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 |  Subject: Via Anarcho-Capitalists' Forum: Why aren’t there more libertarian land use scholars?  Mon Sep 29, 2014 11:36 pm | |
| In this interesting recent post at Concurring Opinions, liberal land use scholar Kenneth Stahl asks why there aren’t more libertarians in his field:
Many professors who study land use and local government law, myself included, consider ourselves leftists rather than libertarians. That is, we have some confidence in the ability of government to solve social problems. Nevertheless, were you to pick up a randomly selected piece of left-leaning land use or local government scholarship (including my own) you would likely witness a searing indictment of the way local governments operate. You would read that the land use decisionmaking process is usually a conflict between deep-pocketed developers who use campaign contributions to elect pro-growth politicians and affluent homeowners who use their ample resources to resist change that might negatively affect their property values….
The organization of local governments, on the surface a merely technical matter, has fallen victim to a similar pattern of what public choice scholars call “rent-seeking….”
It hardly paints a pretty picture of local government. Yet, most leftists’ prescription is more government….
So why would left-leaning scholars, who have seen so clearly the failures of local government, place so much faith in a largely untested restructuring of governmental institutions, rather than looking to less government as the solution? Libertarians often point out that Houston, the lone American metropolis without single-use zoning, has far lower housing prices than comparable cities elsewhere, and has become a magnet for young families and immigrants. What is holding leftists back from embracing Houston’s (sort of) free-market solution?
It’s a good question! In attempting to answer it, I would start by pointing out that there are in fact a good many libertarian land use scholars. I am one of them myself. For years, I have argued that cities should adopt the Houston approach to zoning (or go even further in a free market direction), strengthen protection for property rights, and severely limit the use of eminent domain. I even wrote an entire article devoted to explaining why state and local governments are likely to be particularly dysfunctional when it comes to regulating property rights in land and other immobile assets.
Obviously, the vast majority of land use scholars are far more left-wing than I am, and far less willing to impose tight constraints on government power. But that’s largely because academia in general is dominated by the political left, as is legal academia in particular. Relative to the general distribution of opinion among legal scholars, land use and property law specialists are probably more libertarian than the average. Admittedly, I don’t have systematic survey data to prove it. But that is my strong impression based on over a decade of experience in the field. Certainly, the percentage of libertarian scholars in the land use/property law fields is much higher than in my other field, constitutional law. Some of the most famous libertarian legal scholars of the last several decades have been property law specialists, most notably Richard Epstein and the late Bernard Siegan.
Even left-wing property and land use scholars are often more skeptical of government than liberal legal scholars in other fields. For example, many of them advocate tighter constraints on zoning authority that leads to “exclusionary” zoning that fences out the poor. As compared to several decades ago, few scholars still support the Progressive/New Deal era vision of systematic “comprehensive” land use planning. The backlash against the Supreme Court’s decision in Kelo v. City of New London has even led many on the left to look favorably on reinvigorating public use constraints on takings, though this trend is much stronger outside of academia than within it.
That said, I agree with Stahl’s suggestion that most left of center land use scholars are much more supportive of government intervention than its track record can justify. Most still reject the imposition of tight constraints on zoning and the aggressive use of eminent domain, despite extensive evidence that zoning and “blight” and economic development takings inflict great harm on the poor and racial minorities.
There are a variety of reasons for that trend. But one important one is that what Stahl calls “confidence in the ability of government to solve social problems” is almost a defining feature of modern left-liberalism. To give up on that idea is almost to reject more left-wing ideology generally. Like adherents of other ideologies (including libertarians), left-wing land use scholars are very reluctant to give up on their core commitments. As a result, even when they see an extensive pattern of government failure, they instinctively prefer to look for ways to address the issue without giving up on government intervention more generally. We often make marginal adjustments in our views on specific policy issues. But it is psychologically difficult to reject long-held basic precepts of your world-view.
One can potentially be a libertarian on land-use issues without rejecting activist government across the board. For example, you could favor free market land-use policies, while also favoring extensive redistribution of income to the poor through the tax system. But if land use is a major focus of your professional life, it might be emotionally awkward to have an ideological orientation in your primary field that is very different from that which you bring to most other issues.
Obviously, you don’t have to be a full-blown libertarian (even on land-use issues) to denounce many specific types of dysfunctional zoning and eminent domain policies, or even to call for some tighter restrictions on government power in these fields. A number of left of center scholars have done exactly that. But beyond a certain point, embracing a free market approach to land use issues is likely to conflict with a more general commitment to left-wing ideology.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/09/29/why-arent-there-more-libertarian-land-use-scholars/ |
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