Land, the State, and War

Property Institutions and Political Order in Afghanistan

Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili, Ilia Murtazashvili

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781108493413
• eBook ISBN: 9781108639477
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Political Economy
• Index: Economics

Although today's richest countries tend to have long histories of secure private property rights, legal-titling projects do little to improve the economic and political well-being of those in the developing world. This book employs a historical narrative based on secondary literature, fieldwork across thirty villages, and a nationally representative survey to explore how private property institutions develop, how they are maintained, and their relationship to the state and state-building within the context of Afghanistan. In this predominantly rural society, citizens cannot rely on the state to enforce their claims to ownership. Instead, they rely on community-based land registration, which has a long and stable history and is often more effective at protecting private property rights than state registration. In addition to contributing significantly to the literature on Afghanistan, this book makes a valuable contribution to the literature on property rights and state governance from the new institutional economics perspective.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Photographs and Drawings
• List of Maps
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgments
• Glossary
• List of Abbreviations
• Chronology of Events
• 1 Introduction
• 2 A Theory of Property Rights
• 3 Property Rights and State Building
• 4 Property Rights and War
• 5 Self-governance of Property Rights
• 6 Self-governance, War, and the Commons
• 7 Self-governance, Legal Titling, and the State
• 8 Are Property Rights a Cause or Consequence of Political Order?
• Appendix
• References
• Index