Le mystère du Droit Foncier

Le mystère du droit foncier

Sens et non-sens d'une politique volontariste de généralisation de la

propriété privée de la terre dans le décollage des économies des sociétés du

« Sud »

Étienne Le Roy

Paru dans Christoph Eberhard (dir.), Enjeux fonciers et environnementaux. Dialogues afro-indiens,

Pondichery, Institut Français de Pondichéry, 2007, 549 p (57-88)

Abstract : The Mystery of Land Law. Sense and Nonsense of a Voluntaristic Policiy of Generalizing the Private

Ownership for the Take Off of the ‘South’s’ Economies.

The generalisation of land ownership (propriété foncière) has been an ongoing debate in development policies for over

a century. This debate does not concern property in general, but focuses on propriété privée (the French equivalent to

private ownership) that, according to Article 544 of the French Civil Code, the Code Napoléon, is ‘the right to enjoy

and to dispose of things in the most absolute manner, provided the laws and regulations in force are respected’

1

. Its

distinguishing feature is the discretionary character of land alienation, the fact of rendering “one's land” external

(étranger) to oneself and to a group. And, because the pre-colonial and colonial histories of the societies of the ‘South’

differ widely, the consequences of this alienation have to be assessed case by case.

This paper considers that land security is only incidentally linked to the detention of land titles and to the more or less

absolute character of the conferred right. The real guarantee can only rest in the public authority that represents the

general interest. If this authority is weak, absent, corruptible, hesitant or unduly dominated by the interests of a

minority, no title can guarantee the security of transactions as long as a minimum consensus does not legitimate the

exercise of the invoked rights. This consensus regarding the puissance publique (‘public power’), the State in its

contemporary version, relies fundamentally on the manner according to which the diverse actors of the ‘land law game’

(jeu foncier) imagine this intervention and legitimate its implications. Indeed, there are societies with strong state

traditions, and others that disregard it or do not spontaneously trust it.

In the present case, we should remember that propriété privée is an invention of and for the market economy and that

its

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