www.prosperity.com - Pathways to Prosperity - Land Reform Playbook

8 LAND REFORM PLAYBOOK Background to Land Reform In around the 1940s, many scholars and policymakers began to advocate land redistribution to tackle poverty and inequality in the developing world and encourage development.23 Land reform can fundamentally transform the material and social well-being of the poor in develop- ing countries. [...] The same story played out in Eastern Europe during the time of the Soviet Union and in much of South America in the latter half of the twentieth century. [...] In many of these countries, the roots of contemporary underdevelopment and authoritarianism can be traced back to the political allocation of property and property rights that followed land reform. [...] This discrimination and lack of responsiveness erode the state’s legitimacy and contribute to rejection of the state’s rules and use of the informal market. [...] 17 LEGATUM INSTITUTE Property Rights and Democracy in Portugal Portugal implemented a mass redistribution of property in the context of its revolution in the mid- 1970s and, in the 1980s, strengthened property rights under democracy in a way that brought it into the fold of what became the European Union.