Cornell Studies in Political Economy

Security and the Development of Property Rights in Thailand

Tomas Larsson

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780801464553
• Topic: Économie
• Subtopic: Politique économique

Domestic and international development strategies often focus on private ownership as a crucial anchor for long-term investment; the security of property rights provides a foundation for capitalist expansion. In recent years, Thailand's policies have been hailed as a prime example of how granting formal land rights to poor farmers in low-income countries can result in economic benefits. But the country provides a puzzle: Thailand faced major security threats from colonial powers in the nineteenth century and from communism in the twentieth century, yet only in the latter case did the government respond with pro-development tactics.

In Land and Loyalty, Tomas Larsson argues that institutional underdevelopment may prove, under certain circumstances, a strategic advantage rather than a weakness and that external threats play an important role in shaping the development of property regimes. Security concerns, he find, often guide economic policy. The domestic legacies, legal and socioeconomic, resulting from state responses to the outside world shape and limit the strategies available to politicians. While Larsson's extensive archival research findings are drawn from Thai sources, he situates the experiences of Thailand in comparative perspective by contrasting them with the trajectory of property rights in Japan, Burma, and the Philippines.

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SECURITIZATION AND INSTITUTIONAL DEVELOPMENT

What are the causes of economic development? Increasingly, scholars of political economy answer “institutions” in general and property rights institutions in particular. As Matthew Lange argues, “the protection of property rights is quite possibly the most basic type of social regulation necessary for market production and expansion” (2005, 58). Emphasizing the importance of private property, prominent economists have defined a “good” institution as “a social organization that ensures that a broad cross-section of the society has effective property rights” (Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson 2003, 86, emphasis in original). While the notion is not entirely novel, the Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto (2000) has popularized the idea that the transformation of informal into formal property rights provides the key to economic prosperity, precisely because this is what makes property rights “effective.” This understanding of the importance of formality has in recent years been manifested in “rule of law” initiatives by national governments and international development agencies alike. It has also found an institutional home in a High Level Commission for the Legal Empowerment of the Poor, launched in 2006 and co-chaired by former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright and Hernando de Soto. That formal property rights institutions matter—perhaps particularly for the poor—is a powerful idea.1 But what are the political and historical origins of such institutions? It is this question that this book addresses.

The degree to which states are exposed to international competition is an important part of explanations for the emergence of more efficient property rights structures enforced by the state. As Douglass North has noted, “Relatively inefficient property rights threaten the survival of a state in the context of more efficient neighbors, and the ruler faces the choice of extinction or of modifying the fundamental ownership structure to enable the society to reduce transaction costs and raise the rate of growth” (1981, 29).2

While the intuitions behind this line of argument were developed in the context of Europe’s historical experience—with its strong links between war-making, state-building, and commerce (Tilly 1990)—East and Southeast Asia offer a more recent example of how an intensely competitive regional security environment can motivate state elites to create strong states and pursue economic growth-enhancing and welfare-promoting policies (Stubbs 1999, 2005; Zhu 2000; Kang 1995, 2002, 29–40; Acemoglu and Robinson 2006; Doner, Ritchie, and Slater 2005; Campos and Root 1996; Woo-Cumings 1998).

In other parts of the world, less developmentally positive logics of state formation have prevailed, not necessarily because there has been an absence of war or threats thereof. For postcolonial Africa, respect for the sovereignty norm is often identified as an important explanation for the survival of weak and developmentally ineffective states (Jackson and Rosberg 1982; Jackson 1990). In a more competitive geopolitical context, such states would have been swallowed up by stronger rivals (Herbst 1990). But this Darwinian logic does not necessarily apply even in regions that, like East and Southeast Asia, have seen intense and persistent geopolitical rivalries. Although postindependence Middle Eastern states have focused great energies on preparing for and engaging in war, the developmental impact of such efforts has been limited, mainly because extractive efforts have been directed toward “external” sources of revenues, whether in the form of natural resource rents (oil) or foreign military assistance from wealthy allies (Heydemann 2000; Lustick 1997; Barnett 1992). Wars do not necessarily make states, even if geopolitics “influence the probabilities of changes in property rights” (Campbell and Lindberg 1990, 644).

The apparently indeterminate effects of external security threats on state formation have generally been addressed by making the models more elaborate: by adding explanatory variables that specify the conditions under which states will be induced to build state capacity (Doner, Ritchie, and Slater 2005; Thies 2004). In doing so, much of the literature that emphasizes the role of external and internal security threats in accounting for economic and political outcomes of various kinds treats threats as if they were “objective” and state responses as if they were the only “rational” ones given the circumstances.

