Local Political Effects of Peru’s Land Reform

Who gets to compete for political power? Can historically excluded groups build the capacity to do it under autocracy? In Peru, the historical concentration of land dates back to the colonial period, beginning in the 16^th century. By 1961, the top 1% of landowners still held 80% of private land in the country. This concentration allowed landed elites to exert political control and exclude much of the rural, predominantly indigenous population from political participation. The 1969 agrarian reform, implemented under military rule, expropriated half of the country’s agricultural land from landed elites and redistributed it to newly formed cooperatives composed mainly of indigenous peasants.

In this paper, Héctor Paredes examines the long-term political effects of the reform, focusing on the erosion of landed elites’ electoral control and the rise of collective organization through cooperatives as potential mechanisms. Using digitized land expropriation records, district-level electoral results from 1963 to 2022, and candidate-level data, he investigates how the reform affected local political competition, electoral participation, and political representation after the return to democracy in 1980.

KEY FINDINGS:

• The agrarian reform increased the number of parties competing in local elections by 20–26% and narrowed electoral victory margins by 4.8–6.8 percentage points, indicating a more competitive political environment.
• The reform increased the share of elected mayors with indigenous surnames, suggesting that previously marginalized groups gained greater access to political power.
• The reform undermined the political influence of landed elites. Incumbent landed families lost approximately 10 percentage points of local political office, primarily by withdrawing from electoral competition rather than being defeated.
• Although the cooperatives eventually disappeared, the collective organization they helped establish survived. Local agrarian organization increased particularly among those aged 12-25 at the time of the reform and became a key mechanism behind its effect on political competition.
• Reform-affected districts saw candidates with higher levels of education and greater party experience. Candidates were also older and ran more often through parties that compete nationally, suggesting a shift in who could enter electoral competition.
• The organizational legacy of the reform had welfare implications. While cohorts at the age of political activation (12-25) at the time of exposure became more organized, those exposed as children (0-11) experienced lasting economic costs.

AUTHOR:

• Héctor Paredes, Paris School of Economics