Fighting a global struggle on the local level - Determinants, consequences and perspectives of land reform politics in newly industrializing countries – A comparison of the Indian and South African case
My study focuses on the interactions of different actors involved in land reform programs in India and South Africa. In both countries progressive and far-reaching legislation has been introduced to alter the structures of agricultural land holdings. In both countries the land reform policies have failed to reach their aims by a long shot. Two questions arise from this fact:
1. Why have the land reform programs failed (so far)?
2. What conditions might lead to a successful implementation of land reform?
The question of why the reform programs did not reach the desired goals has been researched extensively in both cases and a number of plausible answers have been found which I will present in my study. The question of how land redistribution might actually be implemented though is neither sufficiently investigated nor satisfyingly answered. It is the objective of my doctoral study to answer this question with a special focus on the role of NGOs in the implementation process. Research I conducted on the South African land reform program for my Diploma study has shown that landless people in the South African context were able to achieve land redistribution within an unfavourable institutional framework by changing the mode of interaction between the different actors involved. By conducting case studies in India and South Africa researching cases with variation on the y-variable (that is the redistribution of land in a specific case) and comparing the cases among each other on a national as well as transnational level I will determine whether recurring patterns can be found in successful or respectively unsuccessful cases and if these patterns are bound to the specific regional/national context or can be found in both countries and across states/provinces. I will complement my case study research with expert interviews and extensive literature research in order to establish the institutional framework of land reform and the specific identities of the different actors involved in its implementation. Ideally this enables me to draw up empirically founded recommendations for future land redistribution struggles. The guiding question for my research reads: „What is the role of non-governmental actors in land reform processes in India and South Africa and what kind of recommendations for action can be made from an analysis of actors and institutions with regard to the future role of non-governmental actors in reform processes in these countries? Specifically, how can NGOs facilitate the implementation of land reform on the ground?”