized as follows:

i. The supply of land is fixed, whereas the supply of agricultural labour does increase overtime in most developing countries.

ii. Land is a gift of nature. Unlike capital, land is not man-made. This fact has far-reaching implications for issues related to property rights in land.

iii. Land is a fixed asset and a measure of wealth for those who claim ownership. Land can be held as livelihood security, as a financial security (e.g. as a hedge against inflation), as a transfer of wealth across generations and as a resource for consumption purpose (e.g. country estates held by urban elites for leisure purposes). The price of land reflects all those demands, services and uses (Ellis 1992:196). Land is something more than a productive asset.

iv. Property rights in land involves social relations, and not relations between man and a thing. These relations assume different forms: relations between tenants and landlords, the individual and the community, the peasantry and the state, and so on (Ellis 1992: 196-97).

v. The economic potential of agricultural land is determined both by its location (distance from the market center and from infrastructure) and by its quality (i.e. fertility). Besides, no one plot of land has identical economic potential as another. That is, different plots of land have different values.

vi. Of all factors of production, land is the least mobile one. In physical terms, no plot of land can be transferred from one place to the other. However, agricultural land can be put to alternative uses subject to physical conditions (like moisture, sunlight, altitude, etc.)

2.1. The Concept of “Property Rights”

Three categories of property rights can be distinguished (Eggertsoon 1990: 34):

i. the right to use an asset (user right or usufruct right) which defines the potential uses of an asset that are legitimate for an individual;

ii. the right to earn income from an asset and contract over the terms with other individuals; and

iii. the right to transfer permanently to another party ownership rights over an asset (i.e. to alienate or sell an asset).

According to Feder and Feeny (1991), property rights are a bundle of characteristics which comprise exclusivity, inheritability, transferability, and enforcement mechanisms. Property rights thus define the uses, which are legitimately viewed as exclusive and also define who the owner of these exclusive rights is (see also Bell 1991). According to one author, the term “property rights” refers to “…all actor’s rights, which are recognized and enforced by other members of society, to use and control valuable resources” (Libecap 1996: 31). Another study defines “property rights” as “… the formal or informal rules that delimit an individual’s or group’s rights over the assets that they possess, including the rights to consume, obtain income from, and alienate the assets” (Lin & Nugent 1995: 2310).

Property rights involve relations between people and property is not an object. “Agricultural land ownership involves social relations between, for example, feudal lord and serf, landlord and share tenant, etc” (Ellis 1992). Similarly, Ostrom (1998:7) notes that “property rights define actions that individuals can take in relation to other individuals regarding some thing”. That is, perhaps why Marxists go further and use the term “relations of production” in place of what the institutional economists call “property rights.” In this light, it is important to note that property rights play not only economizing roles (see Lin & Nugent 1995: 2307-2310) but also redistributive roles; thus, “property rights are seldom neutral with respect to the distribution of gains of specialization and exchange, i.e., of the economizing functions” (Lin & Nugent 1995: 2310).

The standard literature distinguishes four categories of property rights in land. These are (i) private property; (ii) common property; (iii) state property; and (iv) open access property. Some authors refer to these four-fold classifications as “Control regimes” (e.g. Eggersson, 1996: 161). Each of these has a defined owner, ownership rights, and owner duties as depicted in the following table.

Table 1. Standard Types of Property Rights Regimes

Regime type

Owner

Owner rights

Owner duties

Private property

Common property (res Communise)

State property

Open access (res nullius) (Non property)

Individual

Collective

Citizen

None

Socially acceptable uses

Exclusion of non-owners

Determine rules

Capture

Avoidance of socially unacceptable uses

Maintenance; constrains rates of use

Maintain social objectives

None

Source: (Hanna et al. 1965: 5)

Private property is usually defined in terms of exclusivity and transferability. Private property rights are more exclusive and generally, but not universally, more transferable than are common property rights. The owner of a private property can make socially acceptable uses of his property but has the obligation to avoid socially unacceptable uses.

The concept of “Private property” is often misunderstood. After having considered different views on this issue, Dorner (1992), an internationally recognized authority on land tenure, has reached the following conclusions:

· Private property, it is sometimes claimed, is the pillar of a civilized society. [However] private property is, of course, a creation of the state. (Feudal lords, in the absence of the nation-state, had to have their own armies to protect “their property”).

· Nations place many restrictions on private property. In the United States, a local, state, or national government can change the rules governing a landowner’s use of his property. The government can also, with appropriate compensation, take title to privately owned land for public purposes.

· Private property is not and cannot be an absolute right. Questions of property always involve a dual relation of private and public purposes. Always, the question is not just “What is a private purpose over and against a public purpose?” But, more than that, “Is the private purpose also a public purpose, or merely a private purpose?”

· Free markets are wonderful in an economy with the characteristics that allow markets to operate effectively. But market forces are a function of economic power and control. When economic resources and opportunities are widely distributed, then most economic activity can best be left to individual, private initiative and to market forces.

Common Property (res communies) includes a right to use something in common with others or a right not to be excluded from the use of something. It also includes some expression of equality or equability in the allocation of rights. It may also signify a situation in which people have user rights but not exchange rights (McCay: 1996: 114). We will have more to say on common property in connection with common property resources.

State property refers to the property owned outright and used exclusively by agents of the state or property deemed public, over which the state exercises governance as in the case of rural land in Ethiopia.

Open access (res nullius) is the null condition of no property claims or a state of “non-property”. Thus, with open access, owner rights are replaced by a state of anarchy in which anybody can capture the benefits of a resource. Some authors confuse open access with common property. For example, Pindyck and Rubinfeld (1994: 645) asserted that “… common property resources are those to which anyone has free access. As a result, they are likely to be over utilized”. We will deal with this problem elsewhere in this paper.

The standard classification of property regimes into four categories fails to show the transfer mechanism and the extent to which rights are concentrated or distributed over agents. This type of classification will have limited value in improving our understanding of concepts like “the tragedy of the commons” and “popular participation”.

The four types of property regimes identified above are by no means exhaustive (for details see Yeraswork 1995: 33-35). Some authors disagree with the classifications of property rights regimes into private property, state property, common property, etc, and propose alternative models. For example, Eggertsson (1996: 162-171), having concluded that “… researchers have found that these categories are unsatisfactory for dealing with many empirical cases”, proposed alternative classification of his own.

Problems of classification of property rights become more evident when we come to the African case. Prior to colonization, land was rarely owned in the Western sense of exclusive and inalienable firths vested in one individual in exchange for cash. As suggested by the literature (Meek 1946; Okoth Ogendo 1975; Davison 1988), there is confusion of terms related to land rights such as tenure, usufruct, freehold and ownership when they are applied to the African context. Davison (1988) provides conceptual distinctions between these terms in the light of the African context. Tenure applies to holding rights, including land, which is transmitted through inheritance, loan or rental for an established exchange value, and outright sales. Usufruct refers to the right to use land by groups or individuals. Freehold applies to the practice of holding exclusive rights to a piece of land which can be transferred to another by an individual or corporate body. Ownership, in the western sense, refers to land that has cash or commodity value and is registered through a process of entitlement to an individual or corporate group. But, in the African sense, it is problematic to define ownership because in parts of the continent, land, prior to the penetration of capitalism, had an exchange value that was transferred from one individual to another without the benefit of a written deed.

In Africa, tracts of land were merely held in trust by clan or lineage leaders to allocate to heads of families. Customary practices of land occupancy and use tended to be inclusive rather than exclusive, that is, no one who needed land went landless (Davison 1988).

2.2. Transferability and Security

Land right systems can be characterized according to two basic and distinct dimensions: transferability and security of rights. Using these dimensions two extreme right regimes can be identified as shown by the two extreme corners (i.e. the perfect market model in the south-east corner and its opposite in the south-west corner. In the idealized market systems assumed in orthodox neoclassical economics, all land rights are marketable and security of land rights is perfect (see the south-east corner in Figure 1). At the other extreme (i.e. the north-west corner of the figure), there lies absolutely imperfect land market characterized by complete lack of security and transferability. In between the two extremes, there lie different forms of property regimes. For example African surveys indicate regimes where use rights are quite secure but transferability is restricted to varying degrees. Many African indigenous land right systems and the rist system in pre-1975 Ethiopia fall here. The Thai squatter Model (Hoff 1993) indicates a system where both dimensions are highly restricted. The Feder-Feeny model (Feder & Feeny 1991) indicate a system with a high degree of transferability coupled with highly limited security.

Figure 1: Land Rights Systems Characterized by Transferability and Security

Oval: B

Oval: D

Oval: C

Perfect

transferable

No security

Oval: A

Source: Adapted from (Hoff 1992:233)

2.3. The Complexity of Property Rights: Ostrom’s Approach

Simple classification of property right regimes into state, private and common property is misleading. Thus, Ostrom (1998) underlines that “the world of property rights is far more complex than simply government, private and common property.”

An alternative and innovative approach to the analysis of the concept of property right regimes is provided by Ostrom (1998). This approach is likely robust in showing the complexity of the concept in and clarifying the confusions surrounding its effect on efficiency.

Based on a comprehensive review of the relevant literature, Ostrom identified five property rights and five classes of property-rights holders as indicated in Table 2.

The five property rights are the following:

Access: The right to enter a defined physical area and enjoy non-subtractive benefits (e.g., hike, canoe, sit in the sun).
Withdrawal: The right to obtain resource units or products of a resource system (e.g. catch fish, divert water to own field).
Management: The right to regulate internal use patterns and transform the resource by making improvements.
Exclusion: The right to determine who will have an access right, and how that right may be transferred.
Alienation: The right to sell or lease management and exclusion rights.

