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Janos Kornai developed soft budget constraint logic to explain the socialist world’s dysfunctional economies. We extend his logic to explain dysfunctional land reform in the developing world. International development organizations such as the World Bank provide support for land privatization to developing-country governments, softening their budget constraints. Softer budget constraints encourage developing-country governments to pursue land privatization even when its social value is negative. Kenya’s land reform program illustrates the soft budget constraint syndrome.

Having empirically identified institutions as critical determinants of socioeconomic outcomes, social scientists are starting to turn their attention to empirically identifying sources of institutional change. Rational choice scholars offer two theories of such change: conflict theory and cooperation theory. We highlight crucial but easily overlooked methodological issues involved in attempting to evaluate these theories empirically. To do so, we critically examine Coleman and Mwangi’s study of property evolution among Maasai pastoralists in Kajiado, Kenya. Lessons from our examination, we hope, will help this burgeoning area of research proceed productively.

According to conventional wisdom, privatizing the commons will create wealth. Yet in cases found throughout the developing world, privatizing the commons has destroyed wealth. To explain this phenomenon, we develop a theory of wealth-destroying private property rights. Privatization’s effect on social wealth depends on whether privatizing an asset confers net gains or imposes net losses on society. The decision to privatize, however, depends on whether privatizing an asset confers net gains or imposes net losses on property decision makers. When decision makers are residual claimants, these effects move in tandem; privatization occurs only if it creates social wealth. When decision makers are not residual claimants, these effects may diverge; privatization occurs if it benefits decision makers personally even if privatization destroys social wealth. We apply our theory to understand wealth-destroying land privatization in Kajiado, Kenya.

The Workers' Compensation Board of British Columbia in Canada is the provincial agency mandated to investigate workplace injuries and fatalities. In 2012, the Fatal and Serious Injuries Investigation section of this organization initiated the integration of forensic nursing expertise into the investigation of workplace incidents. The goals were to improve investigative outcomes and aid in prevention initiatives by achieving a more accurate understanding of incident causation through the application of forensic nursing science. An unexpected outcome of the use of forensic nursing expertise was providing closure for families through a deeper understanding of their loved one's tragic workplace incident.

Self-governance of common pool resources is presumed to work well in small, homogeneous communities where interaction is repeated, agents have low discount rates, and information about past performance is available. It is presumed to work poorly elsewhere. This paper provides a case study of online communities who use peer-to-peer networks to illegally share copyrighted material — 'Pirates' — to investigate the robustness of self-governance institutions in less favorable conditions. Early models of peer-to-peer networks predicted complete collapse due to issues of free-riding. When these networks are used to illegally share copyrighted material, the increased risk of legal punishment leads to a further disincentive to contribute. Despite the increased incentive to free-ride, online pirate communities have developed a robust set of institutional mechanisms designed to mitigate the effects of free-riding in the network. My study highlights the diversity, and commonality, of institutional arrangements developed by self-governing communities to solve collective action problems under unfavorable conditions.

`Privatization' has taken many different forms over recent years, and different kinds of privatization have very different sociological implications for consumers of state services. The paper develops a typology of privatization and considers how each type might change the relationship between producers and consumers. It is argued that consumer powerlessness is endemic in many areas of state provision, but that privatization does not necessarily affect this. Indeed, the story of privatization in Britain over the last ten years suggests that those forms of privatization which most empower consumers relative to producers have been precisely those forms which are least developed.