Political economy in the design of land administration reform - a new approach
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2025
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Melbourne Authors
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Infrastructure Engineering
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PhD thesis
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Open Access
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© 2025 Anthony Francis Burns
Abstract
Population growth, urbanisation and climate change are all factors that have made it increasing difficult for governments to manage, allocate and permit the development and use of the finite land resource that is available in any society. Land administration is a key system that supports governments in doing this. The World Bank and other development partners have provided funding to support governments in implementing land administration reform and this support continues.
Major land administration reform projects are typically designed with a focus on finance and technology. Many land administration projects in the developing world succeed but some projects fail to create effective, sustainable transformative change in the way that land administration services are delivered. The reasons for this usually do not relate to problems with finance or technology but are often due to political economy factors such as the lack of clarity on the authority to allocate land and property, the lack of institutional cooperation and reluctance to share information and data, unwillingness of agencies to streamline business procedures and processes and resistance to change from staff and service providers.
This research reviews the current process for the design of land administration reform, sets out a political economy model for the design of land administration reform, provides an overview of political factors that might impact on or should be considered in the design of land administration reform. Approaches to consider political economy in the design of land administration reform are reviewed and the usefulness and viability of using political economy analysis in the design of land administration reform is confirmed in a policy Delphi survey. An innovative framework to systematically consider the use of political economy analysis in the design of land administration reform is developed and validated in a workshop involving a broad spectrum of land administration reform specialists.
There has not been a lot of research into the political economy of land administration, and this research fills an important gap. The research will be of interest to governments and development partners considering investing in major land administration reform initiatives and to the specialists designing and implementing land administration reform projects.
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Land policy, Land administration, Land Tenure, Land Administration reform, Political economy and land administration