State-Customary Interactions and Agrarian Change in Ghana. The Case of Nkoranza Traditional Area
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
In this paper, author tries to address these three issues, including how are land tenure issues conceptualized by state actors with respect to agricultural development; how are customary land tenure relationships evolving in the Nkoranza traditional area? and why do customary land tenure institutions continue to exercise influence and how does this affect land tenure modernization? After careful read, I have to say that the author did a lot of work to prepare this manuscript and English is so fluent. However, I also have to say the author’s work has little meaningness as most contents you listed were well known and published previously. You just presented the facts: perspectives of state on land tenure and perspectives of chiefs on it, and contradictions between the two proxies.
Weaknesses also include 1) during explain communal tenure, you should refer to Elinor Ostrom who is the distinguished scientist in this field. 2) the interviewed persons are so few and I think the other opinions may be not expressed; furthermore, as you said ‘Meanwhile, mirroring land tenure after statutory systems or chiefly approval or both, without community acceptance cannot catalyze any real transformation. Without community acceptance, private agricultural enterprises may encounter some resistance.’ Then what does ‘community acceptance’ mean? In this case, opinions of numbers in community are very important, but it is a pity that you did not interview them. 3) L533-547, as you mentioned there are cases of chiefs and the state having negotiated agreements for land to support agricultural production. So why do not you compare benefits from these negotiated lands and traditional lands? As I think, this is a more important topic you should study. If the former had obvious benefits than the latter, I think the conflicts between the state and the chiefs could be relieved. 4) in section 5.4, you also mentioned modernity within Tradition: The Case of Customary Land Tenure. So I suggest you should do a lot of work on this aspect, that is you should present the specific details of modernity and its consequences comparison with no modernity’s lands.
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
The paper entitled “State-Customary Interactions and Agrarian Change in Ghana. The case of Nkoranza Traditional Area” was an interesting read. Based on a recent qualitative case study, the emergence of a “New African Customary Tenure” through state-customary interactions is reflected. Overall the paper is a relevant piece of research, well documented and reasoned and suitable for “Land”.
However, I think some revisions are still necessary.
General issues
(1) I wonder how you define the term “institution”? In institutional economics and property rights theory it is mainly used for “established set of rules”. I think that throughout the paper you don’t use the term consistently. In some cases you speak about “customary institutions” and call them actors (line 12-13), in other cases you speak about the “chieftaincy institution” (line 614) which clearly refers to the set of rules. In the latter case the chief would be one key actor of the “chieftaincy institution”. The chief may also be called customary actor or authority. You may also speak about “state institutions” and refer to the set of rules that constitutes a state. Then some governmental authorities can be called state actors. I would recommend to use the term institutions for “set of established rules” and to use it consistently throughout the paper.
(2) I miss a clear statement in the introduction about the value added of your study. What is your contribution to the literature? You should add a clear statement in line 81 before you explain the structure of the article.
(3) You quite often use footnotes to explain terms. I would prefer to integrate the explanations in the text.
(4) You cited Liz Alden Wily two times, but the name is spelled incorrectly. Please correct.
(5) “…as land scarcity was theorized to affect tenure relations.” Although land scarcity plays a role in the design of the study, it does not show up again in the results part, the discussion of the conclusion. Please add.
(6) I recommend paying attention to some more literature on the subject (introduction, theory and discussion).
Alden Wily, Liz (2018): Collective Land Ownership in the 21st Century: Overview of Global Trends. In: Land 7 (2), S. 68. DOI: 10.3390/land7020068.
Lawry, Steven; Samii, Cyrus; Hall, Ruth; Leopold, Aaron; Hornby, Donna; Mtero, Farai (2017): The impact of land property rights interventions on investment and agricultural productivity in developing countries: a systematic review. In: Journal of Development Effectiveness 9 (1), S. 61–81. DOI: 10.1080/19439342.2016.1160947.
(7) In your conclusion you often mention the state, e.g. “…will require the state to revise…”. The question is here: who is the state? Do you mean the government? Some state authorities? The state is not a monolithic actor! Please revise.
(8) You draw quite some general conclusions without a proper reflection on the external validity of the results from your case study. I also miss a reflection on the limitations of your research. Please add.
