Land and Legibility: When Do Citizens Expect Property Rights to Be Secure?

• In Event: Territory, Politics, and Power in Africa

Abstract

Policymakers and donors promote land titling—replacing informal property rights with statutory documents—as an intervention to increase tenure security in low-income countries of Africa and Southeast Asia. Yet, in practice, whether titling actually increases perceptions of tenure security relative to informal land rights varies widely. Individual and community characteristics, such as literacy levels, political connectedness, and ethnic heterogeneity may impact demand for land titles. Further, perceptions of land titling depend, in part, on whether citizens expect enforcement of land rights by the state or local authorities such as chiefs, where titling may be less desirable in areas with low state capacity for enforcement. This research examines how individuals formulate property rights preferences in Malawi, a context of limited but rapidly increasing land titling. We use a survey experiment to disentangle two key characteristics of property rights that are often conflated in studies of land titling: written documents and state authority. Doing so reveals that citizens have an overwhelming preference for written documents, independent of the authorities involved. In addition, a conjoint survey experimental design allows us to gauge the impact of other key variables that have been shown to affect tenure security, including gender, ethnicity, and community social capital. These findings highlight the power of legibility in shaping citizens’ evaluations of their land rights.

Authors

• Melanie Lauren Phillips, University of California, Berkeley

• Karen E. Ferree, University of California, San Diego

• Lauren Honig, Boston College

• Ellen M. Lust, University of Gothenburg