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The contested commodification of state‑owned land

In many countries, there has been an increasing move to rely on the market to decide how state-owned land is currently used and how it will be used in future. This article draws on a review of the available literature to develop a sociological perspective on the commodification of state property.

par Marie PIGANIOL

The Grignon estate in the Yvelines, which housed AgroParisTech before the school moved to Saclay, was due to be sold to a property developer in 2021. The site ultimately remained in the state’s property after months of campaigning by local elected officials, associations, teachers and students. The banner reads: ‘Because Grignon is our national heritage, a hotspot of biodiversity, a symbol of agroecology, let’s not sacrifice it on the altar of profit.’

Article paru dans : Piganiol, Marie. « The contested commodification of state-owned land ». French Politics, 20 (2022): 226-243.

Based on the French case, this article highlights the contested character of state-owned land commodification, as different institutionalized rationales conflict with the market logic. It combines political sociology and economic sociology perspectives to address three questions: Why does land privatization matter? Is the commodification of state-owned land just another neoliberal reform? Does commodification submit the French state to market forces?

The 1990s saw many countries around the world selling public land on an unprecedented scale, with governments pushing administrations, public bodies and state-owned companies to put their land and buildings up for sale (Kaganova and McKellar, 2006). If measures to decrease social services expenditure make up one side of the austerity coin (Blyth, 2013; Boyer, 2012;
Crouch, 2009; Morel and al., 2012), the other is surely the sale of public land; in other words, attempts by governments to increase revenue through the markets. Thus, in the last few decades hectares of urban land and forest, as well as military sites, courts, hospitals, schools, universities, public housing, administrative buildings, and heritage sites have been sold, mostly
to the private sector. In France, the state has sold 10% of its property since the 2000s.2 Although this figure may seem fairly low, when we consider that the French state is one of the biggest landowners in Europe, it still represents a massive property transfer in absolute terms.3
Although one might assume that land privatization is a recent phenomenon in
contemporary Western society, comparable processes have occurred before in various places and contexts. Large-scale land privatizations took place in Europe (most notably in France and in Spain) in the 18th and 19th centuries when the Church and the nobility’s property was confiscated by the state and subsequently sold in order to pay off the public debt (Bodinier, 1999). More recently, at the turn of the 1990s, massive land privatizations were a prominent
feature on the roadmap of the post-socialist transition and sparked radical political change in Eastern Europe (Hamm and al., 2012; Verdery, 2003). Historians, economic sociologists and political economists have accumulated a considerable amount of evidence that massive land privatizations in both periods profoundly affected the state’s bureaucracy and reinforced the power of a rising (or newly-created) bourgeoisie (Bodinier and al., 2000; Bodnar, 1996; Eyal and al., 1998; King and Szelényi, 2010). Despite this, for many years land privatization in contemporary Western countries was a surprisingly neglected subject in the social sciences (Christophers, 2018). As a matter of fact, there is no entry in the major handbooks on political economy (Hay and Smith, 2018; Weingast and Wittman, 2008) and economic sociology (Smelser and Swedberg, 2010; Steiner and Vatin, 2009) on the privatization or commodification of public goods in general. The subject has however recently drawn attention
in urban studies and economic geography, which have mostly investigated its local outcomes, observing how state-owned land is turned into urban redevelopment projects in various political and urban contexts (Adisson and Artioli, 2020; Eidelman, 2018; Hyötyläinen and Haila, 2017; Piganiol, 2017).
What we know even less about is the larger process of commodification of state-owned land. By commodification, I mean that the market rationale is becoming a major point of reference in public land management: market values, devices, actors, and institutions are all playing an increasingly prominent role in deciding how public land is currently used and how it will be used in future. This trend neatly complements the rise of new public management reforms that have pushed administrations to adopt supposedly more efficient market-based instruments (Hood, 1991). However, as emphasized by economic sociologists, the conversion of goods into commodities is often contested (Polanyi, 2001 [1944]; Block and Somers, 2014;
Radin, 1996; Steiner and Trespeuch, 2014), and a number of examples suggest indeed that the commodification of state-owned land is an incomplete process. In France, it is still the case that most state-owned buildings and land provide public services, allowing certain public bodies to freely make use of state-owned land to achieve various political and social goals. Moreover, sale is not the only possible outcome when property is reevaluated: public buildings and parcels of land may be valued as commodities and rationalized according to market standards without necessarily being put on sale. Finally, sale does not always involve the private sector: in France, since the mid-2000s 40% of state-owned land has been sold at a reduced price to municipalities, the major beneficiaries of public land transfer.


OpenEdition vous propose de citer ce billet de la manière suivante :
marpiganiol (21 novembre 2025). The contested commodification of state‑owned land. Sociologie politique de l'économie. Consulté le 12 juin 2026 à l’adresse https://doi.org/10.58079/156je


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