Land reform from below: Institutional change driven by confrontation and negotiation

Abstract

ABSTRACT China’s collective landownership was created by the revolutionary land reform in the early 1950s. Economic reforms since the early 1980s have dismantled the collective farming, but the collective landownership remains unchanged. Nonagricultural economies have manifested collective land rent in the dynamic urbanizing regions. The rural collective vigorously challenges the notion of collective land as a means of production that denies villagers’ claim of land rent. The contest for land rent through confrontation and negotiation with the urban state demonstrates a process of bottom-up informal institutional change. Without certainty, informal institutional change gives rise to substandard built environment that is unsustainable to the high-density urbanization. Formalization to legitimize the informal institutional change comes to minimize land rent dissipation so as to enhance welfare to both the urban state and rural collective. Land reform from below show an evolutionary route of institutional change to the collective land.