Autocracy and Redistribution: The Politics of Land Reform

“Political elites are instead autonomous agents; they have their own interests and political agendas (Albertus 2015 ; Albertus and Menaldo 2012a ; Menaldo 2016 ).”

“3 Albertus (2015).”

“In newly founded authoritarian regimes, Albertus and colleagues show how land distribution can weaken the power base of political rivals in the landlord class (Albertus 2015, Albertus et al. 2018).”

“Many countries around the world have pursued land reform, and many of these are regarded as highly successful (Albertus, 2015; Lipton, 2009).”

“, Acemoglu & Robinson, 2006; Boix, 2003; Moore, 1965), taxation (Fairfield, 2015), and land reform (Albertus, 2015), we show that environmental legislation is a policy domain that is increasingly relevant to large producers’ core interests.”

“Since independence in 1821, Colombia has implemented a series of land distribution programs, transferring vacant and colonized state land to rural producers (Albertus 2015).”

“Land distribution is one of the major social programs, placing it among the most important recent land reforms in a region with a long history of such reforms (Albertus, 2015).”

“Public and private goods provision, quasi-democratic institutions, and propaganda have all been found to increase support for dictatorships (Albertus 2015; Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2005).”

“…that these effects might occur because the military faces a power struggle shortly after seizing power, consistent with studies of authoritarianism that highlight the commitment problems that new rulers face during their early years of tenure (Albertus 2015; Haber 2006; Magaloni 2008; Slater 2010).”

“40 Albertus 2015.”

“…large changes in the degree of democracy or autocracy and the left-versus-right-versus-center political ideology, affect the likelihood of various important types of land reforms, have been theorized by Albertus (2015), Acemoglu and Robinson (2001, 2006, 2008) and Bardhan and Mookherjee (2010).”

“Unfortunately, a recent body of mounting evidence has dashed the hopes that economic equality will follow political equality (Albertus 2015; Piketty 2014).”

“To start, a de jure expansion of the franchise may not lead to greater de facto political power for the poor due to the disproportionate influence of the elite over institutional design and electoral politics (Londregan 2007; Albertus and Menaldo 2018; Elkjaer and Klitgaard 2021). Similarly, not all autocracies are pr…”

“More than 40 million hectares were expropriated in Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru, and Venezuela (Albertus 2015).”

“This is evidenced by the fact that land transfers can be linked to political influence in rural areas, which may have contributed to the entrenchment of the ruling political party’s hegemony (Albertus, 2015; Albertus et al., 2016).”

“In much of our previous work (Albertus & Menaldo 2012b, 2014a; Albertus 2015a,b; Menaldo 2016), we have employed all or some of these measurements to capture both inequality and redistribution as part of an “all of the above” strategy.”

“The comparative literature on land reform under democracies shows that a minimal degree of institutional quality and democratic rules slow down ambitious redistributive democratic agendas (Albertus, 2015; Bardhan and Mokherjee, 2010).”

“(36)One caveat to bear in mind is that in the last column (6) the sample is so severely restricted to only 23 countries that the statistical variation exploited is drawn from a limited number of observations.”

“Of course, a key puzzle of modernization is that landed elites often retain outsize political influence, even after agriculture has been reduced to a minuscule proportion of total economic output (Varshney 1995; Albertus 2015; Thomson 2019).”

“Th e revolutionary and emancipatory politics of the 20 th century integrated a previously excluded rural sector into national imaginaries in new ways, leading to agrarian reforms that sought to democratize landholding in rural areas (Albertus, 2015 ).”

“Land redistribution may contribute to political order, provided that such redistribution is a response to local demands (Albertus 2015).”

“Similarly, according to Albertus (2015), ‘ the ability to execute policy plays a key role in redistributive outcomes ’ (p. 19).”

“…center of development agenda by the national governments, more prominent reason for adopting land reform was often to prevent rural unrest and struggle for social justice; land redistribution happened more likely when the rural poor formed a credible threat of revolt (Albertus, 2015; Fuwa, 2000).”

“Since independence in 1821, Colombia has implemented a nationwide land reform program based not on breaking up large farms, but rather transferring vacant and colonized state land to rural producers, mainly landless and poor peasants (Albertus 2015).”

“On the other hand, land reform may be perceived as a decrease in the probability that large landholders will retain their land when the property is contested, therefore increasing the probability of a conflict (Horowitz, 1993; Albertus, 2015; Kapstein, 2017).”

“That is not to say that political parties have not been featured in the political economy literature (e.g., Boix 1998, 2015; Iversen and Soskice 2006; Huber and Stephens 2012; Rasmussen and Knutsen 2021).”