I take a different approach. Most threats to security are not self-evident, and neither are the policies and institutions that will counter them most effectively and efficiently (Widmaier, Blyth, and Seabrooke 2007). State elites are susceptible to misperception, myopia, myth-making, and hysteria (Jervis 1976; Mueller 2005; Van Evera 2003; Snyder 1991, 31–55). Uncertainty and indeterminacy is also a consequence of the fact that security remains an “ambiguous symbol” (Wolfers 1965, chap. 10) and an “insufficiently explicated” concept (Baldwin 1997, 24) not only for scholars but also for statesmen. Furthermore, the capacity of humans to anticipate the future, and their desire to shape it, means that political action is often prophylactic and, as such, motivated not so much by unmediated, imminent existential threats as by (perhaps unjustified) fears about the future. Policy formulation in the face of security threats therefore tends to proceed by way of a particular form of counterfactual reasoning: “We’d be sorry if we didn’t.” When to act and what to do is therefore never directly determined by the “objective” level of external security threats arrayed against a state, but rather by such factors as the threat perception and risk aversion of the actors, their beliefs about what policy responses are likely to be efficacious, and their assessment of domestic political consequences.

Using a minimal conception, security often refers to two core values: state sovereignty and territorial integrity. But even these values are not necessarily held equally dear in all times and all places—such as premodern Southeast Asia—but rather constitute the core values of the classic Westphalian state. Using a wider definition of security, in the interest of portability across contexts, security threats are here understood as referring to events and phenomena that political actors intersubjectively interpret as necessitating change in order to protect cherished values and identities. In this book the main focus is on security threats that are perceived as fundamentally external in origin—although these may also be associated with internal, Quisling-like dimensions.

Securitization as a Causal Mechanism

How, then, to understand the role of “security threats” as a cause of institutional change? The “mechanismic” turn in social science may offer a way forward. While the conception of causal mechanism is a contested one, a baseline definition states that a causal mechanism is “the pathway or process by which an effect is produced or a purpose is accomplished” (Gerring 2008, 178). Instead of thinking of external security threats as (simply) an independent variable, we can conceptualize security threats as elements of a causal mechanism—securitization.

I conceive of securitization as an argumentative process that connects the perception of a threat with the formulation and implementation of policy that is intended to alleviate the threat (Balzacq 2009, 2011; Guzzini 2011). Securitization involves an agent that identifies a threat against something regarded as a fundamental value. In this book, the state is the securitizing agent, and the two most important referent objects of securitization are the state itself and the society over which it seeks to rule, with sovereignty and (national) identity, respectively, as the currencies in which security is measured (Waever 1995). The process of securitization furthermore involves an articulation of causal beliefs that motivate choices of policy instruments (Goldstein and Keohane 1993).

In contrast with the so-called Copenhagen School’s understanding of securitization as (just) a “speech act” (Waever 1995; Buzan, Waever, and Wilde 1998), securitization when conceived as a causal mechanism therefore requires that a securitizing rhetorical “move” is followed by actual “security practice” (Floyd 2010, 54).3 Our attention is thus shifted away from (mere) discourse towards the actual policy instruments that states use to deal with dangers (Balzacq 2008). These policy instruments may be of a traditional military variety, or they may be categorized as economic, political, social, cultural, environmental, etc.

The choice of policy instruments are determined by causal beliefs. State officials in different countries frequently hold different beliefs about how particular policies may enhance security. For example, Centeno (1997) shows that Latin American leaders in the nineteenth century viewed borrowing money abroad and printing money as policies that could finance preparation for and engagement in war. In Siam, similar policies were viewed, perhaps not unrealistically, as a certain road to ruin.4

In this book the focus is on the property rights regime and policies relating thereto. There is nothing inherent in such policies that make them causally related to security, however that is conceived. But political actors can make the argumentative link between threats and policies (securitization). They can also sever established connections between threats and policies (desecuritization). Or property rights policies may not be regarded as relevant to questions of security at all. However, although issues and policy instruments that state elites regard as having a direct bearing on matters of national security are highly variable (Katzenstein 1996, 10), the property rights regime is likely to be viewed by public officials at least in part through the lens of security. This is particularly true if security is conceived in the broader sense of the stability of the overarching political order.

Given the substantive focus of this book, securitization as a causal mechanism builds bridges between usually quite separate political realms. The first is the “high politics” of international diplomacy and national security. The second is the usually low politics of cadastral surveys, land-titling schemes, and agricultural finance.5 In my argument these two spheres are closely intertwined. Herring (1983, 4) has emphasized the significance of “the perceptual model of elites of the rural world: the prevailing understanding of what is wrong, what is possible, what will work.” The argument here is that what appears to be wrong, to be possible, and to be workable in relation to the rural world is critically shaped by understandings of what is possible and workable in terms of the wider geopolitical context. This is particularly true in periods when, as has frequently been the case, property rights institutions serve as critical benchmarks of civilization and hallmarks of rival ideological camps in world politics.

