Land grabbing and land reform: a conceptual proposition

This paper investigates the political and economic dimension of land allocation. Dichotomies such as land grabbing versus pro-poor land reform fails to fully grasp economic transformations that are at play – the type of revenue (rent versus profit) and the type of production (crop-sharing for self-subsistence versus wage relation for market-oriented production). We propose a conceptual reformulation through ideal types and re-examine the historical case of the ‘White Revolution' in Iran. Land reform refers to a process of land appropriation in the interest of those who do not have concentrated economic or political power that might lead to a separation of property from sovereignty. On the other hand, land grabbing is the use of coercive means to appropriate land in the interest of those who have concentrated power leading to a fusion of sovereignty and property. This conceptual proposition highlights how deeper theoretical conceptions of the state and property rights constraint the understanding of land reform and land grabbing. While contractualist or extended contractualist perspectives of the state bear limitations, an appropriative perspective drawing from Public Choice theory (Boettke & Leeson, 2015; Cai et al., 2020; Vahabi, 2016) could allow to explore tenure security not only beyond the state, but also repealing it.