The World Bank’s Land Policy Framework,

The postcolonial State’s implementation strategy to enhance agricultural policy resonates with the World Bank approach to land reform where the land redistribution model based on a willing seller/willing buyer approach is promoted as the benchmark for land reform. In 2003, the Land Policy Division of the World Bank

39 _{See for example Government of Malawi, note 15, 3. This position was confirmed by a senior officer}

commissioned a blueprint on land policy frameworks.40 The World Bank’s land policy framework of 2003 emerges in the shadow of the Land Reform Policy Paper, 1975 and two key draft reports; the Land Institutions and Land Policy and the Land Policy for Pro–Poor Development, both of 2002, where it was recognized that land reform plays a key role in the wider macroeconomic framework in promoting economic growth and good governance.41 This recognition jolted the Bank into taking a leading role in setting the policy agenda in land reform. The recognition culminated, as it were, in the land policy framework of 2003.42 The land policy framework of the 2003 advocates a supposedly ‘human–centred approach’ to land reform. In this respect, the Division contends that there is need for ‘secure property rights’ where there is legal recognition of ‘customary’ tenure systems.43 The Division makes this conclusion following findings that there is no empirical evidence between individual title and economic growth.44 The Division recognizes a ‘bundle of property rights’ which may comprise access rights, usufruct or full ownership.45 The Division also acknowledges that a ‘unitary model of the household is often inappropriate’ and that ‘formal title is not always necessary or sufficient for high levels of security of tenure’.46

Hence, the major shift in the Bank’s 2003 paper is the consistent reference to ‘secure property rights’ as opposed to ‘formalized title’.

Four key issues are identified under the land policy framework of 2003 to ensure that a land reform makes ‘meaningful’ contribution to the economic growth of a country: the promotion of owner–operated farms for increased agricultural productivity; security of land tenure; land disputes as disincentives to investment; and promotion of a credit market based on land as collateral.47

The views of the Bank’s Land Policy Division as contained in the land policy framework of 2003 are not shared by its Macroeconomic, and the Environment and Sustainability Divisions. Anne Whitehead and Dzodzi Tsikata conclude that the

40 _{See World Bank, Introduction, note 1.}

41 _{See A Manji, Introduction, note 4, 54–57; and K Deininger & H Binswanger, Introduction, note 44.}

42

See A Manji, above, 54–61.

43 _{See World Bank, note 40.}

44 _{See A Whitehead & D Tsikata ‘Policy Discourses on Women’s Rights in sub–Saharan Africa: The}

Implications of the Return of the Customary’ (2003) 3(1) Journal of Agrarian Change 67, 82.

45

See World Bank, note 40, 25.

46 _{See World Bank, note 40, 38–39.}

Macroeconomic, and the Environment and Sustainability Divisions of the Bank respectively are still rooted in the property rights concept under the Bank’s seminal paper on land of 1975.48 Hence, these Divisions argue that communal forms of property ownership lead to an inefficient market and over–exploitation and suggest that the modernization of the ‘customary’ space must remain the central pillar of the implementation of land reform in political economies such as Malawi.49 The concerns and observations of the Land Policy Division of the Bank seem to have been overridden by the ‘philosophy’ within the Macroeconomic, and the Environmental and Sustainability Divisions of the Bank.

Alvaro Santos suggests that the diametrically polarized positions by different divisions of the Bank are not atypical. He points out that there is often a lack of consensus within the Bank generally due to ‘institutional inertia and constraints, groups’ struggles and competition over resources and prestige, and the relationship between groups at the Bank and the governments of borrowing countries.’50 While the internal dynamics in the Bank reveal a lack of consensus, the ‘dissensus’ is often reduced under the rubric of the ‘rule of law’.

The absence of consensus within the Bank (especially) means that the nature of land reform, the implementation of reforms in aid–dependent and heavily indebted economies (symptomatic of most postcolonial states) is highly inconsistent and contradictory.51 However, Joel Ngugi argues that the contradiction in the Bank represents a strength since any traits of ‘systemism’ are ‘decentred’ and, in the process, mask its hegemonic character.52 This suggests that the contradiction may be exploited by the Bank to its ‘advantage’.

While the rhetoric in the Land Policy Division is for a ‘human–centred approach’ to land reform, the implementation strategy suggests deference to the philosophy of the Macroeconomic, and the Environment and Sustainability Divisions of the Bank. In relation to the broader development agenda, Kerry Rittich has

48

See A Whitehead & D Tsikata, note 44, 80–88.

49 _{A Whitehead & D Tsikata, note 44, 82.}

50 _{See A Santos ‘The World Bank’s Uses of the “Rule of Law” Promise in Economic Development’ in}

D Trubek & A Santos (eds.), Introduction, note 47, 253–300, 255.

51

See A Whitehead & D Tsikata, note 44, 88.

52 _{See J Ngugi ‘The World Bank and the Ideology of Reform and Development in International}

observed that the ‘basic institutional architecture’ and the ‘core legal reform agenda’ of the international financial institutions have not changed.53

Notwithstanding the dissensus within the Bank, the dissensus at the local Malawian space is ameliorated in two ways. First, the quest for the resolution of the land question is immersed in the broader context of poverty reduction. Second, the coalescing of land reform and poverty reduction leads to an even broader agenda under the rubric of ‘good governance’. The focus on poverty reduction is one way of marginalizing the land question. Suffice it to say that ‘good governance’ is contested territory and its critics consider it a legitimation apparatus for an ‘imperial’ agenda.54 One of the critics, Antony Anghie, has observed that the ‘good governance’ initiative is a basic task for the ‘reproduction of principles and institutions’ for ‘progress’ and ‘stability’ in the South.55

The point can still be made that the strategic iteration by the Bretton Woods Institutions under the rubric of good governance ensures that their various frameworks are in apparent symmetry at both the global and the local spaces.

B

The Micro Level Analysis of Predatory Calculated Conformity