The Political Trap of Land Titling: Evidence from the Brazilian Amazon

• In Event: Governance in Action: Comparative Studies of Bureaucracy and Policy

Abstract

Under what circumstances might land titling programs hinder rather than promote the well-being of marginalized rural communities?What is the political feedback of these policies?My research addresses a classic debate in the property rights literature to examine the effects of land titling policies in the Brazilian Amazon.I argue that autonomy granted by individual land titles may come at the expense of weakening community networks and diminishing their legibility to an inefficient but protective state, which, in a context of aggressive expansion of agribusiness, could leave peasants more vulnerable.I test this argument by leveraging spatial and temporal variation in granting individual land titles to rural settlements in Brazil.Using a difference-in-differences design,I examine the effect of land titles across different dimensions of electoral behavior using precinct electoral data.I complement my community-level analysis with original household survey data(n=2,000) gathered from 195 rural communities in Pará.My research seeks to bridge the gap between traditional scholarship on land reforms and the emerging literature on the territorial rights of marginalized rural populations amid a land rush and increasing environmental concerns.While previous studies have predominantly examined the violent conflicts arising from these pressures, this research explores non-violent mechanisms through which state and non-state actors may threaten the livelihoods of these communities.

Author

• Debora Duque, Brown University