Specific issues
Line 13: “…the two actors…” are the state and “customary institutions” correctly conceptualized as monolithic actors? The state and customs as “institutions” define roles of multiple actors. Please clarify and potentially revise.
Line 32: “…centralizing security…” What do you mean with this term, please clarify.
L82: Section 2 is wrongly labeled as “Materials and Methods”. I may be more properly labelled with “Background”
Line 81: “…the purpose of the paper is not to evaluate these aspects…” I think it should read “…it is not the purpose of the paper to evaluate these aspects…”. Please check.
Line 85: “…section four (4)…“ should better read “…section four…“
Line 98: Figure caption should be below the figure.
Line 93-94: “Meanwhile, modern state institutions require efficient land management for implementation of agricultural policies.” How do you define “efficient land management”? Please clarify the meaning of the term here.
Line 175-176: “…Alden Wiley…” must read “…Alden Wily…”
Line 219-220: “They are important for depicting the contradictory positions that state actors and customary tenure institutions…” sould better read “They are important for depicting the contradictory positions that state and customary tenure actors …”
L 265-266: “…as land scarcity was theorized to affect tenure relations.” Please provide some references supporting the possible effect of land scarcity on tenure relations.
L 305-316: Either use words or numbers, but not both. One or 1 but not “one (1)”.
L 309: “Institutional representatives…” What are institutional representatives? Representatives of state authorities?
L 310: “The institutions interviewed…” Again how do you define institutions?
L 318, Table 1: Before you always mentioned actors, now you use the term “stakeholder”? Why? Is there any difference? I recommend using actors.
L 443: “Alden Wiley” must read “Alden Wily”, also in the references.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
Dear editors of Land,
Many thanks for sharing with me an interesting manuscript to be considered for publication in your journal. My observations, remarks and comments are summarized below. I hope that the authors will find my suggestions useful.
- Title. The title sounds promising and nice.
- Abstract. The abstract is very well structured and covers everything one would expect from the abstract. Maybe the original results might be more highlighted at the end of the abstract and some more information about the methodology would be fine to have here. Primarily, the number of interviewees to understand the scale of what to expect. I would also propose to indicate the period when the research was conducted.
- Keywords. The keywords are fine, maybe Ghana should be also located here.
- Introduction. In the introduction, a nice piece of work with literature is presented. I would recommend mentioning in the first sentences of the manuscript that the main geographical focus is on Africa. This might be strengthened. Generally, I think the theoretical framing about the study is nicely developed but should be more expanded so that more contemporary studies is reflected. Out of 14 references used in this part, just one them is from 2019, all other refs are more than a decade old. It doesn´t necessarily mean that this the framing was done insufficiently but this might signal that the frontiers in understanding social relations in land tenure in Africa might be elsewhere (and are not reflected). Indicating of more recent studies will definitely make the statements used in this part stronger. We should read more about various aspects of social relations to land tenure specifically in Africa.
- Please check line 55 for duplication of the number.
- After reading of section 2 on the methodology I finally understood that the section on theoretical framing is situated behind the methodology. Please shift the theory behind the Introduction so that more traditional structure of research papers is followed.
- The sections 2.1 and 2.2 present the context of the case study but I guess that this should be rather located in the introduction as a background for the study and the case study description should be rather focused on Nkoranza. I also miss it these sections the number so that the reader could understand the scale of the problem. For the readers, not so well oriented in Africa, this might be challenging. In figure 1 (map) I would suggest adding the location of Nkoranza.
- No remarks on the methodology are included in section 2 although this is mentioned in its title.
- Section 3 (Theoretical perspective). I am not sure that italics should be used for highlighting the terms, neither quotation marks as I think it has a potential for the confusion what is meant. I also think that the basic parameters or principle characteristics of evolving land tenure regime might be depicted in the table so that the difference could be clearly visible.
- The authors should devote more time to the formatting of the manuscript, it is obvious that different fonts are used for citations for some reason.
- The methodology (this section appears in the manuscript twice). Please expand more on the research design of the study. As it stands now, the research design is mixed with the case study description. Please distinguish more between individual parts of the section. I would propose to show a scheme where the research design, its phases and interlinkages are shown (when, where, what and how, all this should be clearly answered).
- It seems to me that the weaker side of the manuscript is its graphics that should be more advanced. Especially more could be shown in Figure 2 than just geographical location.
