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Annual Review of Political Science

Volume 28, 2025

Land and Politics

  • Michael Albertus1 and Kathleen Klaus2
  • 1Department of Political Science, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA 2Department of Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden; email: [email protected]
  • Vol. 28:19-36 (Volume publication date June 2025)
  • First published as a Review in Advance on December 10, 2024
  • Copyright © 2025 by the author(s).
    This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. See credit lines of images or other third-party material in this article for license information.

Abstract

Human societies and their politics are deeply rooted in the land. Land shapes politics through its material nature and distribution across society, by serving as a mechanism of control and state-building, and by acting as a symbolic site that imbues identity and belonging. That land is inextricably intertwined with politics makes it a crucial driver of a wide range of social, political, and economic outcomes. We explain and survey these rich and complex relationships, focusing on the formation of political preferences and identities, the forms and dynamics of political violence, and the long-term structure of society, ranging from patterns of settlement and dispossession to inequality, state capacity, and economic development and urbanization. Land access, land rights, and land tenure institutions are all implicated in these outcomes. We conclude with reflections on promising research frontiers in the study of land and politics, including climate change, migration, and urbanization.

Keyword(s): development, inequality, land, land tenure, political violence, property rights
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Land and Politics
Annual Review of Political Science 28, 19 (2025); https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-polisci-040623-112955
/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-polisci-040623-112955
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