This type of anatomy of property rights challenges the commonly held view that property rights systems that do not contain the right of alienation (or (transfer) are considered to be ill-defined. Moreover, it challenges the view that a system that does not allow the transfer of rights is inherently inefficient.

This approach suggests that “much more information must be known about the specific values of a large number of parameters before judgments can be made concerning the efficiency of a particular type of property right” (Ostrom 1998).

The five classes of property rights holders are:

Authorized entrants: Refers to those users who can get access to a resource in a very limited sense, like a person who buys an operational right to enter and enjoy the natural beauty of a park, but who do not have a right to harvest forest products (or remove the flowers from a park).
Authorized users: Refers to those users who can access a resource and also withdraw products. Operational rules allow authorized users to transfer access and withdrawal rights either temporarily through a rental agreement, or permanently when these rights are assigned or sold to others.

3. Claimants possess the operational rights of access and withdrawal plus the right of managing a resource. Claimants’ rights also include decision making power concerning the construction and maintenance of facilities as well as the authority to devise limits on withdrawal rights. But claimants do not have the right to exclude others from the use of a resource or the right to alienate (or transfer) a resource.

Proprietors hold the same rights as claimants with the addition of the right to determine who may access and harvest from a resource (i.e. the right to exclude others). Most of what is known as “common property” regimes fall in this category. However, proprietors do not possess the right to sell their management and exclusion rights even though they most frequently have the right to bequeath it to members of their family. In this sense, we can redefine the usufruct rights of Ethiopian peasants and consider them as “proprietors”. Customary tenure system often grant the bundle of rights except the right to alienate a resource. Empirical studies (e.g. Migot-Adholla 1993; Hazell 1993) have found that proprietors frequently have sufficient rights to make decisions that promote long-term investment and harvest from a resource. In densely-populated regions, however, proprietorship over agricultural land may not be sufficient (Ostrom 1998).
Owners possess the right of alienation (the right to transfer a good in any way the owner wishes that does not harm the physical attributes or uses of other owners) in addition to the bundle of rights held by a proprietor. “The rights of owners, however are never absolute. Even private owners have responsibilities not to generate particular kinds of harms for others” (Ostrom 1998).

One point we can draw from above is that “well defined and secure property rights do not need to involve the rights to alienation” (Ostrom 1998).

Table 2: Bundles of Rights Associated with Positions

Rights	Owners	Proprietors	Authorized Claimants	Authorized Users	Authorized Entrants
Access	X	X	X	X	X
Withdrawal	X	X	X	X
Management	X	X	X
Exclusion	X	X
Alienation	X

Source: (Ostrom 1998)

2.4. The Demand for and the Supply of Property Right Regimes

Do property right regimes change over time? What factors explain country-specific evolution of property right regimes? These questions are addressed by Feeny (1988). Using a simple model of induced institutional change (see Hayami & Ruttan 1971), Feeny attempted to explain changes in property right regimes in south and southeast Asia.

According to the model of induced institutional change, a demand for institutional change arises when some gain cannot be captured under current institutional arrangements. In the specific case of the system of property rights, an appreciation in the relative price of a factor will induce an increase in the demand for an institution to define property rights in that factor. It will also increase the benefit to be derived from the utilization of that system of property rights. A rise in the relative price of a factor thus will increase the demand for the establishment of a system of property rights to govern the use of that factor (Feen 1988).

The factors that affect the demand for change are the factors that serve to create the potential benefits for the users of institutional arrangements. However, whether change will indeed occur depends on the supply of institutional change, that is, the willingness and capacity of the fundamental institutions of government to provide new arrangements (Feeny, 1988).

The capacity of governments depends partly on the cost of institutional innovation. As in the case of technical change, the cost depends in part on the stock of existing knowledge about the design and operation of institutions. The stock of knowledge, in turn, depends on past experience in economic activities as well as the previously existing set of institutions and the nature and degree of research institutions. Investment in educational institutions and research (especially in legal studies and the social sciences) can affect the supply of institutional change. This can be achieved through both the creation and the borrowing of new ideas in institutional design. In addition to the effect of the stock of knowledge, the cost of supplying new institutions depends on the prices of the factors used in the institutional design. In addition, implementation cost will affect the supply of new property right regimes (Feeny 1988).

In addition, the willingness to provide a new institutional arrangement does depend on the private benefits accruing to and costs incurred by agents of government (i.e. the elite). This implies that the fundamental institutions of a society and the initial distribution of power will have a significant impact on the kinds of institutional arrangements that are supplied. The problem here is that the interests of the elite may not be compatible with social welfare (Feeny 1988). In addition to the interaction of demand and supply factors, new institutional arrangements are also affected by ideology and conventional wisdom. Notions of how the world should and how it does operate affect institutional design (Feeny 1988).

The neo-classical approach of Feeny (1988) suffers from one major problem, to the extent that developing economies are concerned. The implicit assumption of a competitive factor market may not be realistic under conditions of sub-Saharan Africa.

2.5. The Evolutionary Theory of Land Rights (Individualization)

The evolutionary theory of land rights in sub-Saharan Africa holds that, under conditions of deepening population pressure, market integration, and technological progress, general or communal land rights systems spontaneously evolve into specific or private rights (Binswanger & McIntire 1987; Ruttan 1987; Alchian & Demsetz 1973). That is, this theory argues that land tenure systems adjust mechanically and harmoniously to satisfy the evolving functional needs of agricultural development and population growth. Changes in relative prices lie at the heart of the functionalist approach to changes in land rights. Thus, Ruttan (1987) notes that:

A rise in the price of land (or natural resources) in relation to the price of labour induces technical change designed to release the constraints on production that result from an inelastic supply of land and, at the same time, induces institutional changes that lead to greater precision in the definition and allocation of property rights in land.

The evolutionary theory of land rights has thus strong affinity with the property rights theory, since both approaches take changes in relative prices as the engine of the transition from communal to individual tenure, or from general to specific land rights (e.g. see Feeny 1988).

The historical experiences of The United Kingdom (Alchian & Demsey 1973) and several Asian countries (Feeny 1988) are called upon in support of the evolutionary/property rights approach to the analysis of changes in land tenure systems.

However, based on the case of Asian countries, Feeny (1988) challenges this approach. He introduced tensions and disputes into the picture, suggesting the possibility that vested interests may block spontaneous evolution of individual rights. The tension between progressive and conservative forces may lead to disputes. Administrative reforms are required, according to Feeny, to overcome resistance by vested interests. A similar concern was also expressed by Boserup (1965), a pioneering proponent of the idea of spontaneous transition from general to specific rights in land under conditions of growing population pressure. Boserup notes that “each new step on the road to private property in land may well create less and not more security of tenure and vast amount of litigation is the obvious result.”

The evolutionary theory of land rights in developing countries has been challenged on the grounds of historical evidence underscoring tensions arising between those who support the status quo and those who struggle for individual rights. Thus, Platteau (1992: 148) notes:

Historical processes of transition are always characterized by tensions arising from the clashing of contradictory forces. The outcome is necessarily influenced by the way the political power (crystallizing the existing class structure of society) decides to deal (or to refrain from dealing) with the newly emerging situation, and by the relative bargaining power of the social groups/classes that have an interest in maintaining or breaking the status quo.

In an important workshop on land tenure in Africa (Toulmin & Quan 2000) consensus was reached on the following points:

- Formalisation of land tenure through titling is neither necessary nor sufficient for the development of a western-style land market.

- Demands for a formalised land market are generally first voiced by individuals from outside the community, such as officials and merchants who want to acquire land to which they might not be entitled under customary systems.

Formalisation can create greater security of tenure for those who purchase land, facilitating exchanges and increasing land values. However, where markets are not well developed, formalisation of tenure will not produce land sales. Equally, where people have few or no livelihood options outside agriculture, little land is likely to enter the market.

2.6. Common Property Resources

Common property rights should not be confused with open access regimes. That is why Eggertsson (1996: 161) remarked: “I prefer the term ‘communal’ property to the more popular ‘common property’ because the latter is often confused with ‘open access – “unregulated access to productive resources”. One can rather argue that the notion of tragedy of the commons be replaced by the tragedy of open access. The users of common property resources do have time-tested institutional mechanism that regulate the behaviour of individuals and communities (Dejene 1999; Platteau 1992: 120-123).

Common Property Resources (CPR) are extremely important for the livelihoods of peoples in Africa. CPR have multiple uses including the supply of water, grazing land, building materials, medicinal productions, fuel, edible plants, fish, raw materials for tools and handicrafts, and habitat for wildlife.

The resource tenure for the multiple uses of CPR can be considered as one of the bundles of rights and duties, which can be desegregated by resource type (such as grazing, tree felling, irrigation, hunting), resource users (such as dry season, post harvest period, wet season), and nature and strength of rights and duties (such as exclusive use, shared use, permanent rights) (Cousins 2000).

CPR are associated with a number of difficulties. Recent years saw an increased pressure on CPR. The state continues to hold legally defined de jure ownership rights over land (including the command in much of rural Africa, while rural communities and individuals exert de facto rights which are partly defined in terms of “custom” and partly by ongoing adaptation of practices and rules to changing circumstances. The state is often reluctant to give legal rights to communities concerning the use of CPR. External investors often encroach upon CPR, thus creating conflict over land. CPR can also be a source of conflict among ethnic groups.

