Since 2000, many African countries have adopted land tenure reforms that aim at comprehensive land registration (or certification) and titling. Much work in political science and in the advocacy literature identifies recipients of land certificates or titles as ‘programme beneficiaries’, and political scientists have modelled titling programmes as a form of distributive politics. In practice, however, rural land registration programmes are often divisive and difficult to implement. This paper tackles the apparent puzzle of friction around rural land certification. We study Côte d'Ivoire's rocky history of land certification from 2004 to 2017 to identify political economy variables that may give rise to heterogeneous and even conflicting preferences around certification. Regional inequalities, social inequalities, and regional variation in pre-existing land tenure institutions are factors that help account for friction or even resistance around land titling, and thus the difficult politics that may arise around land tenure reform. Land certification is not a public good or a private good for everyone.

中文翻译：

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土地认证的推动、拉动和后退：科特迪瓦试点认证项目的区域动态

自 2000 年以来，许多非洲国家采取了旨在全面土地登记（或认证）和所有权的土地使用权改革。政治学和宣传文献中的许多工作将土地证书或所有权的接受者确定为“计划受益人”，政治学家将所有权计划建模为分配政治的一种形式。然而，在实践中，农村土地登记计划往往存在分歧，难以实施。本文解决了围绕农村土地认证的明显摩擦难题。我们研究了科特迪瓦从 2004 年到 2017 年土地认证的坎坷历史，以确定可能导致对认证的异质甚至冲突偏好的政治经济变量。地区不平等、社会不平等、现有土地权属制度的地区差异和地区差异有助于解释围绕土地所有权的摩擦甚至阻力，从而导致围绕土地权属改革可能出现的困难政治。土地认证对每个人来说都不是公共物品或私人物品。