Securitization is a causal mechanism which, following Elster’s conception, is “frequently occurring and easily recognizable” but with unknown “triggers” and “indeterminate consequences” (1998, 45). Securitization can therefore cause a wide range of outcomes, depending on how threats are linked to policies. At one extreme, securitization can lead to the deliberate construction of a thriving agricultural economy, as was the case with the South Korean and Taiwanese land reforms: these were counterrevolutionary responses to the communist challenges emanating from China and North Korea (Tai 1974), which subsequently provided the economic basis for the construction of successful developmental states (Grabowski 1994).6 On the other hand, securitization can cause state leaders to intentionally impoverish their societies. Such was the case in the Southeast Asian archipelago in the seventeenth century, where rulers such as the sultan of Magindanao (in what is today the Philippines) suddenly decided to ban the cultivation of valuable spice crops—pepper, cloves, nutmeg—in order to avoid war with violently monopoly-seeking European powers, most notably in the form of the Dutch East India Company (Reid 1993, 299–300). Another illustrative example is provided by the contrasting approaches that the military juntas in Bangkok and Rangoon adopted in the early 1960s in order to secure themselves against the threat of communism. In Bangkok, the generals lurched rightward, embracing the principles of private property and capitalism while mobilizing traditional legitimating symbols such as the monarchy and the monkhood (Thak 2007 [1979]; Suehiro 1996). In Rangoon, in contrast, General Ne Win embarked on the “Burmese Road to Socialism”—including the nationalization of land—in order to win the hearts and minds of the rural population and to reduce the military threat posed by Mao’s China (Callahan 2003, 209). Burmese state elites essentially sought to preempt a communist takeover by joining the fraternity of socialist states.

In these examples, the causal mechanism—securitization—is the same, but the policies adopted vary greatly, as do the consequences for long-term economic and political development. Thus, while we can make a reasonably strong argument that security threats have a significant impact on property rights regimes, we cannot necessarily make predictions of how they do so. As Tilly argues (1995, 1601), “regularities in political life…consist of recurrent causes which in different circumstances and sequences compound into highly variable but nonetheless explicable effects.” Securitization is one such recurrent cause.

Context Is (Almost) Everything

Why do outcomes vary even though the mechanism is the same? The answer is that the contexts are different. In order to explain outcomes, social scientists are increasingly focusing their attention on the interaction between causal mechanisms and the context in which they operate. This, according to Falleti and Lynch (2009), is the only way that causal explanations can be rendered credible. But since context is endless, while the scholar’s life is short, we must focus our attention on the most critical aspects of the context. Here I have generally been guided by existing theories about security threats and state formation and the concept of property itself.

History can be divided into periods depending on the character of the international system and the overarching patterns of rivalry in world politics. The era of colonial expansion in Southeast Asia can thus be treated as analytically nonequivalent to the Cold War era of decolonization. These are different contexts, the perceived threats are different, and we would not necessarily expect causal mechanisms to operate in the same way in both time periods.

Sequencing is another important temporal dimension of the context (Pierson 2004, chap. 2). In what order things happen can determine whether or how securitization operates. This is an argument that I develop most explicitly in chapter 3, through a comparison of Siam and Japan (see also Larsson 2008). But throughout the book there is also another way in which sequencing matters. How securitization operated at more or less critical historical junctures affects how it operates in subsequent episodes. In this case, the choices that rulers make regarding property rights policies—if and how to securitize—“not only limit future options, they may also precipitate later crises, structure available options, and shape the choices made at those junctures” (Haydu 1998, 353; see also Haydu 2010). We should expect this to be true of many different kinds of policies, but particularly so of those that relate to property rights. This is because property rights institutions are characterized by powerful feedback mechanisms. How property rights are securitized can therefore affect resource allocation, wealth accumulation, and power relations within (and, indeed, between) countries. By manipulating property rights, usually in periods of crisis, state actors can “alter the organization of the economy” and thereby give rise to entirely new interest groups in society (Campbell and Lindberg 1990, 635). In this sense, “policy produces politics.”

Another guide to relevant aspects of the context is provided by recognition of the multidimensional nature of property rights. Property rights in land are often conceptualized as a “bundle of rights” which may include different combinations of the rights to use, abuse, exclude others, inherit, give away, rent out, lease, sell, buy, mortgage, tax, expropriate, and so forth. Over a single plot of land many different persons and juridical entities may hold different bundles of rights. These may, furthermore, vary from field to field and from village to village. The process of formalization is intended, in part, to ...

Table of contents

• Figures and Tables
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Securitization and Institutional Development
• 2 Capitalizing Thailand
• 3 Weapon of a Weak State
• 4 Conserving Smallholder Society
• 5 Combating Specters and Communists
• 6 Old Solutions, New Challenges
• Notes
• Bibliography