Distribution of power and agrarian reform: An explanatory model applied to India and Chile

This article appraises within an interdisciplinary framework key social, political, and economic aspects of the distribution of power in agrarian societies, and their interaction with various agrarian reform measures. Reform measures investigated include land reform proper, tenancy and wage regulations, land taxes, institutional credit, and productivity promotion measures.Use is made of alternate models that simulate economic development and agrarian reform under alternative sociopolitical regimes. The models distinguish four actor-groups: landlords, peasants, nonagriculturalists, and the state. Regimes differ, on the one hand, according to which actor-group is in power, and, on the other hand, according to which instruments of economic policy the state employs. The models are empirically applied and used to analyze the impact of agrarian reform measures in the 1960s and 1970s in two different regimes, India and Chile (under Allende).