Making Land Rights Accessible: Social Movements and Political-Legal Innovation in the Rural Philippines
研究菲律宾土地改革中的政治法律障碍，发现通过支持结构和综合策略可克服实施困难，对关注土地正义和发展中国家法治的学者有参考价值。
Abstract In recent years, rule of law and legal reform has grown to be a major concern of national governments, international financial institutions, development agencies and donor organisations. Part of this concern has focused on expanding access to justice for the poor. However, little effort has gone into understanding the role of justice sector institutions in shaping the opportunities and limits of redistributive justice. Little attention has been paid to the actual workings of obstacles entrenched within the justice sector to land reform, for example. Instead, pro-market scholars cite difficult legal problems as a reason to turn away from state-led land reform and toward market-oriented land policies. Yet as this paper shows, a closer look at the details of dynamics around land reform in the Philippines suggests that political-legal problems associated with implementation of the agrarian reform law can be overcome under certain conditions. It is argued that for rural poor claimants it is important to have access to a support structure for political-legal mobilisation, particularly an alternative ‘rights-advocacy’ outreach network, and also to adopt an integrated political-legal strategy. 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. However, such a strategy appears to have limits as well.