  Historians and political economists have long debated the processes that led
land in frontier regions, managed commons, and a variety of customary
landholding regimes to be enclosed and transformed into more exclusive forms of
private property. Using the framework of aggregative games, we examine
land-holding regimes where access to land is established via possession and
use, and then explore the factors that may initiate decentralized privatization
processes. Factors including population density, potential for technology
improvement, enclosure costs, shifts in group cohesion and bargaining power, or
the policy and institutional environment determine the equilibrium mix of
property regimes. While decentralized processes yield efficient enclosure and
technological transformation in some circumstances, in others, the outcomes
fall short of second-best. This stems from the interaction of different
spillover effects, leading to inefficiently low rates of enclosure and
technological transformation in some cases and excessive enclosure in others.
Implementing policies to strengthen customary governance, compensate displaced
stakeholders, or subsidize/tax enclosure can realign incentives. However,
addressing one market failure while overlooking others can worsen outcomes. Our
analysis offers a unified framework for evaluating claimed mechanisms and
processes across Neoclassical, neo-institutional, and Marxian interpretations
of enclosure processes.