The case of pastoral areas provides interesting illustrations of problems of CPRs. For herders “land belongs to a vast family of which many are dead, few are living and countless numbers are still unborn” (a remark made by a Nigerian herders). That is, land belongs to groups or “family” that is linked by descent or cultural affiliation. Land is not owned in the western sense of users enjoying unlimited rights to exploit and dispose land at will. Land is held in trust by the living for future generation (Lane 1998).

Today, this concept of land tenure is little understood and even less respected by many African governments and western donors. The result has been overriding of customary pastoral land tenure systems contributing to land insecurity and conflict among pastoral peoples (Lane 1998).

Conditions for pastoralists in recent years have worsened considerably. Ever increasing areas that were once communal pastures have been lost to pastoral production. Irrigation schemes, small scale farming and mechanized agriculture have withdrawn large tracts of the most productive land for non-pastoral purposes. Food production per capita and living standards of pastoralists have fallen. Future incomes and welfare are further threatened by increased degradation of land, while a growing conflict of interests is pitting pastoral communities against governments, against each other, and against other land users (Lane 1998).

Historically, pastoral groups have managed conflicts over resources through trial and error. However, with tenure reform and the alienation of pastoralists from their lands, customary methods of negotiation, arbitration and adjudication are breaking down in competition with more omnipotent forces (Lane 1998).

Misconceptions about pastoralists and their production systems in Africa abound. Acceptance of the “tragedy of the commons” arguments has led to tacit government and donor support for the privatization of pastoral commons. This, in turn, has facilitated encroachment by small-scale cultivating agriculturists and commercial farmers onto pastoral lands and the alienation of pastures for large-scale commercial farming operations and ranches, which have led to conflict over natural resources between pastoralists and cultivators, and between pastoralists and the state.

2.7. Variations in Property Right Regimes in Sub-Saharan Africa

Property rights regimes vary from country to country. For example, in sub-Saharan Africa there are different forms of rights and resource management systems as indicated in Table 3. The various forms of rights in the sub-region have included communal tenure, state ownership, freehold system and a mix of different types of rights.

Table 3: Issues of Access, Control and Management: The African Experience

Country	Author	Issues of Access (use), Control and Management
Lesotho	Lawry (1993)	Customary land tenure system; sharecropping and leasing have been used to land access. Land is the property of the nation and managed by the community.
Burkina Faso	Saul (1993)	Land access was governed by lineage-based norms, and the use of land flexible. Land control was corporate-based types and managed by the households.
Botswana	Werbner (1993)	Elite landholding system is used to access land. Control is by natives, communal and commercial farmers.
Cote d’Ivoire	Bassett (1993)	Landholders (customary) control land and management has been by native peasants, and migrants and operating project in the area.
Gambia	Watts (1993)	Tribal system of communal tenure and local custom has been in use to access land but land has been controlled by the state. Management is by the community.
Kenya	Machenzie (1993)	Customary and freehold tenure where used to access land and control was by mbari social organization or patrilineally defined subclan Management was by men with women’s insecure rights to land.
Senegal	Bloch (1993)	Share cropping (up to 10% of the produce) used to access land. There are other forms. Management of land was by the family.

2.8. Women and Property Rights in Land

Some of the problems women face in accessing and controlling include: loss of customary rights as new technologies make a headway, overburdening with work, constrained access to land, bearing increased responsibility as male migration increases, and limited control of income from farm activities (Dejene 1999; Hilphorst 2000).

The status of women has received increased attention in the formulation of constitutions and land legislation in Africa. While there have been some achievements, the overall gains remain limited despite the energy invested in advocacy and lobbying activities. Statutory laws may offer more protection to women than customary laws but it is not always easy to enforce formal laws (Hilhorst 2000).

Interesting findings have emerged concerning the gender dimension of property rights in Africa. For example, Babalola and Dennis (1988) examined women’s differential access to land and income generation activities in a particular Yoruba society of Nigeria and concluded that women were overburdened with the production of a cash crop as men migrated in search of jobs. Goheen (1988), in her study of women farmers in Cameroon, demonstrated that the increasing tendency to view land as a commodity for the cultivation of cash crops has resulted in change of access to resources for both sexes to the advantage of men and disadvantage of women. Schoepf and Schoepf (1988) argued that land expropriation for cash crop production in Zaire has had a pronounced adverse effect on peasant women’s ability to provide a balanced diet for their families, leading often to advanced cases of nutrition deficiency. Bernal (1988) showed that women in Sudan’s irrigated schemes lost customary inheritance rights to property as irrigated land tenancies have been granted almost exclusively to male heads of households. Davis (1988) documented the erosion of women’s usufruct rights with the impact of colonial capitalism, a growing land market and registration in Kenya. Rose (1988), who dealt with the case of Swaziland, demonstrated that even where women may not have direct access to land, they are capable of devising ways to gain access through male and female relatives. Pinehurst and Jacob (1988), using evidence from Zimbabwe, investigated how women’s legally dependent status impinges on their productive capabilities as farmers. Davison (1988), using evidence from Mozambique, demonstrated that even where land has been nationalized and women are able to gain equal access with men to production, their limited control over resources, (such as technological innovations and water rights) may constrain improvement in their status.

3. RURAL LAND MARKETS

Rural land markets have remained relatively inactive in spite of the fact that agricultural land plays a key role in the livelihood of rural people and the predominant role that agriculture plays in the economies of many developing countries. Thus, Bardhan and Udry (1999: 60) note that “compared with the massive influence of the distribution of land on economic and social activities, the extent of actual transactions in land market in a given year is relatively low.” They further note that “the market flow is a trickle compared with the weighty stock, and even the market is often more active in land-lease than in the buying and selling of land.” Although more active than land buying and selling, land-lease market can be restricted by legislation or by the landlord himself because of fear of land reform, which may entitle the tenant to occupancy rights on the land. In cases where legislation prohibits tenancy, it is possible that land-lease be “driven underground” (Bardham and Udry 1999: 62).

Indigenous land transfer arrangements are evident in sub-Saharan Africa. In economies where land cannot be freely and definitely transferred custom may allow holders to be temporarily alienated for determinate or indeterminate periods of time. Two well-known mechanisms for such temporary transfers are represented by the practices of lending and pledging land. Loans of land may serve the function of adjusting the distribution of land to that of labour or the varying subsistence needs of different households (Platteau 1992: 94).

3.1. Share Tenancy

Tenancy is at the center of the literature on land market. Tenancy exists all over the world in different forms. Latin America tenancy is largely of the fixed rent variety, where as that of Asia has been characterized by a high incidence of sharecropping. The total rent (R) can be related to agricultural output (Y) in the following way (Ray 1998):

R = aY + F

Where:

a = An agreed share of the landlord in the total output;

F = fixed rent, i.e., an agreed fixed sum of money paid to the landlord.

If a = 0 and F>0, this is a fixed rent contract with rent F. If F=0 and a lies between 0 and 1, then this is a sharecropping contract in which the tenant surrenders to the landlord an agreed proportion. Finally, if a = 0 and F<0, this can be interpreted as a “pure wage contract”, where the wage (W) equals –F. In this case, the tenant is not a tenant at all, but a labourer on the landlord’s land (Ray 1998).

Is sharecropping an efficient contractual arrangement? This question is discussed extensively in the literature (e.g. see Ray 1998; Ellis 1998). A most recent study tentatively concludes that: (1) sharecropping leads to under-supply of the tenant’s inputs and (2) a rational landowner trying to maximize the earnings from land lease will always prefer a suitable fixed-rent contract to any share contract (Ray 1998).

If sharecropping (share tenancy) is inefficient and if a fixed-rent system is demonstrably superior to it, then why does sharecropping enjoy such enduring popularity in real world practice? This issue is known as the “Marshallian puzzle” and is extensively discussed in (Ellis 1988; Ray 1998). One way of explaining this puzzle is to introduce risk analysis into land markets. If the tenant is risk-averse, he should prefer the sharecropping contract over the fixed-rent contract. That is sharecropping emerges as a way to share, not just the results of productivities, but the risk that is associated with them as well. A tenant who pays a fixed rent is bound to bear the entire risk of farm operations. He may have an incentive in sharing risk with the landlord. Sharecropping accomplishes this objective by essentially varying the rent payable with the size of the harvest (Ray 1998).

Why fixed-rent systems predominate in Latin America can also be explained in terms of risk. In most Latin America countries, the tenant is a capitalist farmer who has the cushioned against risk of crop failure, whereas in Asia the typical tenant is a poor operator having no cushion against risk.

Asia and Latin America also differ significantly in terms of the average size of holding and inequality. For example, in Bangladesh, the average operational farm size is 1.6 hectares and the Gini coefficient of land concentration is only 0.42 whereas in Colombia the former is 26.3 hectares, and the latter is as high as 0.86 (Ray 1998). In Latin America, big commercial farmers operate large tracts of land as compared to small operators in Asia.

A lot has been written on share tenancy in developing countries. However, few studies provide enlightening observations. The following provides conclusions of a comprehensive study of share tenancy in South Asia (Herring 1983). Holdings under share tenancy often generate higher yields and utilize more labour and other inputs per hectare of land than owner – cultivators of a comparable size and land quality. Thus, it would seem that the Marshallian logic of marginal costs and returns is incomplete at best, perhaps even inappropriate to the conditions of South Asia. A major explanation for this statement could be the economic behaviour of the poor tenant. Having few alternative economic opportunities and facing severe deprivation if the harvest is poor, the tenant farmer of South Asia arguably operates according to an economic logic somewhat different from that conceived by Alfred Marshall. The neoclassical calculation of marginal returns is less important than the classical “whip of hunger.” In addition, the tenant can also benefit from the intermediary role and knowledge of the landlord. In highly stratified societies with vast differentials of access to knowledge, extension personnel, and credit, the tenant with a “good landlord” as a patron is operating in a different realm of production possibilities than is the marginal, isolated owner-cultivator. But tenancy exhibits severe deficiencies in terms of rational utilization and investment of the economic surplus, which is extracted by the renter class (Herring 1983).

