Land Reform and Rural Rebellion: A Test of Hunting's Thesis

土地改革被描绘成第三世界农村不稳定的补救办法，理由是它减轻了被认为是社会不稳定根源的极端不平等。然而，土地改革很少能成功地减少正在进行的内战，也没有阻止革命挑战在其后果中反复出现。部分问题在于，土地改革往往伴随着镇压性暴力。因此，土地改革必须在农民的“心灵和思想斗争”中与镇压暴力竞争。这个项目测试了土地改革和镇压暴力对农民政治忠诚的竞争效应模型。从20世纪80年代到90年代在萨尔瓦多收集的数据用于测试该模型。这些数据包括这一时期的选举结果、土地改革受益者、镇压、叛乱和战斗暴力以及国家事件的受害者。这些数据为广泛接受的不平等与不稳定之间的联系以及土地改革应恢复农村稳定的必然命题提供了直接的经验证据。

Land reform has been portrayed as a remedy for rural instability in the Third World on the grounds that it alleviates the extremes of inequality that are thought to be the root causes of social instability. However, rarely has land reform succeeded in abating an on-going civil war nor has land reform precluded revolutionary challenges from recurring in its aftermath. Part of the problem is that agrarian reform is often accompanied by repressive violence. Thus land reform must compete with repressive violence in the `struggle for the hearts and minds` of the peasantry. This project tests a model of the competing effects of land reform and repressive violence on the political loyalties of peasants. Data collected from El Salvador from the 1980s through the 1990s is used to test the model. These data include election results, land reform beneficiaries, victims of repressive, insurgent and combat violence and national events over this time period. These data provide direct empirical evidence on the widely accepted linkage between inequality and instability and the corollary proposition that land reform should restore rural stability.