Abstract
Scholars and policymakers prescribe legal titling to improve prospects for economic development and political order. However, a public choice literature exists that has long recognized that self-governance often works well and that the state may not be able to improve upon local economic institutions at reasonable cost. Although the implication that legal titling should proceed with caution is seemingly straightforward, the literature on legal titling does not take anarchy seriously as a policy option. In addition, there is a public choice literature that presumes the state is the most important source of property rights. This essay fills this gap in the property rights literature by applying the concept of “efficient anarchy” to legal titling in Afghanistan. Original fieldwork evidence from rural Afghanistan suggests that anarchy of land governance is a better option than legal titling. The essay concludes by opening up the black box of state building by explaining why it often makes sense to sequence improvements in political capacity and political constraints prior to investing in legal titling.
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Notes
Even recent theoretical studies that consider the challenges confronting land registration (Arruñada 2014) do not explicitly consider anarchy as an alternative to land registration.
Stringham (2014) reminds us that both Hayek and Mises recognized an important role for the state in providing law and in enforcing property rights. In this regard, the libertarian political economy and the old institutional economics share common ground.
Clay and Wright (2005) question the effectiveness of such spontaneously arising property institutions, viewing instead state-backed legal rights as a source of efficiency in the frontier mining sector.
The literature on the transplant effect suggests that whether or not transplanted institutions “stick” in their new context depends upon preexisting institutional capacity, such as a competent bureaucracy, to implement these new institutions (Berkowitz et al. 2001, 2003). Acemoglu and Jackson (2014) suggest that transplants will also depend on fit with social norms. Where such capacity exists and social norms are receptive to a formal system of private property rights, the cost of legal titling will be less than it would be otherwise.
Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, Central Statistics Organization.
Afghanistan comprises 34 provinces. The provinces visited included Balkh and Kunduz in the northern part of the country, Bamiyan in the center, Kabul and Nangarhar in the east (Nangarhar borders Pakistan), and Herat in the west. Kandahar was selected as a field research site but was not visited due to a deteriorating security situation.
Coburn (2011), for example, provides an ethnographic account of norms governing market transactions in Afghanistan by studying a single village.
Hanifi (2011) considers formal rules governing trade in historical perspective but does not consider property rights or informal institutions.
Anderson (1978) suggests that landowners, viewed by communists as vestiges of feudalism, were self-financed public servants and that taking their property undermined the quality of village governance.
In some areas the position of malik is referred to as arbab, namayenda, qaryadar, wakil, or simply as an elder (spingar, rish-e safid, mu-ye safid, oq soqol). We refer to these positions by the generic term “malik” for clarity of exposition.
Our survey accounted for the diverse nomenclature with which Afghans describe their customary representatives.
Mukhopadhyay (2013) provides compelling evidence that strongmen can govern effectively at a regional level. Our fieldwork interviews did not involve regional strongmen, but rather strongmen that operated on a smaller scale. The smaller scale of the strongmen interviewed is perhaps one reason why we found that they are more like roving bandits, or what Wintrobe (1998) called “tinpot” dictators.
The word Kuchi derives from the Persian verb “to migrate” (Kuchidan). Kuchi are mainly Pashtun.
Interview, District Governor, Panjab District, Bamiyan Province.
Focus group discussion, Bamiyan Province. Three women offered similar accounts.
Interview, female villager, Anjil District, Herat Province.
Focus group discussion, malik, Anjil District, Herat Province.
Interview, female villager, Bamiyan Center, Bamiyan Province.
The National Rural Vulnerability Assessment survey and the Central Statistics Organization of Afghanistan provide data on village governance.
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Acknowledgments
We are grateful to Peter T. Leeson and two anonymous reviewers for exceptionally useful comments and suggestions. We benefitted from discussions on anarchy and self-governance with Dan Berkowitz, Dan Bromley, Evgeny Finkel, Ed Friedman, Scott Gehlbach, Paul Lundberg, Werner Troesken, and Dave Weimer. M. Yasin Safar and J. David Stanfield provided invaluable insight into land governance in Afghanistan. This research would not have been possible without generous support and encouragement from Democracy International, the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit, and incredible research assistance provided by M. Hassan Wafaey, Fauzia Rahimi, Ghulam Sakhi Frozish, Bahir Sadat, Nasreen Quraishi, and Gulalai Karimi.
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Murtazashvili, I., Murtazashvili, J. Anarchy, self-governance, and legal titling. Public Choice 162, 287–305 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11127-014-0222-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11127-014-0222-y