Su, Yiqing

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.

Market is a complex and rigorous environmental governance instrument, and building a nested institutional system is a necessary condition for the market mechanism to play its advantages in the governance of the rural commons. Institutions can not only limit the profit-seeking nature of the market mechanism and reduce the transaction cost of the market, but also help expand the market and achieve the unity of fairness and efficiency. Focusing on whether and how the market mechanism can improve the governance of rural living environment, this paper makes an empirical analysis with 133 villages and 976 farmers in southwest of China as samples. Research shows that it is difficult for a single market mechanism to improve the governance of rural living environment. When the government-led institutional rules intervene, the advantages of market mechanism can be brought into play under the protection and constraint of high-level institutional rules. On this basis, this paper discusses the relationship between the government and the market in the governance of the rural commons by using the nested institutional system analysis framework, and summarizes the institutional design of "market under institution". The institutions have a crowding-out effect on the market mechanism, that is, although the government-led institutional rules will weaken the promotion of private interests by the market mechanism, these reduced private interests will also be transformed into public interests under the influence of institutional rules, thus promoting the improvement of social benefits and finally achieving the compatibility of fairness and efficiency. Furthermore, this paper analyzes the internal mechanism of transforming private interests into public interests by using the institutional design of "market under institution". In this process, without losing the role of the government, the market is not losing its efficiency, the combination of promising government and effective market is realized, and the balance between public interests and private interests is achieved in the governance of the rural commons.
Keywords: Market mechanism; Government; Institutions; Collective Action; Rural Living Environmental Governance

Disaster arising from climate change are critical factors that affect rural development. Promoting collective action-based natural resource management in rural areas is crucial for enhancing the resilience of rural social-ecological systems. Land fragmentation is a common land use pattern in underdeveloped regions, and research on the relationship between land fragmentation and collective action has suggested that the impact of land fragmentation on collective action is purely negative. However, past research has disregarded the systemic external shocks that disaster represent, as well as the positive role of land fragmentation in risk prevention and ecological sustainability. Based on survey data from 902 households in the border region of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, China, restricted cubic spline regression is employed to examine the nonlinear relationship between land fragmentation and farmer collective action under the impact of disaster. The results show that: (1) Under the impact of disaster, the relationship between land fragmentation and collective action exhibits an N-shaped pattern. (2) Factors such as education level, relationships with fellow villagers, whether other villagers are supervised to comply with village regulations and agreements, sense of village belonging, and fertility of family land are also important factors influencing collective action. Among these factors, farmers with a stronger sense of belonging, higher education level, better relationships with fellow villagers, and more fertile family land are more likely to participate in collective action under disaster scenarios. This paper integrates relevant research from both the social and natural sciences. It not only provides new insights into the key factors influencing rural collective action, but also demonstrates the prospects of cross-disciplinary integration between social science and natural science research.

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.