Shifting visions of property under competing political regimes: changing uses of Côte d'Ivoire's 1998 land law

Boone, Catherine ORCID: 0000-0001-5324-7814 (2018) Shifting visions of property under competing political regimes: changing uses of Côte d'Ivoire's 1998 land law. Journal of Modern African Studies, 56 (2). pp. 189-216. ISSN 0022-278X

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Abstract

Land law reform through registration and titling is often viewed as a technocratic, good-governance step toward building market economies and depoliticizing land transactions. In actual practice, however, land registration and titling programs can be highly partisan, bitterly contentious, and carried forward by political logics that diverge strongly from the market-enhancing vision. This paper uses evidence from Côte d'Ivoire to support and develop this claim. In Côte d'Ivoire after 1990, multiple, opposing political logics drove land law reform as it was pursued by successive governments representing rival coalitions of the national electorate. Between the mid-1990s and 2016, different logics -- alternatively privileging user rights, the ethnic land rights of autochthones, and finally a state-building logic -- prevailed in succession as national government crafted and then sought to implement the new 1998 land law. The case underscores the extent to which deeply political questions are implicated in land registration and titling policies.

Item Type:	Article
Official URL:	https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of...
Additional Information:	© 2017 Cambridge University Press
Divisions:	International Development
Subjects:	D History General and Old World > DT Africa K Law > K Law (General)
Date Deposited:	25 Jan 2018 15:43
Last Modified:	18 Apr 2024 06:27
Funders:	STICERD
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/86544

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