3.2. The Relationship between Tenure Security and Transaction Costs

The relationship between security and transaction costs is defined in (Lyne et al 1997: 60-61) in the following terms. While it is often claimed that tenure is secure under indigenous systems operating in Africa, it can be argued that customary tenure is secure only when it refers to the ability to use land for a certain period and for a defined purpose without disturbance. The situation may change when the holder attempts a land transaction. The security of tenure has three components: breadth, duration and assurance. Transaction costs (as perceived by farmers) are expected to vary inversely with security of tenure. For example, a potential tenant seeking exclusive rights to a plot of land may find transaction costs prohibitive if there are many legitimate claimants, each possessing inclusive rights to the same plot, owing to the high cost of discovering the owner and establishing his or her rights. Uncertainty about laws that would be applied to disputes, unpredictable judgments, and fuzzy procedures to establish or defend contracts would undermine the assurance component of tenure security. Other things being equal, exclusive rights to land (not necessarily transfer right) enhance tenure security or reduce transaction costs and are therefore central to an efficient rental land market (Lyne et al.. 1997).

3.3. Land Rental Markets in sub-Saharan Africa

One study (Lyne et al. 1997) investigated rental markets for agricultural land in regions of sub-Saharan Africa, where land is scarce and customary institutions influence security of tenure and transaction costs. The data presented in this study showed that renting closes the inter-household productivity gap by transferring land to farmers who can use it more effectively and that, far from damaging the interests of the poor, it sustains many households that would otherwise be destitute. Moreover, where small farm households value their land rights as a form of social security, rental transactions are a more reliable indicator of allocative efficiency in agriculture than land sales. Renting will not only bring idle land into use but, where leasing out is risky, it will also tend to transfer land to farmers confident of their ability to cover the risk premiums charged by lessors. However, contrary to what many authors argue (as indicated elsewhere in this paper), the authors note that, in sub-Saharan Africa, land markets are often constrained because customary tenure is not secure and transaction costs are high. These problems stem largely from two sources; either the user does not have exclusive land rights (i.e. the breadth of rights is inadequate) or the risk of losing land as a result of very high transaction costs. In theory, the authors note, titling could resolve these problems but it poses formidable logistical problems that may aggravate tenure insecurity by creating conflicting claims to land. Instead, attention has turned to ways of facilitating an endogenous shift toward exclusive land rights (Lyne et al. 1997). The usefulness of this study is diminished by the limited quantitative analysis reported and the inadequate coverage given to regions outside east and southern Africa.

3.4. Comparing the Economic Effects of Individualization Process and Indigenous Land Rights

Individualization refers to land registration and titling. Individualization has, at the theoretical level, certain advantages. For example, Bardhun and Udry (1999: 60-61) note the following:

The individualization of tenure and transferability rights enforced on the basis of public records and cadastral surveys can reduce uncertainties and thus encourage investment and allow for a more efficient reallocation of land. Investment may also be encouraged by the easier convertibility of land into liquid assets, and the emergence of credit market may be helped by land rendered collateralizable.

Arguments in favour of land titling can be summarized as follows: These are allocative effects (resulting in more efficient use of land available) and dynamic effects (resulting in land conservation and improvement). Gains from more efficient use of land arise from two sources: (1) more profitable crops can be grown and (2) land can be transferred from less capable and less dynamic farmers to more capable and dynamic farmers. In addition, there could be what is known as the “collateralization effect” of land titling (i.e., using land as a collateral for loans) (Platteau 2000).

Put differently, conventional economic theory argues in favour of granting freehold title on the following three grounds: (1) the freehold system encourages long-term investment in land because of the security it provides; (2) titled land can be used as collateral to secure loans from the formal sector; and (3) agricultural output increases resulting from increased access to land by more efficient farmers (World Bank, 1989; Swynnerton, 1954).

Pinckney and Kimuyu (1994) have attempted to challenge this argument, using empirical evidence from Tanzania and Kenya. Tanzania and Kenya pursued the two extremes of land tenure types, i.e. state control and freehold system, respectively. The researchers of land ownership in two similar communities, one each in Tanzania and Kenya, showed that “land titling has had little if any impact on investment or credit markets” and that “land titling did not lead to increased land inequality” in the study areas. Then, they concluded that “land titling is unimportant for development except in unusual cases. “he authors went further and underlined that “neither community shows evidence of small, inefficient farmers selling out to larger, more efficient farmers.” Moreover, Pinckney and Kimuyu (1994) concluded that indigenous tenure arrangements granted secure access to individual holders, who enjoyed usufruct rights to land. In addition individual holders could transfer land to their sons through inheritance arrangements. Further, the authors argued (on the basis of evidence from communities in Tanzania and Kenya) that indigenous rights evolve into individual rights, over time.[1]

The authors claimed that their findings are “in broad agreement with other studies conducted in Africa in recent years”. That is, indigenous land tenure arrangements provide considerable security for investment and continue to have strong impacts on production even when there are no land markets. Similarly, Bardhan and Udry (1990: 60-61) argue that the process of individualization “is fraught with problems that may harm both equality and efficiency concerns”.

In many developing countries the public sector has limited capacity to undertake cadastral surveys and register land titles. In addition, vested interests tend to manipulate the process of land registration in their own favour. That is why the evolution of private property rights in land has often been associated with the dispossession of the indigenous use rights of poor farmers, with heightened social tensions and the creating of new uncertainties, and in general with a proliferation of litigation and other transaction costs (Boserup 1965, Bordham & Udry 1999).

On the other hand, the productivity effects of indigenous land tenure systems in sub-Saharan Africa has been analysed by Hazell (1993), using evidence from Ghana, Kenya, and Rwanda. Using an econometric model, Hazell investigated whether indigenous land rights systems in sub-Saharan Africa are a constraint on agricultural productivity. His study cast doubt on the conventional theory, which views indigenous rights as obstacles to growth. In his words:

With few exceptions, land rights are not found to be a significant factor in determining investment in land improvements, use of inputs, access to credit, or the productivity of land. These results cast doubt on the need for ambitious land registration and titling programs at this time.

In a similar fashion, Migot-Adholla and others (1993), who undertook a survey in the same countries as Hazell (1993), concluded that “At best, there is a weak relationship between individualization of land rights and yields in the regions surveyed.”

3.5. Why do Land Markets Fail to Transfer Land to More Efficient Farmers?

Following the literature (e.g. Bery & Cline 1979; Ray 1998; Binswanger et al. 1995; Ellis 1988) let’s assume there is an inverse relationship between land size and productivity. In other words, we assume that small farms are more efficient than big ones. In that case, efficiency criterion dictates that land should be reallocated through market mechanisms, in such a way that land be transferred from less efficient farmers to more efficient ones. However, in the real world land market often fails to function that way. The problem is that large landlords do not voluntarily sell their land to small family farmers.

According to Bardham and Udry (1993), land ownership does not pass from the large to the small farmer because of the following reasons. Holding land may offer some tax advantages or speculative opportunities or be generally a safe investment vehicle (particularly when non-agricultural investment opportunities are limited or risky) for the rich. Similarly, large landholdings may give their owner special social status or political power in a lumpy way. In addition, land is often used as a preferred collateral in the credit market and thus serves more than just as a productive asset. This implies high prices of land as compared to the capitalized value of the agricultural income stream for even the more productive small farmer. With low household savings and severely imperfect credit markets, the more efficient farmer may thus be incapable of affording the going market price of land. There will be no scope for mutually profitable land sales from landlords to tenants (or farm labourers), as the latter will be unable to borrow enough to finance the purchase. The land market is bound to remain thin.

In connection with this issue, Bardham and Udry raise an interesting point. In poor countries, they argue, land sales go the opposite way to what is suggested by the evidence of the more efficient small farmer: land passes from distressed small farmers to landlords and money-lenders. Further, they argue that this process deepens as the traditional reciprocity based risk-coping mechanisms get weaker and farmers may have to depend more on land sales in time of crisis. Thus, in general, the authors note that imperfection of the insurance or credit market may prevent the land market from bringing efficient allocation. However, the authors provided no empirical evidence in support of their assertions.

3.6. Impacts of Land Markets on Poverty

There is no clear correlation between the development of land markets and increasing concentration of land in a few hands. There is also insufficient evidence to assess the impact of land markets on levels of landlessness, in different circumstances. Growing land concentration has been reported from Rwanda and some areas of Kenya, but elsewhere in Kenya and in parts of Uganda land distribution has become more equitable with the establishment of land markets (Toulmin & Quan 2000).

Nevertheless it is possible to identify certain situations where land markets concentrate ownership and accelerate landlessness. This may occur, for example, where land markets develop in chaotic fashion in peri-urban areas. This is sometimes linked to abuse of power by traditional authorities who alienate community lands to outsiders (e.g. cases in South Africa and Ghana). Distress sales by poor households constitute another example. However, in general, poor households that are dependent on agriculture usually try to keep hold of some land (Toulmin & Quan 2000).

