In person icon Ideology, Power and Expertise in the Political Economy of Land Policy

Abstract

Land policy sets the regulatory framework for governing the ownership, use, development and distribution of land and land value. It therefore performs a central coordinating and structuring role in the political and economic organisation of societies. The design of land policy and the practices it shapes can be conditioned not only by technical expertise, but also by ideological preference and various economic ideas. Which ideologies, economic logics and forms of expertise are legitimised via land policy, and to what distributional effect, is therefore deeply political. Despite this, land policy can sometimes be represented as a complex, technocratic and specialist area navigable only by experts. This can serve to obfuscate the underlying politics that shape it and excludes communities from understanding and engaging in political decisions that can significantly influence their welfare. This can be true, for example, of some forms of urban planning regulation and land taxation. However, other forms of land policy display their politics much more clearly and are more visible to the general public – such as via debates concerning land redistribution and indigenous land rights, for example. Given the growing pressures on land deriving from climate change, population expansion, financialization and urbanisation, increasing demands are being placed on land policy, policy-makers and politicians. This is serving to further politicise land policy and the policy-making process. It also has the potential to challenge and disrupt settled ideological assumptions concerning land, property and its regulation, to create political ruptures via which new forms can emerge. However, in all cases there will be similar political questions to navigate. These include what is considered legitimate expertise in relation to more fundamental political questions concerning justice, the role of the state and the interaction of different forms of property with freedom. This Panel includes papers that critically examine these interconnections by focusing on how ideological frameworks intersect with political-economic imperatives and claims of expertise to shape land policy and distributional outcomes, with a particular focus on land markets, land financialization and land value capture.

Title	Details
Land, Values, and Valuation Work: Moral Imaginaries of Land Markets in England and Germany	View Paper Details
Towards a Political Economy of Complexity: Land Markets, Value Capture and Occulted Expertise	View Paper Details
Public Values: The Techno-Politics of Land Value Capture in Bogotá, Colombia	View Paper Details
Land Value Capture and Conflicting Public Goals	View Paper Details
Class Meets Land: the Embodied History of Land Financialization	View Paper Details