Chen, Xiaohan

Endogenous development constitutes an important mechanism of rural governance. Long-term practice has shown that rural endogenous development is affected by numerous factors. By studying the case of the village-stationed cadre program in China, this paper presents an analysis on how external leadership rebuilds social capital and improves the capacity for rural collective action, ultimately leading to rural endogenous development. The survey responses of 593 farmers from 80 villages with village-stationed cadres accredited by the central government in China were analyzed. The following conclusions could be drawn: (1) The higher the villagers’ opinion of the first secretary, the better the collective action the village can carry out. Village-stationed cadres can improve the collective action capacity of the village. (2) The social capital built by village-based cadres is the main path that ultimately promotes the improvement of the rural collective action capacity and endogenous development. The most likely reason why village-stationed cadres can realize this improvement of village collective action capacity is that the first secretary forms the kernel of social capital by weaving networks and building norms in the village. By continuously using the social capital developed by the first secretary when forming institutions, villagers contribute to the improvement of the collective action capacity of villages. The conclusions of this paper offer references for rural revitalization in developing countries.

Improving the resilience and adaptive capacity of farmers to disasters is a major challenge for rural areas around the world in the context of climate change. The ability of farmers to participate in collective action in response to disasters (CARD) is directly related to the adaptive capacity of individual farmers to climate change. Existing studies have discussed the impacts of disaster risk governance and information and communication technology (ICT) respectively, but few have introduced the factors of ICT application into the analyses related to disaster governance. Based on the collective action theory, this paper builds a link between the application of ICT and farmers' participation in CARD, and proposes a mechanism path through which the application of ICT can enhance CARD by enhancing social learning. Taking 987 farmers in the border areas of China as the study sample, the analysis results show that, on the one hand, ICT has a significant positive effect on CARD, but this positive effect will be weakened with the increase of the users of ICT; on the other hand, ICT will increase the human capital, financial capital and social capital of farmers by promoting the social learning pathway of the farmers, which will enhance the farmers' willingness to participate in CARD. This paper increases awareness of the new public goods represented by digital space, and provides practical pathways for rural villages in developing countries to cope with the impacts of climate change.