Agricultural land redistribution: toward greater consensus, edited by Hans P. Binswanger-Mkhize, Camille Bourguignon and Rogier J.E. van den Brink, Washington, DC, World Bank, 2009, pp. xxii + 464, US$40, ISBN 9780821376270.
This is an unusual and intriguing book, as well as being informative about a range of land-reform experiences. It has something of a southern African emphasis, where two of the editors have done much work, but also provides handy comparisons with chapters on major cases: China, India, Brazil and the Philippines. There are also chapters on general themes such as land taxes, policy design, and monitoring and evaluation, as well as introductory chapters providing a comparative historical context.
It is unusual in that it is a World Bank (WB) publication, with the editors all associated with the Bank or its policies, and a couple of other WB staff contributing, but that among the other authors of chapters some have been known as trenchant critics of Bank proposals about land reform – Jun Borras (Editor of Journal of Peasant Studies), Sam Moyo from Zimbabwe, Karuti Kanyinga of Kenya and Edward Lahiff on South Africa. Other contributors include Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) staffers, and independent consultants.
The sense in which it is intriguing is evident in the subtitle of the volume and, in a different phrasing in that of the opening chapter, ‘The growing consensus on the importance of land reform’. This review is mainly organised around the questions implied: does the volume reveal a consensus, and if so, over what? The one thing that all of these specialists on land redistribution, especially the ‘critics’, are likely to agree on is its importance. It would be welcome news if there were evidence that the Bank in its entirety now shares that view, clearly embraced by some of its representatives in this work. We can explore how far the book and the contributions of some of its own specialists indicate that, but the proof of the pudding of how far this priority is evident in the Bank's wider practice, given the more general emphases on neo-liberal policies and limiting the role of the state, remains to be explored. The more crucial question is whether there is any coming together of some World Bank personnel and others on how actually to approach this important topic of land reform.
The one country where the volume might have tested the degree of consensus is South Africa, which is the subject of a chapter by a critic and by an existing and a former WB official and an ex-government official, as well as a regional comparative chapter by Sam Moyo. But the chance to compare perspectives is muffed when the second chapter on South Africa ‘does not attempt to develop an independent line of argument … [just to] offer additional insights’ (p. 201). On scrutiny, the chapters agree in critiquing performance as enormously behind schedule, inappropriate models and lack of post-transfer support, leading to unsuccessful utilisation of the land transferred and inadequate provision of livelihoods. It is also probably true as the second chapter claims, that there is a ‘broad-based consensus’ on the urgent need for a radically different approach, and even on some elements of a new strategy. The WB opinions partly go along with proposals for compulsory purchase rather than only voluntary market purchase; and contributors also agree in calling for a ‘smallholder strategy’. But they omit mention of one of Lahiff's chapter's prescriptions that such a strategy needs to reject the ‘bureaucratic imposition of collectivist models loosely based on existing commercial operators’ (p. 195). This contradictory outcome of the heavily ‘market-based’ approach, which he rightly picks out as a crucial cause of ‘failure’ and as a major constraint on ‘smallholderism’, is not picked up by the WB/government officials. They also avoid mentioning the one major institutional difference in how the same ‘willing buyer, willing seller’ approach pursued in Kenya and Zimbabwe was applied in South Africa: the avoidance of having a state institution acquire the land so as to sub-divide it. That part of the strategy was urged on South Africa in the mid-1990s by World Bank officials, and it is still advocated as a general approach in the historical introductory chapter of this volume, ‘as it combines purchase and land allocations into a single step, simplifying and accelerating the process’ (p. 78, emphasis added). How can any informed writers make such a statement after 16 years of experience of the one case of this approach in Africa, which has been marked by the snail-like progress and bureaucratic complexity that has characterised South Africa?
This volume does at least present a number of different country experiences alongside each other, and does contain a range of perspectives, as well as an opportunity to engage with the World Bank. That such discourse is leading to a consensus beyond just noting the importance of land redistribution still remains to be proved, and the volume does not help, for it avoids any summarising conclusions.