Land development involves many different assessments, decisions and judgements, and the institutional designs of these rules of procedure exhibit a variation of different structures. During legislative processes it is often stated by the law-making bodies that efficiency is an important aim and motive in the establishment of new or revised review procedures. Prevalent theoretical models concerning institutional development and change can, however, be classified into two opposing traditions depending on whether they perceive legislation as allocative (value-enhancing) or redistributive in nature.

The aim of this article is to present some existing theories on institutional development and by two case studies, concerning legal reforms in Swedish legislation on land development, evaluate the explanatory and predictive capacity of these theories. The results and analysis indicate that both theoretical traditions have explanatory value and that the concept of path dependence is an important complementary factor.