For over a century, the Philippines has been characterised by fierce, sometimes bloody, power struggles over land. Typically, governments have won votes and appeased protestors by promising to reform land ownership, but have then failed to deliver more than token levels of redistribution.
However, this Research Summary shows how an alliance between civil society and state reformers helped drive a remarkable period of land reform in the Philippines from 1992 to 1998. Change was made possible because of mobilisation by autonomous rural organisations, independent initiatives by state reformers, but also, significantly, by the sophisticated interaction between both groups of actors.