Agrarian Reform

Agrarian reform has been consigned repeatedly to the dustbin of history, yet it returns again and again in new forms, in different locations, and under different guises. While agrarian reform is often justly identified with land reform, it is important to recognize that land reform is but part of the broader phenomenon of agrarian reform, which includes changes not only in land holding but also in the vast array of institutions, laws, and practices that frame the political economy of any rural society. Law plays a central role in any understanding of agrarian reform, if not in the actual design of the land reform, at least in the underlying relations of property and governance that are subject to change in the process of reform. In ...