There is a need to examine land markets from a gender perspective. Poorer women may suffer in cases where their spouse alienates family land, but the better off may be able to acquire land in their own right when markets in land develop (Toulmin & Quan 1999).

The importance of land markets as a means to provide better access to credit has been seriously overstated. Only for larger landholders and where banking systems and formal credit markets are well developed does this link seem to hold. For smallholders, borrowing within the community, or micro-credit schemes, provide more reliable and efficient sources of finance, neither of which depend on the existence of transferable land titles (Toulmin & Quan 2000).

3.7. Donor Policies and Land Tenure

Donor policies change from time to time. For example, the World Bank’s land policies have involved, since 1975, as summarized below (Deininger 1998; Migot-Adholla 1999; Toulmin & Quan 2000).

In 1975, the World Bank issued a Land Reform policy paper which recommended:

· formal land titling as a precondition of “modern development”;

· the abandonment of communal tenure systems in favour of freehold title and sub-division of the commons;

· widespread promotion of land markets to bring about efficiency-enhancing land transfers; and

· support for land redistribution on both efficiency and equity grounds.

In the light of practical experience and continuing policy debate since 1975, the World Bank has considerably revised its assessment and guidance, and now recognises that:

· communal tenure systems can be a more cost-effective solution than formal individual title, if transparency and local accountability can be assured;

· the circumstances in which land titling is an optional solution are much more limited than had been thought where credit is not widely available to the rural poor; titling is likely to be biased in favour of the rich and precautions against land-grabbing need to be taken; and

· widespread market distortions limit the effectiveness of land markets in enhancing efficiency and equity; greater benefits should be expected from the development of land rental markets instead.

Following the end of the Cold War, debates about private versus public ownership of land have become less polarised. More flexible alternatives to universal private titling on the one hand, and public ownership on the other, can now be proposed, such as market assisted land reform.

Nevertheless, the Bank maintains that the key principles outlined in the Land Reform Policy paper remain valid:

· the desirability of owner occupied farms on equity and efficiency grounds;

· the relative inefficiency of farming based either on wage labour or collective ownership;

· the need to promote markets for sale, purchase and rental of land; and

· the desirability of land reform.

The World Bank continues to view a framework of secure, transparent and enforceable property rights as the critical precondition for investment and economic growth. But they now recognise that property rights need not necessarily be individualised, and that security can be provided within customary tenure systems.

Within Africa, the World Bank is now engaged in the promotion of:

· land policy reforms (as opposed to tenure reform, more narrowly conceived) to reflect this new understanding, and to eliminate conflicts between parallel sets of rights;

· pilot programmes to register and adjudicate customary rights and provide titles on a community basis; and

· piloting of negotiated and market-based programmes for land redistribution.

In addition, the Bank now places more emphasis on gender rights, on those of pastoralists, the importance of encouraging stakeholder participation in land policy processes, partnerships with civil society and building capacity of local institutions for decentralised land management.

4. LAND REFORM

4.1. Theoretical and Ideological Perspectives on Land Reform

Land tenure issues can be analysed from different theoretical and ideological perspectives. Based on the experience of Latin America and following Dorner (1992), we can classify these perspectives into the following categories: 1) structuralism, 2) dependency, 3) institutionalism, and 4) liberation theology. To these, we can add the fifth one i.e., neo-liberalism.

The structuralist school does not focus on land tenure issues. However, a strand of this school argues that low productivity of agriculture and its unresponsiveness to economic incentives (due to the latifundo /minifundio system of ownership and organization in Latin America) has led to rising food prices and inflation. In this view, the patterns of land tenure and ownership are held responsible for the lag in agricultural output. Therefore, land reform is required to increase agricultural output (Dorner 1992).

The dependency theory (Dos Santos 1970; 1973) with its extension to internal colonialism considers existing tenure as a major constraint on agricultural growth. In the periphery, says Prebisch (1980: 183), “industrialization is superimposed on a land tenure regime which acts as a brake on the penetration of techniques and productivity, to the detriment of development”. Although dependency theory does call for redistributive land reforms, it recognizes that political prospects for reform became more remote when the traditional landowning class joined forces with the ruling class in the metropolitan countries of the West (Dorner 1992).

Institutionalism argues in favour of redistributive land reform on the grounds of expected efficiency and equity gains arising from the reform (see Dorner 1971). This theory is built around the hypothesis of an inverse relationship between land size and yields. If output per unit of land is indeed higher on small land, redistribution in favour of small holders would not only boost aggregate production but would also establish greater equity and create employment opportunities in rural areas. In addition, given high income elasticity of demand for industrial goods, smallholders would spend a substantial portion of incremental income on industrial goods. That is, the growth of the industrial sector would be favoured under conditions of a systematic and enduring state intervention (Dorner 1992).

The liberation theology approach, which originated primarily with Catholic theologians in Latin America, rests on one basic tenet: development alone is not sufficient unless it is humane and structurally compatible with social justice. It advocates a form of socialism which is, however, quite unrelated with Marxism. The new theologians defend private property but reject the idea that the right to private property is natural and inalienable. According to this view, only what is necessary for man’s end is a natural right; all else is not, and everything beyond necessity (a second car, a second home, and so on), if attained by depriving others, is unmistakably against the doctrine of Christian tradition. Liberation theology has far-reaching implications for land reform issues. It makes land reform a major issue. The new theologians argue that reforms to date have failed to solve the problems of the rural mass of landless workers, tenants and small-plot owners. In Latin America, land monopoly and feudalism in labour relations have persisted, especially in plantation agriculture. According to liberation Theologicians, piecemeal and superficial land reform is insufficient. What is needed is a radical land reform involving structural revolution (Dorner 1992).

Neo-liberalism focuses more on macroeconomic policy reforms and market liberalization rather than on the question of land reform per se. As indicated elsewhere in this paper, the neo-liberal school favours land titling and registration measures. In principle, it favour the freehold system.

4.2. Anatomy of Land Reform in Developing Countries

A distinction is often made between agrarian reform and land reform. Land reform generally refers to a reorganization of tenure arrangements and landholdings that often assumes two basic forms: the break up of large holdings and their redistribution and the consolidation of fragmented holdings into a single field. Agrarian reform often combines some types of land reform with specific interventions designed to promote rural development such as the expansion of extension services, agricultural credit, and improved infrastructure to rural producers.

In a comprehensive study of thirty six countries across the world, Sobhan (1993) concluded that the only countries where rural poverty was ameliorated in a short period of time and the foundation laid for permanent, all-round development were those which carried out comprehensive, egalitarian agrarian reforms (see Annex 1).

4.3. Land Reform without Political Reform: The Case of China and Vietnam

Is tenure reform possible without political reform? This question has remained controversial among economists from socialist countries. For example, Kornai (1992) argues that the question of state power is critical for economic development. He asserts that:

There can be no comprehensive and consistently radical transformation in other spheres while the key feature of the old classical structure, the communist party’s power, remains.

Kornai’s assertion has been questioned by Szelenyi (1998) on the basis of evidence drawn from former and present socialist countries. In particular, Szelnyi notes “that Kornai’s all or nothing hypothesis is at least incomplete” as evidenced by the case of China and Vietnam. These countries achieved significant economic progress without dismantling the communist parties. These countries rearranged bundles of property rights, first in agriculture, later in other sectors of their economies. China created a multiplicity of property right regimes, which included private property, state property, and mixed forms including foreign invested property.

China’s success in economic development cannot be attributed to land reform alone. In addition to incentives created by the return to individual plots, three other factors played a role in boosting agricultural production. These are: favourable output prices, affordable fertilizer prices, and well-functioning communal capital (e.g. fertilizer factories and infrastructure) built during the previous years (1949 – 78). Fertilizer use more than doubled during the period 1978-84. Here, it should be noted that the state provided substantial subsidies to insulate rural and urban dwellers from the adverse effects of inflation (Muldavin 1998).

China’s phenomenal success in rural development can be summarized as follows (Muldavin 1998; Selden 1998). First, China has arrived at the current strategy of rural transformation after fifty years of experimentation. Second, institutional continuity and change are important features of Chinese agricultural development strategy. For example, land markets have been prohibited through half a century, while the incentive structure and peasant state relationship kept on changing through the period. Moreover, in China new institutions were built on the foundation of old ones. For example town and village enterprises (TVEs) were built on the organizational and technical experiences gained during collectivization era. Third, per capita land holding has dropped substantially (0.62 ha.), and yet per capita income has risen phenomenally. Moreover, the distribution of land in China has remained nearly perfectly equal. Fourth, equal land distribution assures subsistence while off-farm income, including processing, commerce and industry, hold the key to achieving rural prosperity. That was what China succeeded to achieve. Fifth, in China, land reform reversal has never become a possibility. Unlike many former socialist countries like Hungary, former landlords have never become a threat to Chinese non-private ownership of land. Even in South Vietnam land reform lacked legitimacy and farmer landlords claimed rights to their lost land. Sixth, agribusiness (including contract farming or out growers schemes) has played an important role in transforming Chinese agriculture. Seventh, rising income of villagers was accompanied by phenomenal rise in consumption of household durables (such as TV, bicycles, washing machines and dwellings in the booming coastal regions) and non-durables. Eighth, the Chinese case abundantly demonstrates that the question of property rights in land should be addressed along with problems in other areas, like prices, investment, employment etc.

