Without carrot and with stick: Prevalence of punishmenti n the institutional design of formalization programs to substitute illicit crops in colombia

Abstract

The land titling programs created as an instrument for the substitution of illicit crops are based on the assumption that there is a relationship between the security of peasants’ property rights and the decrease in the areas used for planting of illicit crops (positive incentive). This, on the one hand, due to the fact that the property entails access to public goods and private resources, advantages that are obtained only when you have dominion over a property. On the other hand, the policy contains negative incentives, the new owners have powerful reasons not to reseed since doing so would entail the application of domain extinction. In this article we show, from the institutional analysis, that the advantages of formalization are not a necessary and immediate consequence of the ownership of the right of ownership and that, on the contrary, the extinction of the domain has the potential to occur and aggravate the situation of the vulnerable population that, without the adequate endowment of goods, could not fulfill the formalization commitments itself.