Power, Property Rights and the Issue of Land Reform: A General Case Illustrated with Reference to Bangladesh

The argument for land reform is most persuasive when the proposed land reform promises not only to improve distribution but also to increase growth and efficiency. Such is the promise in the GKI advocacy of radical redistributive land reform. In this paper, first (a) the Griffin, Khan and Ickowitz (GKI) and (b) World Bank positions on land reform are compared, and their points of agreement and disagreement identified. Secondly, the political economy of Bangladesh is examined to evaluate the appropriateness of these two competing neoclassical approaches for understanding the constraints in the agrarian sector. Thirdly, it is argued that the anomalous evidence on land transactions and productivity in Bangladesh cannot be easily accommodated within purely economic models of markets in the way that the neoclassical approach attempts. Paradoxically, both the World Bank's focus on institutional reform and GKI's focus on radical land reform are derived from such attempts and both suffer from similar empirical and theoretical problems. There is a strong case for going back to Brenner-type political economy approaches for understanding the dynamism and constraints facing agrarian transitions. Such an approach puts the analysis of class and power at the centre stage of an analysis of structure and change in the agrarian economy, and focuses on the distribution of power that prevents primitive accumulation in some countries leading to a capitalist transformation.