Figure - available from: Studies in Comparative International Development
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Provincial variations in transparent village management. Thi figure illustates the extent to which provinvial regulations mandate transperent village management. Red regions follow the national regulation that important village affairs should be published twice a year; blue regions impose a higher standard, requring publication of village affairs four times a year
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Nominal democratic institutions under non-democratic regimes vary across countries. This study intends to advance our understanding of such institutions by exploring the relevance of one aspect of the authoritarian regimes, government hierarchy. Focusing on village-level democratization in China, we investigate the intermediary role of the provinci...
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Social hierarchies exist in democracies as well as in authoritarian societies. However, their nature is different. Democratic hierarchies are built bottomup through election while autocratic hierarchies are built top-down through domination. Both, however, have power asymmetries between the weaker citizens and the stronger politicians, which are am...
Citations
... The research indicates that informal institutions bear significant weight in governance. Institutions, including customs, norms, and ethical foundations established through prolonged interaction among group members, can help curtail opportunistic behavior [16], and when villages form good self-governance rules, it will greatly improve village commons performance [17]. ...
The prevailing literature has extensively explored the economic ramifications of land reallocation; however, its impact on commons governance remains underexamined. This study, using the agricultural irrigation system in rural China as an example, empirically investigated how land reallocation affects collective action. Survey information from 6298 households, spread across 461 villages in 20 Chinese provinces, served as the basis for the analysis. Our findings suggest that land reallocation is unfavorable for irrigation collective action, but the presence of informal organizations and effective leadership within the village can help ameliorate these negative effects. This research contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of the nexus between land reallocation and irrigation collective action, offering potentially valuable policy insights for countries or regions worldwide that grapple with land reallocation issues.
... In addition, leadership's role in environmental governance cannot function without institutional norms (Huhe and Tang 2017). In rural communities, institutional norms include both formal laws and policies as well as various agreed-upon village social norms, which not only provide some authority for leaders, but also depend on leaders' compliance and promotion to be fully implemented (Bryson, Crosby, and Stone 2006), and subsequently stimulate villagers' behavioral change for better environmental governance (Koopmans et al. 2018;Rist et al. 2007). ...
Rural environmental governance in developing countries is often challenged by problems of insufficient investments, lack of incentives of stakeholders, and unsustainable practices. Whilst the dysfunction of rural community is regarded as one of the major reasons and has attracted much attention, the role of community leadership and its contributions to rural environmental governance under the dynamic changing context has been rarely explored. Drawing upon case studies of villages in Shanghai, China, this study posits that rural community leadership could be categorized into three dimensions: leading and demonstrating, mobilization and organization, and reputation and credibility. Results show that all three dimensions contribute positively to rural environmental governance, while mobilizing and organizing contributes more significantly in the short term, and reputation and credibility promotes rural environmental governance more effectively in the long term. Community leadership also presents significant moderating effects on the function of stakeholders and the implementation of top‐down policies and village rules and norms. Therefore, cultivating community leadership should be prioritized in the process of improving rural environmental governance.
... The village committees elected by villagers play a key role in the governance of rural public goods. The earlier the implementation of the villagers' self-governance institution and the clearer the institution, the higher the governance level (Huhe and Tang, 2017). Some scholars believe that this is because a reasonable institution can put strong constraints on farmers and increase their input in the governance of rural public goods . ...
Participatory irrigation management is key to realizing the virtuous circle in which irrigation facilities are used and managed in rural China. Therefore, it is essential to explore the key factors influencing participatory irrigation management. This paper innovatively analyses the impact of external institutional constraints and internal moral obligation of farmers on participatory irrigation management by using a structural equation model (SEM) and drawing on survey data from 1543 householders in the Yellow River basin. The results indicate that: (i) generally, both institutional constraints and moral obligation have significant positive impacts on collective action in participatory irrigation management; (ii) moral obligation plays an active regulating role in the process of institutional constraints affecting collective action; (iii) collective action contributes positively to the performance of participatory irrigation management. This paper shows that institutional constraints and moral obligation need to be taken into account in participatory irrigation management, and these considerations can offer some insights into governments in managing irrigation systems.
... Despite local variations, there are powerful homogenizing forces whose influences are bounded by provincial boundaries but transcend lower geographic units. Most notably, provincial governments in China enjoy far greater autonomy than lower level jurisdictions (Montinola, Qian, and Weingast 1995;Mertha 2005); and the laws and policies they enact, as well as how they interpret and implement national legislations, impact the entire province (Tsai and Dean 2014;Huhe and Tang 2017). Moreover, many social and economic activities exhibit a high degree of interconnectivity within provinces but not beyond. ...
This study examines the macro-level determinants of work values in urban China. Drawing on Inglehart’s theory of postmaterialism and the institutional theory in sociology, I argue that economic development and market transition, two of the most prominent themes of China’s social change in the post-socialist era, exert opposite effects on work values. On the one hand, rapid economic growth has created unprecedented material affluence and a high level of existential security in some parts of China. According to Inglehart’s theory, this should lead individuals to focus less on material rewards and to prioritize postmaterialist goals in the work domain. On the other hand, China’s institutional change from socialist redistribution to markets has abolished lifetime employment and replaced it with a precarious labor market. This change, I argue, promotes a materialist orientation among Chinese workers and discourages them from embracing postmaterialist work values. Using data from a 2012 national labor force survey, multilevel regression analysis shows that, all else being equal, workers in China’s more developed provinces indeed place less importance on how well work meets their survival needs, whereas workers in more marketized provinces exhibit the opposite tendency. However, neither economic development nor marketization at the province level is a significant predictor of postmaterialist work values. These findings have direct implications for work value research and for understanding social change in post-socialist China.
