Who decides Development? Politics of Land Acquisition and Democratic Activism

This paper provides a theoretical analysis of civil society activism and development. In a one period static model, the Government of a backward region attempts to acquire land for a development project in exchange for compensation. Citizen-activists observe a noisy signal about the size of unwilling land losers being evicted forcefully. \emph{Ideological} activists protest against the violation of democratic rights whenever the number of unwilling land losers exceed their tolerable size. Strategic participation of \emph{Non-ideological protesters} gives rise to a coordination problem. We find an increasing role of ideological activism to have a positive welfare effect on raising the compensation for the land losers but a negative effect on the chances of the project’s success. These results are strengthened in a broader framework with a general protest function. Politicization of the issue sees campaign by the \emph{Incumbent} and ideological activism as complementary. Our protest model built using Global Games is a general one and can be helpful to analyze other contexts as well