8 - Are Property Rights a Cause or Consequence of Political Order?

Summary

Chapter 8 concludes the book with a substantive discussion of a key puzzle in the comparative politics and political economy literature: Is property security a cause or consequence of political order? Much of the property rights literature views the creation of legal rights as a solution to what ails society, such as underinvestment, both public and private. Investment, in turn, is understood to be likely to result in prosperity and eventually political order. In our conclusion, we argue that it makes more sense to conceptualize political order and political institutions that limit the scope of government as a cause rather than consequence of property security. This conclusion does not deny the possibility of self-governance. But it does mean that the creation of legal rights requires that we think clearly about features of the state. The straightforward implication of our analysis is that the domestic and international policymakers should scale back land titling, relying instead on communities until there is progress in establishing robust, inclusive political institutions at higher levels of government.