Suchergebnisse

AbstractThe continuing economic stagnation of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) has typically been explained in terms of the resource‐curse thesis. Yet, without analyzing the geographical constraints of MENA and the institutions of the region, particularly ones that pertain to land and property rights, this explanation is partial at best. Specifically addressing the structural constraints on using land for economic transformation, we offer a new explanation for the underdevelopment of MENA. We show that transformation in agriculture is inhibited by fuzzy property rights in land that were inherited from colonial and post‐colonial agricultural policies. Political‐economic transformation in MENA could unleash the power of land in the region.

Contributors -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction / Rosa Congost, Jorge Gelman and Rui Santos -- Migration and accommodation of property rights in the Portuguese Eastern Empire, sixteenth-nineteenth centuries / José Vicente Serrão and Eugénia Rodrigues -- Alternative uses of land and re-negotiation of property rights : Scandinavian examples, 1750-2000 / Mats Morell -- Institutional innovations and economic development in Lombardy, eighteenth-twentieth centuries / Andrea M. Locatelli and Paolo Tedeschi -- The shift to "modern" and its consequences : changes in property rights and land wealth inequality in Buenos Aires, 1839-1914 / Julio Djenderedjian and Daniel Santilli -- Taming the platypus : adaptations of the colonia tenancy contract to a changing context in nineteenth-century Madeira / Benedita Câmara and Rui Santos -- Demythologizing and de-idealizing the commons : Ostrom's eight design principles and the irrigation institutions in eastern Spain / Samuel Garrido -- Hopes of recovery : struggles over the right to common lands in the Spanish countryside, 1931-1936 / Iñaki Iriarte-Goñi and José-Miguel Lana -- Hurdles to reunification : cultural memories and control over property in post-socialist rural East Germany / Joyce E. Bromley and Axel Wolz -- Property rights in land : institutions, social appropriations, and socioeconomic outcomes / Rosa Congost, Jorge Gelman and Rui Santos -- Index

This book constitutes volume one of a two volume examination of development community land issues in Southern Africa. In this volume, Ben Chigara undertakes a holistic inter-disciplinary evaluation of the legitimacy of colonial and emergent post-colonial rule property rights in affected States of the Southern African Development Community (SADC). It particularly focuses onintensifying litigation in national courts, the SADC Tribunal, and more recently the Washington based International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) regarding counter claims to title to property. The book examines cultural, economic and political drivers at the core of SADC land issues, focusing on their significance and potential to contribute to the discovery of a new, sustainable land relations policy that guarantees social justice in the distribution of all the advantages and disadvantages relating to the allocation and use of land. Chigara shows that persistent systematic administrative failures by pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial authorities have made for a very complex challenge that requires Solomonic tools that neither the Courts alone, nor human rights centric morality alone could resolutely attend. The book recommends a sophisticated systematic new approach to SADC land issues, which is developed in volume two, Re-conceiving Property Rights in the New Millennium. This book will be of great interest to students and researchers of Property and Conveyancing Law, Human Rights Law and Land Law.