Informal Institutions, Collective Action, and Public Investment in Rural China
Informal Institutions, Collective Action, and Public Investment in Rural China

Author: Yiqing Xu

Publisher:

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 70

ISBN-13:

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Do informal institutions, rules and norms created and enforced by social groups, promote good local governance in environments of weak democratic or bureaucratic institutions? This question is difficult to answer because of challenges in defining and measuring informal institutions and identifying their causal effects. In the paper, we investigate the effect of lineage groups, one of the most important vehicles of informal institutions in rural China, on local public goods expenditure. Using a panel dataset of 220 Chinese villages from 1986 to 2005, we find that village leaders from the two largest family clans in a village increased local public investment considerably. This association is stronger when the clans appeared to be more cohesive. We also find that clans helped local leaders overcome the collective action problem of financing public goods, but there is little evidence suggesting that they held local leaders accountable.

Informal Institutions and Rural Development in China
Informal Institutions and Rural Development in China

Author: Biliang Hu

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2007-08-07

Total Pages: 379

ISBN-13: 1134102240

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Providing an account of the role of informal institutions in Chinese rural development, this book puts forth a distinctive argument on a very important topic in Chinese economic and social affairs. Winner of the 2008 Zhang Peigang Development Economics Award

Social Networks, Informal Accountability, and Public Goods Provision in Rural China
Social Networks, Informal Accountability, and Public Goods Provision in Rural China

Author: Jie Chen

Publisher:

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13:

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Few political scientists would deny the centrality of institutions in comparative political studies. Institutions, conceptualized as “the rules of the game in society” (North 1990, 3), impose constraints on people's behavior and shape their strategies of interaction. These humanly devised constraints, according to North's conceptualization (North 1990; Mantzavinos et al. 2004), can be either formal, such as written rules, or informal, such as shared conventions and customs. In this study, we focus on the informal institutions.

Proceedings of the 2022 2nd International Conference on Modern Educational Technology and Social Sciences (ICMETSS 2022)
Proceedings of the 2022 2nd International Conference on Modern Educational Technology and Social Sciences (ICMETSS 2022)

Author: Youbin Chen

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2023-02-10

Total Pages: 1069

ISBN-13: 2494069459

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This is an open access book. ICMETSS 2022 is to bring together innovative academics and industrial experts in the field of Innovation in Teaching & Learning , Technology-Enhanced Learning in the Digital Era and Integrating Educational Technologies. The primary goal of the conference is to promote research and developmental activities in Innovations in educational technology in the digital age and another goal is to promote scientific information interchange between researchers, developers, engineers, students, and practitioners working all around the world. The conference will be held every year to make it an ideal platform for people to share views and experiences in Innovations in educational technology in the digital age and related areas.

The Art of Political Control in China
The Art of Political Control in China

Author: Daniel C. Mattingly

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2019-12-05

Total Pages: 269

ISBN-13: 1108485936

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Civil society groups can strengthen an autocratic state's coercive capacity, helping to suppress dissent and implement far-reaching policies.

Decentralized Governance and Accountability
Decentralized Governance and Accountability

Author: Jonathan A. Rodden

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2019-02-28

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 1108571093

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At the end of the twentieth century, academics and policymakers welcomed a trend toward fiscal and political decentralization as part of a potential solution for slow economic growth and poor performance by insulated, unaccountable governments. For the last two decades, researchers have been trying to answer a series of vexing questions about the political economy of multi-layered governance. Much of the best recent research on decentralization has come from close collaborations between university researchers and international aid institutions. As the volume and quality of this collaborative research have increased in recent decades, the time has come to review the lessons from this literature and apply them to debates about future programming. In this volume, the contributors place this research in the broader history of engagement between aid institutions and academics, particularly in the area of decentralized governance, and outline the challenges and opportunities to link evidence and policy action.

How Informal Institutions Matter
How Informal Institutions Matter

Author: Zeki Sarigil

Publisher: University of Michigan Press

Published: 2023-09-19

Total Pages: 217

ISBN-13: 0472903772

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In How Informal Institutions Matter, Zeki Sarigil examines the role of informal institutions in sociopolitical life and addresses the following questions: Why and how do informal institutions emerge? To ask this differently, why do agents still create or resort to informal institutions despite the presence of formal institutional rules and regulations? How do informal institutions matter? What roles do they play in sociopolitical life? How can we classify informal institutions? What novel types of informal institutions can we identify and explain? How do informal institutions interact with formal institutions? How do they shape formal institutional rules, mechanisms, and outcomes? Finally, how do existing informal institutions change? What factors might trigger informal institutional change? In order to answer these questions, Sarigil examines several empirical cases of informal institution as derived from various issue areas in the Turkish sociopolitical context (i.e., civil law, conflict resolution, minority rights, and local governance) and from multiple levels (i.e., national and local).

Collective Action and Property Rights for Poverty Reduction
Collective Action and Property Rights for Poverty Reduction

Author: Esther Mwangi

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2012-05-22

Total Pages: 450

ISBN-13: 0812207874

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To improve their well-being, the poor in developing countries have used both collective action through formal and informal groups and property rights to natural resources. Collective Action and Property Rights for Poverty Reduction: Insights from Africa and Asia examines how these two types of institutions, separately and together, influence quality of life and how they can be strengthened to improve the livelihoods of the rural poor. The product of a global research study by the Systemwide Program on Collective Action and Property Rights (CAPRi) of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, this book draws on case studies from East Africa and South and Southeast Asia to investigate how collective action and property rights have contributed to poverty reduction. The book extends the analysis of these institutions beyond their frequently studied role in natural resource management by also examining how they can reduce vulnerability to different types of shocks. Essays in the volume identify opportunities and risks present in the institutions of collective action and property rights. For example, property rights to natural resources can offer a variety of advantages, providing individuals and groups not only with benefits and incomes but also with assets that can counter the negative effects of shocks such as drought, and can make collective action easier. The authors also demonstrate that collective action has the potential to reduce poverty if it includes more vulnerable groups such as women, ethnic minorities, and the very poor. Preventing exclusion of these often-marginalized groups and guaranteeing genuinely inclusive collective action might require special rules and policies. Another danger to the poor is the capture of property rights by elites, which can be the result of privatization and decentralization policies; case studies and analysis identify actions to prevent such elite capture.

Precolonial Legacies in Postcolonial Politics
Precolonial Legacies in Postcolonial Politics

Author: Martha Wilfahrt

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2022-12-31

Total Pages: 317

ISBN-13: 100928620X

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Why are some communities able to come together to improve their collective lot while others are not? Looking at variation in local government performance in decentralized West Africa, this book advances a novel answer: communities are better able to coordinate around basic service delivery when their formal jurisdictional boundaries overlap with informal social institutions, or norms. This book identifies the precolonial past as the driver of striking subnational variation in the present because these social institutions only encompass the many villages of the local state in areas that were once home to precolonial polities. The book develops and tests a theory of institutional congruence to document how the past shapes contemporary elite approaches to redistribution within the local state. Where precolonial kingdoms left behind collective identities and dense social networks, local elites find it easier to cooperate following decentralization. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.