“…attempts by political elites to fixate rural populations or other constituencies of strategic importance to specific areas where they can gain access to new political trinkets that can further entrench dependency on the state whilst providing a reliable source of political support (Albertus, 2015).”

“…under the current autocrat and waiting until the next period when ð1þ rÞθ ¼ pð1; γ; pÞð1þ rÞθ þ ½1 pð1; γpÞ ð1þ rÞθ () θ ¼ pθ þ ð1 pÞθ () θ ¼ θ. 33This assumption builds from recent literature on political regimes, property rights, and expropriation (Albertus, 2015; Ansell & Samuels, 2014).”

“This could benefit the rural poor, as autocracies also distribute land to peasants to build popular support in the countryside (Albertus 2015).”

“20 Land reallocation in pursuit of economic growth has instead manifested itself in the seizure of urban or peri-urban land for infrastructure, industrial, or even residential use.”

“In additition, autocracies have shown to be more capable than democracies in terms of land reform given their concentration of political power and lack of veto points, (Albertus, 2015; Huntington, 2006).”

“While immobile assets might undermine attempts to democratize, resource concentration can also result from autocratic policies (Albertus 2015; Brooks and Kurtz 2016; David and Wright 1997; Ramsay 2011; Stijns 2006).”

“5 billion people over the last century (Albertus, 2015).”

“It was not a negotiated land reform (Albertus, 2015, p. 8) since there was no radical split between political and land elites; moreover, the proposals to sequestrate and expropriate land were introduced by a right-wing political party.”

“Autocracies are thought to be less constrained in violating property rights than democracies (e.g. Albertus, 2015; Ansell and Samuels, 2014; Haber, 2006; North, 1990), and elites are thought to have more ability to safeguard their privileges under the latter (Albertus and Menaldo, 2014; Mainwaring,…”

“Research reveals that the threat of social instability motivates autocrats or ruling parties to redistribute welfare benefits to maintain political survival in nondemocratic regimes (Albertus, 2015).”

“…” as the provision of public goods and services and builds on recent literature that has demonstrated counterintuitive authoritarian public goods provision, such as Christopher Carothers ’ s (2022) work on author-itarian anticorruption reform in China (see also Albertus 2015; Tsai 2007).”

“Japanese Journal of Political Science (2018), 19, 353–375 doi:10.1017/S1468109918000191 state capacity, and land reform (Albertus, 2015).”

“La colonización del valle tuvo como principales objetivos aliviar la presión migratoria en las ciudades costeras, ofrecer una alternativa pacífica a la reforma agraria y aprovechar el potencial agrícola de las tierras amazónicas (Albertus, 2015; Paredes y Manrique, 2018).”

“Since land is a fixed asset and constitutes the majority of the wealth of landed elites, they recognize themselves as “vulnerable” upon invasion or expropriation (Albertus, 2015; Gutierrez, 2014).”

“Many initially adopt popular platforms of wealth redistribution (Albertus (2015)).”

“In an excellent comparative analysis of 20th-century land reforms, Michael Albertus considered Spain as the only case in which land redistribution followed Acemoglu and Robinson’s (2006) model predictions of political transitions (Albertus 2015, p. 276).”

“…er der endnu færre grunde til at svække de-mokratiet, da høj demokratisk kvalitet sikrer formel politisk lighed, giver dem større indflydelse og bidrager til at sikre deres materielle interesser (Meltzer og Richard, 1981; Ross, 2006; se dog Albertus, 2015 vedr. omfordeling i auto-kratier).”

“For this reason, many cases of land reform fall short of meaningful redistribution (Albertus and Kaplan, 2013; Albertus, 2015; Albertus and Menaldo, 2012; Joshi and Mason, 2008; Mason, 1998; Paige, 1996).”

“A common approach is to deploy differential tactics on separate population segments for buying loyalty, neutralising resistance and reinforcing political legitimacy and stability (Albertus, 2015; Luo, 2025), often resulting in uneven economic outcomes at the grassroots (Han & Han, 2023).”

“An expansive set of literature on the politics of land reform from past to present has focused on how political dynamics at the elite level can initiate or constrain central policy initiatives (Albertus 2015; Albertus and Menaldo 2012; Huntington 2006; Tai 1974).”

“Third, we contribute to a growing body of work that emphasizes how public goods provision, such as education, can advance the goals of au-thoritarian regimes (Albertus, 2015; Paglayan, 2022).”

“While peasant mobilization may not have led to the adoption of land reform (Albertus, 2015), it appears to have created the bureaucratic infrastructure required for its implementation.”

“It was both longer lasting and more extensive, in terms of total land area redistributed, than in any other Latin American country in the twentieth century (Albertus 2015).”

“Albertus (2015) asserts that the success of agrarian reform requires synergy among various actors, including the landowning elite, the ruling political elite, and the rural poor.”