Published on April 21, 2026 – Updated on April 21, 2026
Location
Pôle Tertiaire - Site La Rotonde - 26 avenue Léon Blum - 63000 Clermont-Ferrand
Salle 212

Research Seminar. Redistribution Without Inclusion: Land Reform and Political Turnover in Egypt, 1924-1984.


Mohamed Saleh
London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)

Coauthors : Rowaida Moshrif et Allison Hartnett. 

Abstract

Does land redistribution from the landed elite to the poor open political institutions to new actors? We study Egypt's 1952–1961 land reform using a new dataset of all members of parliament from 1924 to 1984. An event study comparing districts with higher versus lower redistribution intensity shows that, before the reform, landed elites suppressed political turnover in high-redistribution districts. After the reform, turnover rose everywhere but disproportionately in high-redistribution districts, as the removal of the landed elite freed political space previously monopolized. Entry, by contrast, rose uniformly and did not vary with redistribution intensity. The differential rise in turnover persisted across all post-reform cycles, was larger at the MP level than the family level, and was concentrated in districts with high pre-reform political concentration and a thick tier of medium landholders. Redistribution broke oligarchic incumbency and intensified competition among medium landholders below the expropriation ceiling, but did not expand the boundaries of political access in proportion to its local intensity.