Compulsory Acquisition and the VGGT: Institutional Pathways in Six Asian Jurisdictions

Compulsory acquisition is usually assessed by the legality of the taking and the adequacy of compensation, yet these tests say little about how tenure safeguards reach affected holders in practice. This paper examines how the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure (VGGT) are operationalized in the compulsory-acquisition systems of the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia, with India as an Asian comparator. Using a documentary comparative legal–institutional method, it traces each system across an eight-stage acquisition lifecycle and interprets the evidence through three dimensions: economic adequacy, governance legitimacy and institutional capacity. Legal sources, institutional materials and implementation evidence are kept at separate evidentiary levels. The six systems allocate valuation, compensation and review to different combinations of courts, administrative agencies and licensed valuers, and similar valuation standards sit within materially different compensation architectures. Tenure identification, the interval between possession and payment, and the scope of review emerge as the junctions at which formal entitlements depend most on institutional mechanisms. The paper develops institutional realization, the process by which a safeguard becomes ascertainable, implementable, reviewable, enforceable, and economically meaningful, and distinguishes valuation architecture from compensation architecture, with implications for legislators, acquiring agencies, and valuers.