Land and Legibility: When Do Citizens Expect Secure Property Rights in Weak States?
By Karen E. Ferree, University of California, San Diego, Lauren Honig, Boston College, Ellen Lust, University of Gothenburg, and Melanie L. Phillips, University of California, Berkeley
Legibility and political authority are often conflated in debates over formalization processes, including land titling. This can lead to a fundamental misunderstanding of what it is that citizens anticipate would strengthen their property rights. This study examines the effects of legibility on citizens’ evaluations of property rights in Malawi, a country with limited but increasing land titling. We argue that legibility is a strategic resource for citizens, which has value in itself. To disentangle the effects of legibility and authority on tenure security, we employ a survey experiment. Our findings show that respondents perceived land with written property rights to be more secure and more desirable regardless of whether a state or customary authority granted these land rights. In contrast to scholarship that examines legibility as a technology of state control, this research suggests that legibility can help citizens advance their interests.