Finally, how do we categorize the Chinese economy, socialist or capitalist? One authoritative study (Muldavin 1998) has the following answer. When we come to the Chinese case, the utility of drawing a sharp line in the sand to distinguish socialist from capitalist formation is questionable. The hybrid and distinctive character of China’s political economy and society tempts one to use terms like the “third path” or the “third way”, rather than capitalist or socialist systems. With second cycle reform, China has achieved much more than what Yeltsin’s Russia achieved. It is time to look beyond the labels of socialism and capitalism and seek ways to gauge the social and economic contradictions that have appeared as a direct consequence of China’s recent decades of high speed growth, commodification, new class formation (like the local nouveau riche), mounting spatial and class inequalities and environmental disruption.

Like China, Vietnam, another socialist country, has registered considerable increases in agricultural production following the implementation of a land reform measure. In short, Vietnam has allowed the transfer, inheritance and sale of land use rights as a part of its reform programs. In Vietnam the state retained ultimate ownership of land, but undertook far-reaching reforms that improved tenure security and the incentive structure (Watt 1998).

Vietnam and China seem to have adopted decollectivization strategies which involve four common attributes: (a) the creation of a relatively agrarian peasantry; (b) the emergence of secure property rights in land; (c) the establishment of a complex hybrid of new forms of state and market regulation; and (d) surplus labour absorption within rural areas (Watts 1998: 180).

4.4. Land Reform Reversal in the Former Socialist Countries

A comparative analysis of land reform reversal in Central and East European countries (CEECs) has suggested the following conclusions (Swinnen and Mathijs 1997):

i. Most CEECs have chosen to restitute collective farm land to former owners. Moreover, former owners who kept legal rights to their land were restituted property rights on their land without exception. Former owners who lost their legal ownership title were restituted land only in Albania, Slovenia and the Baltic States. In Albania the majority of land is distributed to farm workers.

ii. In the majority of CEECs, state farms are leased, pending sale of the land. The main exceptions are the restitution of state farm land in Slovenia, and the distribution to farm workers in Albania.

iii. Non-land assets have typically been privatised through other procedures than those used for land. In many cases they were privatised using vouchers which can be turned into capital shares in the new co-operative farm or used for purchasing non-land assets for private use.

iv. Privatisation does not necessarily lead to full transfer of all property rights to new (private) owners. In other words, the post-reform effective property rights distribution is only partially determined by the land privatisation legislation.

v. Following the enactment of necessary legislation, state and collective farms have been transformed into a wide variety of farm organisations, such as producer co-operatives, joint stock companies, limited liability companies, partnerships and individual farms.

vi. Large-scale production organizations still dominated agricultural production in several CEECs. Many new land owners lease their land to the large-scale successor organisations of the collective and state farms.

The remarkable variations in privatisation and land reform in CEEC, were based on the following principles (Swinnen & Matiji 1997): The choice of privatisation and land reform process is determined mostly by legal and historical characteristics of agricultural assets, the pre-collectivisation asset ownership distribution, the nature of post-collectivisation asset ownership and the ethnicity of the former owners. These characteristics affect the distributional effects of various privatisation options and the political consequences of the privatisation choice.

4.5. Land Reform in sub-Saharan Africa[2]

Land reform in sub-Saharan Africa can be classified into the following categories: (i) land nationalization, (ii) tenure reform, (iii) agrarian reform, and (iv) agrarian collectivisation.

i) Land nationalisation

Most African countries, following independence, vested land rights ultimately in the state or president. The purposes of nationalisation were to assert the power of the state over traditional chiefs and allow the appropriation of land for development, in the belief that the state would be best placed to manage and distribute land in the interests of all. Although the political power of indigenous chiefs and courts has been marginalised by land nationalisation, the impacts have been uneven, depending on the extent to which the state has been able to exert its own authority. In practice, many states have maintained multiple tenure systems, including public ownership, customary tenure and leasehold, and freehold title.

ii) Tenure reform: land registration and titling

The introduction of formal titles, through granting of individual leases of freeholds, has been introduced, notably in Kenya, following processes of land survey, adjudication and registration. A number of other countries have also pursued this approach on a more limited scale. The aim has been to promote farm investment and land markets as a basis for agricultural development and growth. Land registration, and sometimes titling, have also been introduced as a voluntary measure, such as in Nigeria.

iii) Agrarian reform: Land redistribution and resettlement

In other cases where inherently inequitable dualistic systems of land tenure have predominated, such as Zimbabwe and South Africa, the main approach to land reform has been the redistribution of private holdings to small producers under different forms of tenure and land management. Various approaches have been taken, predominantly state-led, but more recently market-based.

iv) Agrarian collectivisation

Following the overthrow of colonial or feudal regimes, socialist oriented African governments, notably in Mozambique, Ethiopia and Angola, have converted private estates to state farms, while promoting the cooperative association of small producers and forms of communal labour. In Tanzania and parts of Mozambique, rural life was reorganised by villagisation programmes, relocating people and extinguishing pre-existing customary rights to land. More recently, following structural adjustment and political change, state farms and collective production units have been privatised or divided up.

De facto changes in tenurial relations have also occurred as a result of land development and conservation programmes rather than because of an explicit demand for land reform. For example, project led resettlement or land registrations have occurred as a result of major infrastructure or irrigation development. Another example is the creation of parks or reserves where local people have been displaced, or their land and resource rights have been restricted.

More recent approaches to land reform in sub-Saharan Africa aim to provide customary rights holders with real security. This may involve some form of codification of customary law and or registration of customary rights, on an individual but also a kinship-based or community basis. It may also involve work to support and develop local institutions for the management and zoning of land, for instance through the “Gestion des terroirs” programmes in West Africa.

Kenya provides an interesting case of land reform (Bruce 1986; Green 1987; Okotho-Ogendo 1982; Mighot-Adholla et al. 1994).

Land tenure reform in Kenya was originally introduced in the colonial period by the Swynnerton plan of 1954 with the political objective of counter-insurgency. It was hoped to create a class of “yeoman farmers” amongst the Kikuyu, to help foster political stability. The plan aimed to provide individualised tenure security and to stimulate farm investment, agricultural growth and the emergence of a land market. The programme was maintained following independence, and expanded nation-wide. Kenyan nationals were granted individual titles to portions of former colonial settler estates and fragmented customary holdings were subject to compulsory consolidation. Further consolidation was expected as a result of market transactions in land while administrative benefits were anticipated from the creation of an organised record of property rights. The titling and registration process remains incomplete and, in principle, is still continuing. The programme has had a wide variety of unanticipated effects. Free market in land has not materialised, the availability of agricultural credit has not significantly increased, and registers are becoming outdated, as heirs or lessees fail to renew registration.

In addition, land registration in Kenya has been accompanied by:

· increased concentration of land ownership, especially in the hands of the recipients of former settler land, and those influential enough to manipulate the registration process in their own interests;

· the weakening of customary rights, within households and between different social groups, resulting in diminished security of tenure for non-title holders, notably wives, children and landless farmers who can no longer rely on secondary claims or kinship ties to guarantee access to resources. Particularly, registration has brought about increased insecurity amongst women, especially widows, those without off-farm incomes, and those with no male heirs;

· heightened inequalities in land ownership and agricultural incomes, leading to increased landlessness through land sales, and growing rural-urban migration;

· rising rural unemployment, caused by reduced opportunities for share-cropping and tenancy opportunities;

· diminished food security and increased vulnerability to drought amongst groups whose access to land has been diminished by the titling process;

· increased level of disputes resulting from individual rights being imposed on pre-existing systems of multiple rights; and

· the inability of poorer farmers to acquire title, since the costs are often greater than the benefits.

For the direct beneficiaries, land titling has provided very secure tenurial rights, and the early phases of the programme were indeed accompanied by increases in farm income for recipients of title. However, it is difficult to disaggregate the impacts of tenure reform from the many other agricultural development programmes carried out in the post independence period. While debate about the effects of land registration and titling continues, the policy implications of Kenya’s long experience with titling show that:

· the process of registration has been very costly, and the net benefits ambiguous;

· tenure reform alone is not likely to enhance small holder production without a range of associated measures; and

· land titling tends to generate damaging impacts on the position of the poor.

5. A SUMMARY OF HIGHLIGHTS OF THE LITERATURE

The major findings of the study can be summarized under the following headings:

(a) Customary Land Tenure Systems

Recent studies challenge the widely held notion about the insecurity of customary tenure systems and suggest, on the contrary, that long term investment is quite possible under indigenous property rights regimes.

Security is related to transaction costs. Customary tenure is secure when it refers to the ability to use land for a certain period and for a defined purpose. The security of land has three dimensions: breadth, duration and assurance. Transaction costs as perceived by farmers, such as cost of litigation, establishing rights, unpredictable judgment, and uncertainly in general are expected to vary inversely with security of tenure.

The following is a summary of some of the recent findings about the advantages of customary arrangements (Toulmin & Quan 2000: 35-36): (1) customary tenure frequently includes heritable use rights which can by its nature, provide incentives for longer term investments in land improvement and (2) customary property rights can be very secure, even if not defined at the individual level (defined at the community or clan level, they are more relevant to subsistence-oriented, low population density societies).

Whether or not land is registered and titled (or nationalized or not) informal land markets are emerging along with formal markets in many parts of Africa. This is the case particularly in high potential and peri-urban areas, and those with high population densities. The growth of land markets does not require the existence of formalized property rights (See Toulmin & Quan 2000).

There is a confusion regarding the “commons.” A distinction should be made between a regime of “open access” in which users are not excluded and ‘common property,” in which exclusion is possible through institutional means. Common or collective ownership does not necessarily lead to the destruction of the resource base of a society.

