PROPERTY RIGHTS IN THE POSTCOLONIAL WORLD

Abstract

Private property rights are the key to economic development. They assist economic actors in forming reasonable expectations in their transactions with others and incentivize users of property to internalize the costs of their operations. However, in many cases, and especially in the case of land, private property rights must be carved out of preexisting communal property rights. Some enclosure of the commons, some divvying up of the common lot into private parcels is required. Doing so incurs vast administrative costs to appraise the value of the property and assign it to private individuals. Most often, the only apparatus capable of carrying out such a project is that institution that holds a monopoly on the use of force. Thus, major shifts in property rights regimes tend to be carried out by government bureaucracies. It is at this juncture that the historical development of property rights regimes between non-colonized and colonized societies is split. In non-colonized societies, the process of enclosure was carried out over long periods by domestic governments; but in colonized societies, the communal property was privatized all at once, and generally for the benefit of colonizers, not natives. The shock of imperialist violence creates an antipathy toward colonizers and, by extension, their economic regimes. Thus, when independence is achieved by colonized people and a new redistribution of property is required, the practice of privatization is maligned, and the collectivization of property is favored. However, such regimes reproduce the incentive structure of the commons, leading inevitably to the tragedy of underdevelopment.