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 addition to the changing relations of property holders and users, law also provides the framework for local markets, sources of finance, and labor relations, as well as the agricultural and environmental regulations that shape the opportunities and choices of land-based communities. Nevertheless, it is important to remain aware of the broader context that defines the overall pattern and direction of any agrarian reform.

The driving force behind most processes of agrarian reform is a prior history of dispossession or exclusion. While not all processes of dispossession have led to subsequent attempts to restore rights or redistribute land, acts of colonial dispossession and exclusion remain the major sources of grievance underlying the justification for present and future reform efforts. These grievances remain in part due to the extreme degree of social dislocation these processes of dispossession engendered. A different source of agrarian reform has been the attempts to redress historical inequities in access to land, particularly in Asia and Latin America. Although the most effective of these took place under United States military occupations in Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan, similar land-to-the-tiller forms of reform were undertaken in other countries, including Mexico, India, Chile, and later [Page 47]Nicaragua. A more recent wave of agrarian reforms has been justified as rectification of past wrongful takings, including in particular the movement to return property taken in the name of Communist revolutions or post–World War II state socialism in Eastern Europe.