Land reform, emerging grassroots democracy and political trust in China

IF 5.4 1区经济学 Q1 DEVELOPMENT STUDIES

World Development Pub Date : 2024-10-05 DOI:10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106792

Xing Chen , Jintao Xu , Yuanyuan Yi , Andong Zhuge

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Abstract

This study explores how the application of democratic rule in land reform decision-making determines villagers’ political trust towards different levels of the government in China. Analyzing a two-period household survey dataset, we find that in China’s recent Collective Forest Tenure Reform, which has devolved the tenure rights of the village collective-owned forestland to households, democratic decision-making increases trust for town and county cadres. The impact on trust towards village cadres is significant only when democracy involves all villagers in a village. We show two mechanisms that improve villagers’ trust: the “privatization” effect, where democratic decision-making leads to more land devolved to villagers, and the “conflict-resolving” effect, where improved information and cohesion by mass participation helps resolve inter-village land disputes. Heterogeneity analyses show that democratic decision-making has a more pronounced effect in improving trust for villagers with lower income, and those without affiliation with the Chinese Communist Party or village committees.

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中国的土地改革、新兴基层民主和政治信任

本研究探讨了中国土地改革决策中民主规则的应用如何决定村民对各级政府的政治信任。通过分析两期住户调查数据集，我们发现，在中国最近的集体林权制度改革中，将村集体所有林地的使用权下放给农户，民主决策增加了对镇和县级干部的信任。只有当民主涉及一个村的所有村民时，对村干部信任度的影响才会显著。我们展示了提高村民信任度的两个机制："私有化 "效应和 "解决冲突 "效应。"私有化 "效应是指民主决策导致更多土地下放给村民；"解决冲突 "效应是指通过群众参与提高信息和凝聚力，有助于解决村际土地纠纷。异质性分析表明，民主决策对收入较低、未加入中国共产党或村委会的村民的信任度提升效果更为明显。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

World Development Multiple-

CiteScore

12.70

自引率

5.80%

发文量

320

期刊介绍： World Development is a multi-disciplinary monthly journal of development studies. It seeks to explore ways of improving standards of living, and the human condition generally, by examining potential solutions to problems such as: poverty, unemployment, malnutrition, disease, lack of shelter, environmental degradation, inadequate scientific and technological resources, trade and payments imbalances, international debt, gender and ethnic discrimination, militarism and civil conflict, and lack of popular participation in economic and political life. Contributions offer constructive ideas and analysis, and highlight the lessons to be learned from the experiences of different nations, societies, and economies.