Abstract
AbstractThis paper considers Douglass C. North's ‘puzzle’ concerning China's household responsibility system (HRS) and offers a possible solution. China's HRS, which has evolved over the past four decades to become its dominant form of rural land ownership, has stimulated spectacular economic growth and poverty reduction; however, it is based on a type of ownership which is far removed from the property rights regime which North regarded as essential. Two features of the HRS merit attention. The first is ‘split ownership’: this refers to the allocation of different aspects of ownership, including rights of access, use, management, exclusion and alienation, to a range of individual and collective actors with interests in the land in question. The second is polycentric governance: rules governing land use are derived in part from community-level action and in part from state intervention. We argue that in explaining the functioning of the HRS we need to move beyond the narrow conception of legally enforced private property rights on which North relied. We should instead embrace understandings of ownership as an emergent, diverse and complex institution, of the kind emphasized by A.M. Honoré's legal theory of ownership and Elinor Ostrom's theories of the common-pool resource and polycentric governance.
Highlights
A further criticism, made by North himself (2005a), is that since China remains a ‘dictatorship’, there can be no guarantee that such property rights as are recognized in law and practice, including those associated with the household responsibility system (HRS), will be preserved against arbitrary governmental action
Where Honoré points to the complexity of legal understandings of property, Ostrom supplies an analytical understanding of the incentive properties of split ownership, in both cases highlighting the limitations of the ‘standard’ Demsetz–North model of property rights as an explanatory device, and throwing new light on the reasons for the success of the HRS
It is this feature in particular that renders the location of ownership in the case of the HRS a ‘puzzle’ to economists and political scientists basing their analysis on the standard model
Summary
Communal norms may have emergent features, while depending on the state for their stabilization and dissemination; formal law, as Honoré shows, is capable of expressing multiple versions of the ownership concept, and allowing bundles of rights to be divided and recombined in ways which reflect solutions to the problems posed by interdependent uses of resources. This introduction is followed by four sections.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
