A belated follow-up to the discussion on land reform in Latin America which we'll return to in the week on asset reforms..the real discussion in response to that question is long and complicated and deserving of a more complete hearing.
I think Ramona's argument that land reform is most likely in countries that are ethnically or racially homogenous Iie, Asia versus Latin America) may be a useful hypothesis (it's an argument that's often made about any kind of large-scale social or economic policy reform --ie, why welfare state policies are more generous in Scandinavia that in more ethnically pluralist societies).
But here's why I would raise some overall doubts about it as at least incomplete or mis-specified. First, it doesn't help explain why no substantive land reform in countries that are more ethnically homogenous (ie, the Philippines), suggesting it may be something other than the homogeneity issue. Second, I think one can make the argument that land reform in Latin America has been substantial at various times -- Mexico, Peru under Velasco, Colombia, Nicaragua, Cuba, and land reforms that transferred substantial territory to indigenous communities in both Bolivia and Ecuador in the 1990s. Even Brazil's land reforms have been not insignificant, if smaller.
I think the reality that many Latin American land reforms were either the outcome of revolution or in response to significant rural mobilization/unrest (or as a means to consolidate a new regime as in Velasco in Peru) is paralleled in Asia -- South Korea and Taiwan were respodning to threats to the regime, threats lead by peasant mobilization. I would argue more that it was the scale and scope of rural threat prior to industrialization that would determine the degree to which large-scale land reform occurred..(and why many of the Latin American land reforms involved transfer of public lands rather than confiscatory land reforms as in Asia or post-revolutionary situations).
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