Kira Gartzou-Katsouyanni, Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford
There is an implicit assumption that the landholding distribution no longer matters in advanced capitalism, as the decline of the agricultural sector has eliminated land conflict as a salient political issue. This paper questions this assumption. It develops a theory about the effects of the landholding distribution on the organisation of economic production at the local level in advanced economies, and, through this mechanism, on voting behaviour. When land is more concentrated in bigger plots owned by fewer people – largely for historical reasons, as the landholding distribution is known to be highly persistent over time – economic production is also more concentrated in fewer, larger firms at the local level. Thus, in areas specialised in low-productivity sectors that rely highly on land as an input, such as tourism, low-paid workers will constitute a larger part of the workforce when land concentration is high, shifting political preferences to the left. In contrast, when land is more fragmented in a larger number of smaller plots, SME owners will dominate local economic life, shifting local political preferences to the right. The paper offers evidence in support of these hypotheses based on the case of coastal tourism in Greece. The analysis relies on plot-level geospatial data from the Hellenic Cadastre, which are matched to data from the Corine land cover database, the Hellenic Statistical Authority’s hotel survey and business register, and a decade of electoral results since the onset of the Greek financial crisis.
Meet our speaker and chair
Kira Gartzou-Katsouyanni is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow within the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford.
Professor Vassilis Monastiriotis is Director of the LSE Centre for Research on Contemporary Greece and Cyprus - Hellenic Observatory, Professor in Political Economy and Eleftherios Venizelos Chair of Contemporary Greek Studies at the European Institute, LSE.
The Hellenic Observatory (@HO_LSE) is internationally recognised as a leading research centre on contemporary Greece and Cyprus. In 2024, it became the LSE Centre for Research on Contemporary Greece and Cyprus with a strategy to expand its research base within LSE and beyond. The Centre produces world-leading, non-partisan research, critically engaging with key issues and fostering debate among academics, policymakers, and the public. Its work spans academic research, knowledge exchange, and policy impact.
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