(b) Land reform and Impact on Agriculture

Land reform is a complicated and serious matter that needs, among other things, careful preparation and popular participation. Land reform can be an expensive business. One study (Adams et al. 2000) notes that land tenure reform is a time consuming process requiring thorough public consultation and careful preparation.

A comprehensive study of reforms in thirty six countries concluded that the only countries where rural poverty was ameliorated in a short period of time and laid the foundation for permanent, all round development were those which carried out comprehensive, egalitarian agrarian reform (Sobhan 1993). Moreover, land reform is effective if it is accompanied by other institutional innovations and appropriate policy reforms. Also, supportive infrastructure should be in place.

(c) Land Markets

Cross-country evidence suggests inverse relationship between land size and productivity. This suggests that there would be efficiency gain by transferring land (through the invisible hand) from inefficient producers to efficient ones. But there is little evidence that markets encourage the transfer of large land holdings to small farmers, as would have been expected from economic theory, given the efficiency of small operators. More-often than or not, land markets appear to encourage land concentration. This can be explained in terms of market distortions. The development of a competitive market is prevented, among other things, by the following factors: (1) in practice the market value of land often exceeds that of income stream that can be derived from it; (2) alongside speculative value which land frequently acquires, a variety of hidden subsidies and tax incentives can artificially inflate land values; and (3) in many sub-Sahara African countries, small farmers are unable to enter the land market because of limited access to formal credit facilities. Moreover, the literature (e.g. Bardhan & Udry 1999) suggests that rural land markets are highly restricted. Land is not easily transacted, unlike other productive resources.

Contrary to what conventional economic theory provides, recent literature (e.g. Platteau 1992; 2000) shows that, in Africa, land represents far more than a mere productive input in agricultural activity. It is impossible to abstract land from all social, religious, ritual and other non-economic connotations that remain attached to it. Under these conditions, it can be argued that a free market system may not allocate land efficiently.

Concerning informal land markets, the following range of transactions is identified in the literature: buying and selling, land borrowing, land mortgaging; land exchanges, land rental, land pooling and other informal arrangements (Toulmin & Quan 2000: 45). Rental markets provide greater accessibility for the poor because of their low transaction costs. Rentals, leases and loans do not involve the permanent alienation of land, Sharecropping is not necessarily as exploitative. The informal land market is very flexible. It meets the varying needs of the poor in multiple ways.

Land rentals have advantages where land is scarce and customary institutions influence security of tenure and transaction costs. Renting tends to close inter-household productivity gaps by transferring land to farmers who can use it more effectively. But, it has been observed that land markets may fail to transfer land from big to small farmers where the latter are considered to be more efficient than the former.

(d) Policy and land legislation

The literature is silent on concrete measures to be undertaken to address problems of poverty in the context of land reform process. Equity concerns have, of course, received attention in the debate on land rights (e.g. see Platteau 1992; 2000). One study suggests, among other things, that the following means could be used to develop pro-poor agenda (Toulmin & Quan 2000:25):

(1) aiming for more equal pattern of land distribution, to promote both more equitable and improved security to land users;

(2) adopting a pluralistic approach, which seeks to converge customary and formal tenure systems.

(3) identifying diverse ways in which reforms in land relations can be approached; and

(4) strengthening consultation processes, debate within civil society, and easier access to the official policy and legislative processes.

Governments should take into account the following points in formulating land policies (Toulmin & Quan 2000):

1. There are many approaches to addressing land policy and tenure changes in Africa, as well as a growing body of experience with implementing reforms. This provides a sound basis for sharing experience between different countries and stakeholders. A mechanism to facilitate this process of learning lessons would be very valuable.

2. Governments have been forced to recognise the relatively limited role they can play in direct allocation and management of land. Nevertheless, they retain an important set of tasks concerning the framework of law and underlying principles. They must establish the authority of those institutions given the powers to manage land and resolve conflicts. Also, there may be need for a significant redistribution of land between different groups.

3. Law needs to draw upon the values and aspirations held by society, and cannot be drafted in a vacuum. Hence, widespread consultation processes are needed to permit effective engagement by a broad range of actors, in discussion of proposed legal reforms and the institutional options for implementation.

4. Reforms to land tenure and administration have major political implications. Choices must be made about attribution of responsibilities and rights, such as between reliance on established customary systems and the establishment of elected local government structures. In each case, there will be pros and cons, with neither choice offering a perfect solution. Thought must be given to providing checks and balances on the powers attributed, whichever institutional option is chosen.

5. Many land reform programmes have begun with pilot measures to test out their feasibility and need for amendment before launching a nation-wide approach. Use of pilot schemes seems much more appropriate than trying to do everything at once, since it allows for a focus on priority areas where land issues have become acute, as well as learning how best to tailor reforms to fit local conditions.

6. Governments face tight budgetary constraints and need to consider the costs of land reform measures in the light of their likely benefits. There may be considerable advantages to building on existing institutions, modified as necessary, rather than trying to establish a brand new set of structures which require staff, operating budgets, and time to establish their legitimacy.

6. IMPLICATIONS FOR ETHIOPIA

Basic Assumptions and Principles Underlying the Choice of Land Policy Reforms Options

Ethiopia’s objective conditions dictate the appreciation of the following assumptions and principles relevant to the land question:

1. Peasants are, in general, rational economic agents.

2. Rural people do have useful indigenous knowledge systems and culture-appropriate institutions, which can be considered as a form of social capital.

3. No across- the-board and uniform property right regime is appropriate to Ethiopia, a country of great contrasts and of enormous diversity.

4. Law needs to draw upon the values and aspirations held by society, and cannot be drafted in a vacuum. Hence widespread consultation and popular participation are needed.

5. The implementation of land policy reforms should began with pilot measures to test out their feasibility and need for amendment before launching a nation-wide approach.

6. Policy makers must recognize that they have to play a relatively limited role in direct allocation and management of land in areas where people’s mobility is high (such as pastoral areas).

Some Basic Observations about Land Tenure in Ethiopia

It is important to state some of the outstanding features of land tenure in Ethiopia in the light of the survey undertaken in this study.

(i) The pre-1975 period was characterized by great diversity of official property right regimes.

(ii) The proclamation of 1975 did not do away with all sorts of rights that had existed during the imperial era. Customary rights have survived to this date in the pastoral areas and in areas where share-shifting cultivation is practiced. Informal land markets have not only persisted, but have become increasingly common in the densely populated plough-complex areas of the highland.

(iii) Unlike many other developing countries, land inequality is not a major problem in rural Ethiopia. Thanks to the egalitarian reform of 1975 (and subsequent periodic redistribution of land); rural people have succeeded to share poverty. In this light none of the traditional types of land reform (such as the conservative, liberal, and populist models) is relevant to the Ethiopian case. Even the land reform reversal model is inappropriate as rural land restitution is unlikely.

For Specific Categories of Land there should be Specific Property Rights

There are different categories and uses of land as indicated in Figure 2. I propose that, in general, different types of property rights correspond to different categories of land. There is a need to distinguish between different categories of land, such as land in the densely populated areas, land used by pastoralists, shifting cultivations, and land under state farms, or land designated as protected areas.

For specific categories (or uses) there exist specific modes of access to land. For example, in most of the pastoral areas access to land is defined by customary tenure systems. A more or less similar principle applies to shifting cultivation. In the mixed farming systems, where peasants operate land (and where statutory laws can be enforced through peasant administrations), two type of property right regimes function side by side. These are the official right regime (which is based on the proclamation of March 1975) and informal mode of access to land (such as sharecropping, rentals, land mortgage, etc.).

There is a long menu of property rights to choose from in solving problems arising from a given tenure arrangement. By way of an example, consider the case of state farms, which draws from the experiences of East and Central European countries. Policies that attempt to redefine mode of access to land currently under state farms can consider some of the following options, as the case may be: (a) lease to private investors, (b) restitute to former owners, (c) split them into small plots and lease to individual peasants, (d) retain them for the purpose of R & D, and so on.

Consider the case of land in sub-urban areas. Land in such areas can be characterized as follows: (a) proximity to infrastructure and to market centers; (b) a high degree of land use intensity and cultivation of high value crops; (c) land-saving and labour-intensive dairy farms; (d) extremely high demand for land and ever-rising land prices; and (e) increased conflict and tension over land due to urban encroachment on farm land. Because of their specific problems and opportunities, sub-urban areas need specific types of tenure policy reforms.

Is there a Need for Rural Land Policy Reforms in Ethiopia?

There is a need for land policy reforms in Ethiopia because the current policy has not generated desired economic performance[3]. The current tenure arrangements have fallen short of generating optimum results in terms of efficiency, equity, and environmental concerns. The most often mentioned issues for different categories of land include the following:

(a) Land under peasant occupation:

· Insecurity of holdings exists in some areas. This has resulted in soil mining and limited incentive to invest in land.

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[1] This contrasts with the argument forwarded by Platteau (1992).

[2] This section draws heavily on (Quan 1997).

[3] A striking demonstration of this observation is provided by the on-going revision of the lease policy in Addis Ababa and a study undertaken by the Oromia Regional State.

