THE ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL DETERMINANTS OF FENCE REFORM IN POSTBELLUMGEORGIA

This article proposes and tests three general models to explain why Ge orgia politicians in the late nineteenth century enacted legislation t hat facilitated the adoption of an income-enhancing redefinition of pr operty rights to land. The data reveal that legislators were not simpl y ''captured'' by economic elites, as some historians claim. Instead, the politicians voted for legislation that maximized their chances of political survival and that financially benefitted themselves. The pap er argues that by pursuing a strategy of economic and political self-a dvancement, Georgia legislators hindered agricultural development in t he early postbellum period.