Making property rights accessible : social movements and legal innovation in the Philippines

Today, many rural poor Filipinos are using state law to try to claim land rights. In spite of the availability of a much heftier set of specialised legal resources than ever before, however, claiming legal land rights remains extremely difficult. Pro-market scholars cite difficult legal problems as a reason to turn away from state-led land reform and toward a market-assisted land reform (MALR) model. Yet, as this paper shows, a closer look at actual dynamics around land reform in the Philippines suggests that political-legal problems associated with implementation of the 1988 agrarian reform law can be overcome under certain conditions. It is argued that rural poor claimants must have access to a support structure for political-legal mobilisation, particularly “rights-advocacy organisation”, and they must adopt an integrated political-legal strategy, in order to effectively push existing constitutional-juridical openings and institutional reforms in favour of land redistribution. An integrated political-legal strategy is one that is capable of activating state agrarian reform law, exploiting independent state actors’ pro-reform initiatives, and resisting the legal and extra-legal manoeuvres of anti-reform elites.