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From a neo-liberal, neo-classical paradigm, secure, formal and private property rights are crucial to fostering sustained development. Institutions that fail to respond to shifting socio-economic opportunities are thus forced to make new arrangements. The enigma is posed by developments on the ground. Why would the removal of authoritarian institutions during the Arab Spring or Iraq War not increase market efficiency but rather cause the reverse, while China and India, despite persisting insecure, informal and common institutions, featured sustained growth? This collection posits that understanding these paradoxes requires a refocusing from form to function, detached from normative assumptions about institutional appearance. In so doing, three things are accomplished. First, starting from case studies on land, it is ascertained that the argument can be meaningfully extended to labour, capital and beyond. Second, the argument validates the 'Credibility Thesis' - that is, once institutions persist, they fulfil a function. Third, the collection studies 'development, broadly construed', by including the modes of production and beyond, the rural and urban, the developed and developing. This is why it reviews property rights from China and India, to Turkey, Mexico and Malaysia, covering issues such as customary rights and privatization, mining and pastoralism, dam-building and irrigation, but also state-owned banks, trade unions and notaries.
This book was originally published as a special issue of The Journal of Peasant Studies.
List of contents
1. Introduction: An endogenous theory of property rights: opening the black box of institutions
Peter Ho 2. Empty institutions, non-credibility and pastoralism: China's grazing ban, mining and ethnicity
Peter Ho 3. A conditional trinity as 'no-go' against non-credible development? Resettlement, customary rights and Malaysia's Kelau Dam
Bin Md Saman Nor-Hisham and Peter Ho 4. Local perceptions of grassland degradation in China: a socio-anthropological reading of endogenous knowledge and institutional credibility
Heng Zhao and Karlis Rokpelnis 5. Are civil-law notaries rent-seeking monopolists or essential market intermediaries? Endogenous development of a property rights institution in Mexico
Paavo Monkkonen 6. A history of institutional function: Mexican notaries and wealth distribution - Yucatan, 1850-1900
Juliette Levy 7. Rethinking labour market institutions in Indian industry: forms, functions and socio-historical contexts
Satoshi Miyamura 8. Credibility and class in the evolution of public banks: the case of Turkey
Thomas Marois and Ali R¿za Güngen 9. Secure rights and non-credibility: the paradoxical dynamics of canal irrigation in India
Peter P. Mollinga
About the author
Peter Ho is Full Professor at Tsinghua University, China, and Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands. He has published widely in the leading journals of development and planning (H-index: 29). Ho has worked extensively on the revision of 'Western' theories of development. He was named Fellow in China's 1000 Talents Program; awarded the Kapp Prize by EAEPE, one of the largest heterodox economics associations; and was awarded the Consolidator Grant by the European Research Council.
Summary
This collection reviews property rights from China and India, to Turkey, Mexico and Malaysia, covering issues such as customary rights and privatization, mining and pastoralism, dam-building and irrigation, state-owned banks, trade unions and notaries. It was originally published as a special issue of The Journal of Peasant Studies.
