Re: FWD: Report that made Summers sweat and Kanbur walk

The article circulated by Michael McKeever on IPE and David Smith on WSN included this paragraph:


>Growth does reduce poverty, the report agrees. But some growth is much
>better than others - roughly five times better. So what kind of growth is
>good at reducing poverty? Agricultural growth is best. Growth in services
>is not bad. An economy which is growing only in manufacturing may find
>that poverty declines by little or nothing. Moreover, agricultural growth
>is no good if land is all held by big landowners. Best of all is
>agricultural growth coupled with land reform.
>


Just a quick comment regarding land reform:  for now, I don't dispute the basic point; land reform is given credit for laying the groundwork for Taiwan's success in "growth with distribution."  Nevertheless, there can be political hazards in implementing land reform.  If memory serves, the late Shah of Iran's "White Revolution" policy included attempts at land reform.  There are academic disagreements over how successful or thorough the land reform was.  Nevertheless, it is clear that the land reform threatened the politically powerful Islamic clergy, members of which had historically been important land owners.  The reform was thus important in alienating the mullahs from the shah's regime (cf. Bill 1972).  (This is not to say, by the way, that the shah had ever established terribly solid linkages with Iran's traditional society, including the mullahs--he hadn't.  Cf. Armajani 1972 and Saikal 1980).

REFERENCES

Armajani, Yahya.  Iran.  Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Prentice-Hall, 1972.

Bill, James A.  The politics of Iran; groups, classes, and  modernization
Columbus, Ohio:  C. E. Merrill Pub. Co., 1972.

Saikal, Amin.  The rise and fall of the Shah.
Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, 1980.
--
Jeffrey L. Beatty
Doctoral Student
Department of Political Science
The Ohio State University
2140 Derby Hall
154 North Oval Mall
Columbus, Ohio 43210

(o) 614/292-2880
(h) 614/688-0567

Email:  Beatty.4@osu.edu
______________________________________________________   
'_Sapere aude_'--'have courage to use your own reason'
--this is the motto of Enlightenment--Immanuel Kant,
"What Is Enlightenment?"