Land-Related Conflict and Electoral Politics in Africa

Land-related disputes and land conflicts are sometimes politicized in elections in African countries, but this is usually not the case. Usually, land-related conflict is highly localized, managed at the micro-political level by neo-customary authorities, and not connected to electoral competition. Why do land conflicts sometimes become entangled in electoral politics, and sometimes “scale up” to become divisive issues in regional and national elections? A key determinant of why and how land disputes become politicized is the nature of the underlying land tenure regime, which varies across space (often by subnational district) within African countries. Under the neo-customary land tenure regimes that prevail in most regions of smallholder agriculture in most African countries, land disputes tend to be “bottled up” in neo-customary land-management processes at the local level. Under the statist land tenure regimes that exist in some districts of many African countries, government agents and officials are directly involved in land allocation and directly implicated in dispute resolution. Under “statist” land tenure institutions, the politicization of land conflict, especially around elections, becomes more likely. Land tenure institutions in African countries define landholders’ relations to each other, the state, and markets. Understanding these institutions, including how they come under pressure and change, goes far in explaining how and where land rights become politicized.

Agrarian Tenure Institution Conflict Frames, and Communitarian Identities

Drawing on a survey of more than 4,000 respondents, this article argues that contrary to claims by the 1994 Zapatista insurgency, indigenous and nonindigenous respondents in southern Mexico have been united more by socioeconomic and land tenure institution variables than by ethnic identity. Based on statistical models, it concludes that in rural southern Mexico, ethnicity alone is less important in shaping peoples' attitudes than whether the dominant land tenure institutions are the “communitarian” state-penetrated ejidos (communitarian collective farms) of Chiapas or the more “individualist” so-called communal lands of Oaxaca. It concludes by affirming that—contrary to many analysts of Chiapas's 1994 indigenous rebellion—external influences (here state-established land tenure institutions) can trump ideology in framing social movements. Rural Chiapas's prevalent communitarian attitudes seem to have resulted partly from exogenous land tenure institutions (ejidos) rather than from endogenous indigenous identities alone, as claimed by Zapatistas and scholars.

Land tenure and the management of land and trees: the case of customary land tenure areas of Ghana

This study explores the effects of land tenure institutions on land use and management using household date from cocoa growing areas of Ghana. Various land tenure institutions with different land rights coexist in our sites, such as allocated family land, inherited land, appropriated village land, and land received as gift. While tree planting and the decision to leave land fallow may be affected by land tenure status, there are no significant differences in labor allocation and revenue of both cocoa and food crops among parcels under different land tenure institutions. These results support the hypothesis that management incentives of cocoa fields, but not food crop fields, tend to be equalized due to the incentive-enhancing effects of granting secure land rights after efforts to plant cocoa trees are expended.