Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Explorations in Economic History journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/eeh Land reform and peasant revolution. Evidence from 1930s Spain ☆ Jordi Domenech a, ⁎ , Francisco Herreros b a Department of Social Sciences and Instituto Figuerola de Historia y Ciencias Sociales, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Getafe (Madrid), Spain b Instituto de Políticas y Bienes Públicos, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, CSIC, Madrid, Spain ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Land reform Conflict Revolution Re-distribution Property rights Peasantry Agrarian economies ABSTRACT We analyze the impact of failed land reform on peasant conflict in Spain before the Civil War using a municipal data set with monthly observations of peasant conflict in Andalusia from April 1931 to July 1936. We find temporary occupations of land were rare and not correlated with either organized reaction to land reform or the existence of a large pool of beneficiaries. Potential beneficiaries of reform struck more often in the period of land reform deployment, especially in towns with a legacy of domination by a noble family and no previous experience of reform. There is some evidence that actual land reform implementation reduced strikes, most prominently in towns that had not been affected by land reform until the 1930s. We argue both sets of evidence suggest that faster re-distribution would have reduced conflict and that the effects of incomplete land reform were stronger in towns with no previous history of land reform. 1. Introduction Does land reform cause greater levels of rural conflict? According to the literature on political regimes and transitions, re- distributive policies can appease bottom-up revolutionary pressures and social conflict (Acemoglu and Robinson, 2005). While developed economies re-distribute by taxing wealth and income and handing out social transfers, in developing economies characterized by a large presence of the agricultural sector, re-distributive policies have often taken the form of land reform. At the same time, it has been argued that drastic land ownership re-distribution can also create more conflict. First, because land reform accompanies other pro-poor policies and a reduction in repression, land reform may facilitate coordination and increase political activism among peasants. Second, land reform raises the expectations of peasants while making inequality more salient, which may lead to further more demands from the landless (Finkel et al., 2015). Third, land reform creates clearly demarcated groups of winners and losers (Luebbert, 1991; Boone, 2014). Because landed elites are often more able to organize collectively, land reform is often blocked or captured by organized interests. In these cases, land reform failure can trigger peasant rebellions, revolution, and civil wars. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.eeh.2017.02.002 Received 5 November 2015; Received in revised form 13 February 2017; Accepted 15 February 2017 ☆ The authors would like to express their gratitude to Hans-Joachim Voth and two anonymous referees for really helpful and constructive suggestions, critiques, and ideas, as well as to seminar audiences at Universidad Pública de Navarra, the conference “Markets and States” organized at the University of Warwick and the Economic History Seminar at the London School of Economics. All errors are our own. We thank Beatriz Álvarez, Luis García Espinal and Álvaro Martín for occasional research assistance and Chris Absell for helpful editorial assistance. Domenech acknowledges financial support from Fundación Ramon Areces and Spain's Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad under project ECO2015-66196-P and Herreros from Spain's Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad under project CSO2015-65969-P. ⁎ Correspondence to: Department of Social Sciences, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Calle Madrid, 126, 28903 GETAFE Madrid, Spain. E-mail address: jdomenec@clio.uc3m.es (J. Domenech). Abbreviations: CNT, Confederación Nacional del Trabajo, National Confederation of Labor; FNTT, Federación Nacional de Trabajadores de la Tierra, National Federation of Rural Workers; UGT, Unión General de Trabajadores, Workers’ General Union Explorations in Economic History xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx 0014-4983/ © 2017 Published by Elsevier Inc. Please cite this article as: Domenech, J., Explorations in Economic History (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.eeh.2017.02.002