Evaluating Collective Action for Effective Land Policy Reform in Developing Country Contexts: The Construction and Validation of Dimensions and Indicators
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
In general I enjoyed reading this paper which was well written and easy to follow.
I do however have a number of questions and reflections that I think the authors need to take into accountwith some of their claims and methodological considerations.
The paper seeks to look at the challenges for land reform/consolidation processes in developing countries, through the lenses of social capital, trust and cooperative performance.
For this reviewer perhaps the focus, which was implicit needs to be placed on land reform in general or land reform related to agricultural restructuring, the degrees of the three indicators willl vary considerable between these perpspecties.
Second perhaps more attention needs to be played to context. The paper talks about developing countries - and seemed to largely focus on China, although the experts were drawn from a wider catchment area. I would query whether China can or should be classified as a developing country and the context of land holdings state owned v collective customary for examples leads to very different approaches to trust. Equally much of the underpinning ideas from Ostrom and Bourdieu for example are western concepts and their transferability to developing countries contexts (emphasis plural) is perhaps questionable.
For me the weakest part of the paper was the method with a comparison being made between a small number of experts and 200+ Chinese households, in one province of China. We dont know whether these were rural or urban households -see above- or whether they were urban leaseholders- given as I understand it all development in China is on land owned by the state and developers are granted time limited user rights (which can be extended) to the land. So it is not clear to me whether the participants from China could necessarily respond. This left me with major questions about the emprical part of the research and its validity, nothwithstanding the fact I am not convinced of the relevance of comparing the 'experts' views with the householder views.
I think the authors need to think more clearly about the method and whether it actually makes logical sense and perhaps focusing either on the experts or householders only- for this reviewer probably the experts would make for a more coherent arguement.
Author Response
Thank you very much for your valuable comments. Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
Overall, the themes of this study have implications for support the study of collective action on land policy reform in developing country contexts. This research fits in the main theme of the journal, but still requires several revisions. Below are some specific comments:
1. It is recommended to expand the literature review on the topic in the Introduction.
2. Why was the collective-owned land access to market transactions in Jiangsu Province in China selected for the case study when validating the dimensions and indicators for evaluating collective action? Some explanation is needed.
3. The discussion section needs to take into account the comparative analysis of the literature
4. The paper needs to clearly point out the direction of further research.
5. Since land systems vary among developing countries, is your indicator system generalizable? It is suggested to have a more complete and in-depth discussion.
6. Some of the references used are out of date in the context of this study.
Author Response
Thank you very much for your valuable comments. Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Thank you for engaging in the review process. The paper now has a much more logical and internally consistent focus.
