ABSTRACT
This chapter identifies incentives for social and political ordering, to avoid violent conflicts over scarce resources, as a key factor in the initial development of laws on land. It describes incentives for initial property legislation, in systems emerging from violent conflict, to develop simple default rules of state title to land, and complex rules relating to private rights to land. The chapter draws on recent work by North, Wallis, and Weingast on social ordering in circumstances of violence, particularly in terms of correlations between state stabilization and property rules that favor a political elite. North, Wallis, and Weingast's typology of social ordering provides a framework for analyzing institutions that emerge in response to threats of group violence. The chapter presents the case study of East Timor, which explores the relationship between state stabilization and property rules in a contemporary setting. The case study is the development of land law in East Timor, analyses new property rules in a new nation-state.
