ABSTRACT
In the private property-market economy of Egypt and the Philippines, landtenure arrangements assume a crucial role. They can generate conditions of poverty, agrarian unrest and political instability. They can also create an institutional framework realizing anti-poverty rural development and enhancing production incentives, as well as the participation of the poor in the benefits of agricultural growth. In broad terms, the difference in both simplified situations lies in the policy choice within each country’s historical context and its development strategy, which is determined by the configuration of the balance of political power. Subject to the prevailing ideology, the choice of anti-poverty policy requires the removal of institutional barriers obstructing the small tenants and wage-dependant landless workers from entry into the factor markets and from owning land in order to have command over their food intake. Considering that poverty tends to be concentrated in agriculture, which contains a large part of the workforce, the anti-poverty policy should also modify the pattern of agricultural growth so as to spread the accrued benefits, raise productivity of the poor and sustain their gains. Without this strong political commitment, the market tends to work for the benefit of large and medium-sized landowners, traders and the multinational corporations. Hence, inequalities in the distribution of income and remunerative employment opportunities widen, agrarian unrest spreads and the process of rural development is obstructed. Economic power and political advantages being land property market-
based in Egypt and the Philippines, no large landowner or other monopolist gives up power voluntarily. State intervention (by democratic or authoritarian means) becomes necessary to correct market imperfections and to redistribute land, accompanied by small farmers’ access to formal credit. The scope of interventionist policy together with the rates of agricultural population growth tend to greatly influence the pace of poverty reduction and the rate at which rural development objectives are realized. Before we proceed further, a distinction has to be made between the terms
‘land reform’ and ‘agrarian reform’ in the sense of their use in this essay. As
you may have noted, I used the former in the title of the paper, meaning the redistribution of private land-property rights and use under different institutional arrangements enforceable by law. This does not mean that the redistribution of landed property alone is sufficient to achieve the aims of land reform and to sustain the accrued gains in real terms over time. Though it is a strong demonstration of anti-poverty political commitment, land reform is but a single powerful policy in the development strategy. Moreover, land reforms differ in content, aims, pace, scope of redistribution and the implementation capability of state institutions; as do results. Complementarity of investment in raising land productivity and efficiency in labour use is a major prerequisite. The term ‘agrarian reform’, on the other hand, embraces a wide range of changes in land tenure and services, which may not necessarily include the redistribution of private landed property. If agrarian reform measures – such as land settlement schemes and tenancy regulation – leave existing skewed distribution of land and rural power unchanged, these measures cannot be considered land reform under our definition. This is because they evade or blur the central issue of breaking the concentration of land and power. Land reform may be termed agrarian reform but the converse need not be true.