- Please present the case study descriptions in the individual subsection of the Material and methods. Their summary in bullet points in the table would be beneficial. Please add more reasoning behind the selection of your case studies. Maybe even some original pictures would be fine so that we could better imagine what landscape are the authors talking about.
- Please check duplicities (lines 307-308).
- May we know more about how key informants were selected?
- I would propose to be not so creative when working with tables. Just a simple table would be enough (Table 1). It is please possible to see in the table more information about individual interviewees? Please keep their anonymity but it might be good to know some more about the background of individual interviewees (gender, age groups, maybe educational level, number of years in the position).
- Please focus on explaining terms that might be confusing (paramount chief, sub-chief, divisional chief). I am aware that it is sometimes hard to explain but this might really contribute to the clarity of the manuscript. It seems to useless to replicate in the text the same what is located in the table (subsection 4.2).
- Please use the table for showing what 20 documents were analysed in subsection 4.4.
- I think that similar scheme as is presented in Figure 3 should be part of the description of the case study so that we could better comprehend what and who affects the land tenure in Ghana, who exactly was interviewed and what is the meaning of particular position in the system (actors in tenure administration).
- Could you please indicate what has been analysed by NVivo and how? This is not, in my opinion, clear from the results. Some more graphics would be good to have in the results to illustrate them and make them more attractive.
- The results are well structured and interesting enough.
- Conclusion. Could you please expand more in the conclusion about your original results and finding and their implications? I would also add a paragraph on the limitations of the study (are there any)?
- The list of references needs to be updated and include also more recent advances in the field of the study.
Many thanks for the possibility to review this manuscript. I am very sure that the paper will be a good fit for Land. On the other hand, some work still has to be done and in the current version, I think that the manuscript cannot be accepted for the publication. I think that the manuscript should be better structured into individual parts of research papers allow better understanding for the readers. The discussion of literature in the first part is fine, but should more reflect recent advances in the field. Special attention should be devoted to the graphics that is not so well prepared. As the readers of Land recruit from around the world and plenty of them is not so familiar with the topic that is otherwise massively interesting, I would suggest considering the use of more explanatory language. Please focus also on a more advanced explanation of the social and cultural context in Ghana that is, in my opinion, crucial for us to understand land tenure in this part of the world. I recommend a major revision.
Let me wish the authors all the best for their work on the manuscript and let me also thank them for the work they did so far. I hope that the authors will find some of my comments useful.
Kind regard,
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 4 Report
The paper is well written and is almost ready for publication. I would focus on the points below:
- The introduction and literature review parts are not separated.
- A better motivation is needed - why excatly this area, why this topic, what the article really adds to the literature?
- Do results confirm previous findings or contradict them? In what ways?
- What excatly comes out from the policy perspective? How policies should be changed/revised?
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Thanks for you explanations and added information. However, I sitll regard that contents in text could be found in previous doucuments (such as L 590-613) and are not new. As an academic research, it is not enough to just present the facts. The most improtant work is to explore mechanism and consquences of changing in land tenure.
If opinions of common people were not expressed, I do not think changes of land tenure or cooraperation between state and customary could achieve throughly. In this case，I would be looking forward to your other planned papers as you mentioned in response letter.
I am sorry for this decison and do not get depressed!
Reviewer 2 Report
Thank you very much for the revisions which are implemented to my full satisfaction. Just one thing: I suggest turning Figure 3 into a table and moving the far right column to the first far left column. This would improve clarity and readability. Overall you paper now makes an interesting, scientifically sound and relevant contribution.
Reviewer 3 Report
Dear editors of Land,
many thanks for sharing with me the second version of the manuscript on land tenure in Ghana. Let me also thank the authors for the work they did on the revisions. I appreciate that the authors indeed replied in detail to all my comments. In my opinion, the vast majority of my doubts were explained and I am really glad that the authors incorporated my comments and suggestions in their manuscript. I think that now the quality of the manuscript is much increased.
I have read the manuscript carefully and checked all the revisions made. I am fully satisfied with this version of the manuscript and I am very happy to support it to be accepted for the publication in Land.
Let me wish the authors all the best for their future work and let me congratulate the authors for a great job they did.
It has been pleasure to collaborate on this manuscript with Land.
Kind regards,
