An Empirical Evaluation of the Impact of Dispute Resolution Systems on Poverty : A Governance-Related Focus on Developing Countries

The paper is aimed at assessing the access to dispute resolution mechanisms faced by the poorest 20 percent of rural households experiencing land-titling related conflicts within a sample of seventeen developing middle and low income countries. The conclusions presented here are based on a theoretical and empirical framework first introduced by Buscaglia (2001) and empirically tested in Colombia in Buscaglia and Stephan (2005) aimed at assessing the factors linked to access to justice in developing countries. Part II provides conceptual and descriptive account for the subsequent empirical analysis in Part III