Country, Legal Provisions and No. of Reforms	The Magnitude of Redistribution & Type of Rights	Peasant Organization and Cooperatives	Impact
Mexico: The reform of 1917 declared all land to be owned by the nation (since then 3 reforms undertaken).	Major redistribution took place in the 1930s. Almost 18 million ha. were distributed to 814, 537 peasants. In the 1960s about 25 million ha. distributed. Private property granted but the state retained the right to expropriate the land when deemed necessary.	Originally distributed to individual ejido (village) members. Later created collective ejidos; but back to individual units.	Reforms affected a significant redistribution of incomes and assets in favour of groups of rural poor. Decline in production of basic food crops with dramatic increases in export crops due to agricultural policies favouring export and unfavorable internal terms of trade for agricultural products
Ecuador: The agrarian reform law of 1964 was designed to change the precapitalist labour relations. The 1970 decree eliminated pre capitalist relations in rice production areas. The reform law of 1973 was to achieve social justice. The 1977 legislation was to encourage colonization in the Amazon region. (4 reforms)	On the basis of 1964 reform peasants were given title to a plot of land of their own. The 1970 decree did not allocate land parcels. Use right granted.	By a special decree of 1970 producer cooperatives were established.	Some gains for peasants who had the land before were recorded. On balance, the medium and larger producers seem to have benefited the most, through greater access to credit. The traditional hacienda form of production organization radically changed.
Peru: The 1969 reform provided that land over a certain size was to be subjected to expropriation. (2 reforms)	Major redistribution of land was effected after the military takeover by reform of 1969. By 1972, 38.3% of agricultural land had been redistributed to 21% of all agricultural families. Use right granted.	The expropriated land was assigned to groups to be organized via different forms of production cooperatives. Later, beginning 1981 the cooperatives were sub-divided into individual holdings	Results were quite mixed. Latifundio was eliminated and power of the landed oligarchy reduced, benefits were uneven. Many pre reform peasant holdings were neglected not provided credit, inputs and technical assistance. Price controls kept food prices low in the cities discouraging production.
Chile: The three phases of land reform provided, first, land redistribution followed by a period of expanded and accelerated reform, and then, a reversal of the reform and the return of many of lands to previous owners. (3 reforms)	Cooperative ownership combined with private ownership, also, use right granted.	During the first phase a temporary production cooperative called asentamiento was established for three years.	During the reform period, annual agricultural growth rate was above 2% greater than that of pre-reform period. On balance, the reform was characterized by modest success: there was significant redistribution of wealth and income; changes in social relations and advances in participatory development. But this was abruptly ended and reversed in 1973.
Dominican Republic: The 1972 radical land reform law provided for the expropriation of private lands.	There were 15,676 beneficiaries in 118 collectives with an average of 4.l0 hectares per beneficiary. Individual and collective ownership.	118 collectives were organized. In 1985, modified organization established.	The experience with collectives strengthened the capabilities of reform beneficiaries to manage their own affairs and use their land in productive manner. Many of those who received land now become managers and farmers.
Honduras: The land reform effort provided for public or state lands redistribution. (1 reform)	The reformed sector includes only 8% of the nation’s farm land and 10% of rural families. Families ownership and use right.	Peasant organizations were established. Three national compensino associations are among the best in Latin America.	Land reform has limited impact.
Nicaragua: The 1979 reform led to the establishment of state farms. In 1981, land owners were expropriated. (2 reforms)	Almost 30,000 families received titles. State, cooperative and individual ownerships, use right.	Rural peasant organization, rural workers organization.	Agricultural performance was good up to 1984. Increased local participation.
El Salvador: The reform led to expropriated estates over 500 hectares. (1 phase reform)	Expropriated estates over 500 ha were farmed by producers cooperatives.	Production cooperatives organized.	The effort of land reform can be criticized as being too little, too late, and too constricted. For the rural poor in El Salvador, most of whom received no benefit, agrarian reform remains a distinct goal, one yet to be achieved.
Colombia: The land reform law provided: land titling, colonization of public lands, provision of rural services, and authority to expropriate and parcelize private land. (3 periods)	In 1962-67 very little land was expropriated. As of 1978 only 1.6% of the cultivated land was redistributed to 27,568 families. Use right granted.	A peasant association emerged; collective farms were organized.	A yearly decrease in budget in real terms up to 1978.
Venezuela: The 1948 land reform law was not fully implemented. The 1960 new reform provided expropriated landlords with handsome compensation. (2 reforms)	Over 8 million hectares of land has been distributed to 150,000 families (over 35% of the rural families). Individual ownership granted, also use right.	Peasant unionization, the national peasant federation was set up.	(Information not available)
Bolivia: The 1953 land reform decree provided land to cooperatives which, later in early 1970s, broke into individual parcels. (1 reform)	Land redistribution was complete by 1955. About half of the Bolivia’s rural families had become farm owner- operators.	Production cooperatives were set up.	A considerable degree of integration of the masses of peasants in to the national economy society and policy emerged.

Country		1	2	3	4	5
Country		% of Land Distributed to Total Agricultural Land	% of Land Reform Beneficiaries to Total Agricultural Households	Post-Reform Distribution of Land (Gini Coefficient)	Landless/ Land poor as % of Total Agricultural Households	Social Transition Status
1	China (A)	50 (1952)	65 (1952)	N.A.	Negligible	Feudalism to Socialism
2	North Vietnam (A)	50 (1953)	72 (1953)	N.A.	Negligible	Feudalism/Capitalism to Socialism
3	North Korea (A)	54 (1946)	N.A.	N.A.	Negligible	Feudalism/Capitalism to Socialism
4	Cuba (A)	52 (2983)	N.A.	N.A.	Negligible	Capitalism to Socialism
5	Japan (A)	41 (1965)	71 (1965)	N.A.	N.A.	Feudalism to Peasant
6	South Korea (A)	25 (1951)	66 (1951)	0.30 (1960)	38	Feudalism/Capitalism to Peasant
7	Taiwan (A)	25 (1959)	29 (1965)	N.A.	N.A.	Feudalism/Capitalism to Peasant
8	Ethiopia (A)	N.A.	N.A.	0.43 (1977)	N.A.	Feudalism to Peasant
9	Mexico ( B)	43 (19790)	66 (1970)	0.938 (1970)	60+(1970)	Feudalism/Capitalism to Capitalism/Peasant
10	Bolivia ( B)	30 (1970)	34 (1970)	N.A.	85	Feudalism/Capitalism to Capitalism/Peasant
11	Chile ( B)	47 (1973)	13 (1973)	N.A.	53 (1973)	Capitalism to Capitalism/Peasant/State
12	Peru (B)	37 (1976)	37 (1986)	N.A.	75	Feudalism / Capitalism to Capitalism/Peasant/State
13	Nicaragua (B)	25 (1982)	16 (1982)	N.A.	32	Capitalism to Capitalism/Peasant/State
14	Egypt (B)	15 (1987)	10 (1986)	N.A.	95	Feudalism to Capitalism/ Peasant
15	Iraq (B)	27 (1966)	33 (1966)	0.65 (1971)[4]	N.A.	Feudalism to Capitalism/Peasant/State
16	Algeria (B)	58 (1972)	N.A.	0.72 (1973)¹	N.A.	Capitalism to State
17	Syria (B)	39 (1974	25 (1979)	N.A.	N.A.	Feudalism / Capitalism to Capitalism/Peasant
18	Mozambique (B)	5 (1982)	Retained in State Sector	N.A.	N.A.	Capitalism/Tribal to State/Tribal
19	Tunisia (C)	18 (1964)	N.A.	N.A.	N.A.	Capitalism to Capitalism/Peasant/State
20	Kenya (C)	N.A.	3	0.77 (1981)	32	Capitalism/Tribal/ Peasant
21	Zimbabwe (C)	18 (1984)	N.A.	N.A.	N.A.	Capitalism/Tribal to Capitalism/Tribal/ Peasant
22	Bangladesh (C)	Less that 0.1	Less than 0.1	0.60 (1983084)	78 (1981)	Feudal to Feudal/ Capitalist/ Peasant
23	India (C)	1.5 (1986)	2 (1981)	0.62 (1977)	55 (1980)
24	Pakistan (C)	3 (1972)	210(1972)	0.54 (1980)	34 (1980)	Feudal to Feudal/ Capitalist/ Peasant
25	Sri Lanka (C)	41 (1972)	Retained in State Farms	0.62 (1982)	43 (1980)	Feudal/ Capitalist to Feudal/ Capitalist/ Peasant/ State
26	Indonesia (C)	N.A.	296	0.53 (1973)	66 (1971)	Feudal/ Capitalist/ to Feudal/ Capitalist/ Peasant
27	Thailand (C)	N.A.	N.A.	0.46 (1975-76)	13 (1978)	Feudal/ Capitalist/ to Feudal/ Capitalist/ Peasant
28	Philippines (C)	8.68	16.87	0.61 (1980)	78 (1972)	Feudal/ Capitalist/ to Feudal/ Capitalist/ Peasant
29	Costa Rica (C)	2 (1980)	32	0.83 (1973)	64 (1981)	Capitalist
30	El Salvador (C)	15 (1982)	15	0.61 (1971)	41 (1975)	Capitalist to Capitalist/ Peasant
31	Guatemala (C)	16 (154)	N.A.	0.85 (1979)	60 (1971)	Capitalist
32	Honduras (C)	4 (1981)	14 (1981)	0.78 (1974)	41 (1970)	Capitalist
33	Panama (C)	15 (1970)	12 (1970)	0.78 (1974)	N.A.	Capitalist
34	Ecuador (C)	N.A.	N.A.	N.A.	75	Feudal/ Capitalist to Capitalist
35	Colombia (C)	N.A.	101	0.86 (1970-71)	66	Feudal/ Capitalist to Capitalist
36	Venezuela (C)	6 (1973)	35 (1973)	0.92 (1971)	40 (1973)	Feudal/ Capitalist to Capitalist/Peasant

1. INTRODUCTION