ABSTRACT

The use of agrarian reform within civil war to diminish insurgent support and violence has been a key topic within conflict scholarship, particularly in rural societies. Yet, this research has largely overlooked the ways in which the dynamics of counterinsurgency itself shapes land reform institutions – the procedures governing redistribution and legalization. Focusing on Nicaragua’s Contra War (1980–1990) and its longer-term effects, this article illustrates how counterinsurgent warfare can prompt state elites to refashion the rules of agrarian reform and titling in ways that ultimately undermine the state’s ability to regulate land tenure. As the perceived threat posed by the Contra insurgency deepened and peasant producers defected to rebels’ side, the highly centralized revolutionary coalition in power implemented alternative rules structuring land provision to recover rural support and preserve incumbent political power. These new rules permitted the individual and provisional titling of unregistered parcels, widening the property rights gap. The case thus illustrates that the obstacles to wartime agrarian reform may not emerge from state weakness or incompetence, but from how strategic wartime imperatives perversely remake the rules of land redistribution and titling.

摘要

在内战期间利用土地改革来减少叛乱分子的支持和暴力一直是冲突学术中的一个关键主题，特别是在农村社会。然而，这项研究在很大程度上忽视了反叛乱本身的动力塑造土地改革制度的方式——管理再分配和合法化的程序。本文重点关注尼加拉瓜的反叛战争（1980-1990）及其长期影响，阐述了平叛战争如何促使国家精英重塑土地改革和所有权规则，最终削弱国家监管土地保有权的能力。随着反对派叛乱造成的威胁加深，农民生产者叛逃到叛乱分子一边，权力高度集权的革命联盟实施了构建土地供应的替代规则，以恢复农村支持并维护现任政治权力。这些新规则允许对未注册的土地进行单独和临时所有权，从而扩大了产权差距。因此，这个案例说明，战时土地改革的障碍可能不是来自国家的软弱或无能，而是来自战时战略要务如何反常地重新制定土地重新分配和所有权规则。