IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/exehis/v94y2024ics0014498324000445.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Land reform and agrarian socialism in interwar Europe: Evidence from 1930s Spain before civil war

Author

Listed:
  • Domènech, Jordi
  • Lahdelma, Ilona
  • Martinelli, Pablo

Abstract

This paper studies the effects of various types of land reform on the voting of the rural poor in a developing, largely agrarian economy such as 1930s Spain. Using municipal-level electoral results in a region with intense but heterogeneous land-related interventions, we find that permanent transfers of land had the greatest positive impact on voting for leftist candidates, followed by temporary transfers of land aimed at alleviating the problem of seasonal unemployment. Poorly planned temporary transfers of land without adequate funding for beneficiaries made the landless more vulnerable to landowner control and had the opposite result. Our results show that the secret ballot might be insufficient to guarantee the free vote of economically dependent landless laborers. They also show that land reforms with poor support for beneficiaries might backfire.

Suggested Citation

  • Domènech, Jordi & Lahdelma, Ilona & Martinelli, Pablo, 2024. "Land reform and agrarian socialism in interwar Europe: Evidence from 1930s Spain before civil war," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:exehis:v:94:y:2024:i:c:s0014498324000445
    DOI: 10.1016/j.eeh.2024.101618
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0014498324000445
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.eeh.2024.101618?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • N54 - Economic History - - Agriculture, Natural Resources, Environment and Extractive Industries - - - Europe: 1913-
    • O13 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Agriculture; Natural Resources; Environment; Other Primary Products
    • P14 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Capitalist Economies - - - Property Rights
    • Q10 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Agriculture - - - General
    • Q24 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Renewable Resources and Conservation - - - Land
    • Q28 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Renewable Resources and Conservation - - - Government Policy

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:exehis:v:94:y:2024:i:c:s0014498324000445. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/622830 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.