Land and Loyalty: Security and the Development of Property Rights in Thailand
Tomas Larsson
Abstract
Domestic and international development strategies often focus on private ownership as a crucial anchor for long-term investment; the security of property rights provides a foundation for capitalist expansion. In recent years, Thailand's policies have been hailed as a prime example of how granting formal land rights to poor farmers in low-income countries can result in economic benefits. But the country provides a puzzle: Thailand faced major security threats from colonial powers in the nineteenth century and from communism in the twentieth century, yet only in the latter case did the governmen ... More
Domestic and international development strategies often focus on private ownership as a crucial anchor for long-term investment; the security of property rights provides a foundation for capitalist expansion. In recent years, Thailand's policies have been hailed as a prime example of how granting formal land rights to poor farmers in low-income countries can result in economic benefits. But the country provides a puzzle: Thailand faced major security threats from colonial powers in the nineteenth century and from communism in the twentieth century, yet only in the latter case did the government respond with pro-development tactics. This book argues that institutional underdevelopment may prove, under certain circumstances, a strategic advantage rather than a weakness, and that external threats play an important role in shaping the development of property regimes. Security concerns often guide economic policy. The domestic legacies, legal and socioeconomic, resulting from state responses to the outside world shape and limit the strategies available to politicians. The book situates the experiences of Thailand in comparative perspective by contrasting them with the trajectory of property rights in Japan, Burma, and the Philippines.
Keywords:
private ownership,
institutional underdevelopment,
property rights,
security threats,
Thailand,
land rights,
economic policy,
Japan,
Burma,
Philippines
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2012 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780801450815 |
| Published to Cornell Scholarship Online: August 2016 |
DOI:10.7591/cornell/9780801450815.001.0001 |
