Rural Collective Action Research Articles

The effects of socialized agricultural services on rural collective action in the irrigation commons: Evidence from China

Socialized agricultural services (SASs) have reshaped the smallholder agricultural system and promoted scale operations in rural China, but little is known about whether and how they affect rural collective action in the irrigation commons. Based on the social-ecological system framework, we apply an ordered probit model and a mediation model to examine the effects of SASs on rural collective action in the commons using a data set consisting of 7737 farm households from 448 villages in 14 provinces in China. We show that SASs have a positive effect on collective action for the governance of the irrigation commons and can slow down and mitigate the negative effect of rural labor migration. In particular, SASs can help improve collective action by enhancing village leadership, fostering agricultural resource dependency, and diminishing economic heterogeneity among villagers. We contribute to the literature by investigating the effects of SASs on rural collective action, which reveals a self-regulatory mechanism inside of the social ecological system enabling it to adapt and restore balance under external shocks. Our findings have implications for the reform of the farming system and governance of the commons.

Farmland titling, farmland adjustment and rural collective action: Application of institutional analysis and development framework using evidence from China's irrigation commons

The existence of land adjustment undermines the positive effect of farmland titling. This situation not only affects agricultural operation, but also the social governance of rural areas. Using the institutional analysis and development framework, this paper takes the governance of irrigation commons in rural China as an example. Based on 721 household survey data sets, the ordinal regression model and instrumental variable method are employed to examine the relationship between farmland titling, land adjustment, and irrigation collective action. The empirical results show that, on the one hand, farmland titling both clarifies and stabilizes farmers' ownership of the residual claim on land output and encourages farmers to participate in irrigation collective action to ensure their benefits. On the other hand, land adjustment lower farmers' perception of the security of their property rights and discourage long-term investment in agricultural production. This situation not only reduces the incentive for farmers to participate in collective action, but also weakens the promoting effect of farmland right confirmation on collective action. Therefore, future land system reforms should enhance farmers' perception of property rights security and promote the land governance mode. The research conclusions of this paper provide implications for developing countries towards promoting both land system reform and socioeconomic development.

Socialized Farmland Operation—An Institutional Interpretation of Farmland Scale Management

Farmland scale management is an important approach for developing countries to ensure food security in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. At present, the realization of farmland scale management through the path of farmland use rights trading encounters obstacles in practice; moreover, the new model of farmland scale management has rarely been systematically discussed. Considering the farmland trusteeship practice implemented in Shandong Province of China as the research case, this study discusses the essence and realization premise of the new farmland scale management model represented by farmland trusteeship based on case analysis. The conclusions are as follows. (1) The high cost generated from farmland scale management is the main obstacle to realize this model. (2) The process of realizing farmland scale management through farmland trusteeship is actually the process of meeting the requirements of the socialization of farmland use, the socialization of the farmland management process, and the socialization of farmland output. Thus, in the context of the existence of a large number of small and scattered farmers in China, the socialized farmland operation is the essence of farmland scale management. (3) Effective collective action is the premise of realizing socialized farmland operation. Undeniably, a lot more systematic explorations are further demanded to strengthen the irrigation management and infrastructures, promote and ensure stable village leadership, and comprehensively improve the ability of rural collective action to ensure the further strengthening of socialized farmland operation so as to realize stable farmland scale management, which will be pursued in the future.

Optimizing the rural comprehensive land consolidation in China based on the multiple roles of the rural collective organization

Land consolidation is considered an effective solution to revitalize rural areas internationally, and a variant, Rural Comprehensive Land Consolidation (RCLC), is widely practiced in China. RCLC is essentially a rural collective action which needs collaborative governance efforts from multiple stakeholders, who mainly are the local government, rural residents and social enterprises. Commonly, RCLC projects are led by the local government and rely on top-down approaches. In such a process, rural interests are often sacrificed due to the relatively weak status of the rural residents. Also, market forces are not motivated enough for low-cost performance of participation. These result in rural stakeholders' resistance and low future development vitality of the areas which implement RCLC. A more effective collaborative mechanism of RCLC is consequently called for. Under the guidance of collaborative governance theory, it is argued that the Rural Collective Organization (RCO) shows potential to provide ‘facilitative leadership’ to guide the collaboration in RCLC, by playing its multiple roles as a rural interest representative, a grass-roots manager and an independent legal entity in Chinese society. This research proposes a theoretical framework of the potentially optimized RCLC collaborative mechanism which facilitates the collaboration of stakeholders by setting the RCO as the collaborative leader and based on the flexibility of its multiple roles to strengthen bottom-up approaches and invoke multiple forces. A case study is constructed to demonstrate and support this potentially optimized approach. It is shown that the RCO, if flexibly playing its roles in different RCLC affairs, can provide balance between stakeholders and can catalyze stakeholders who may have a low incentive to participate, thus generating innovative outcomes. Based on above observations, we also refine a practice-oriented collaborative model, with prerequisites for its wider application being discussed.

Determinant factors of the Rural Warehouse Condominium collective action model

Abstract The Rural Collective Actions are presented with the aim of facing and overcoming difficulties and particularities of the agricultural business, as well as obtaining gains and advantages, in an environment that suffers from constant transformations. This study investigates which reasons determine the choice of the Rural Collective Action model Rural Warehouse Condominium, under the perspective of the Theory of Logic of Collective Action. For this purpose, we conducted the Statistical Analysis, Multiple Correspondence and Correlation Analysis. The results indicate motivating factors for the rural model through Social, Logistics, Political, Economic, Management and Collective Action Logic variables, being of more significant burden: (i) smaller collective actions are easier to promote collective interest; (ii) rural producers work together to promote common interests; (iii) in a small collective group, individual efforts have a higher influence on results; and, (iv) the smaller is the collective group, the closer is the individual will be to achieving collective benefits. The correlation analysis shows stronger relationships between cost reduction with freight and cost reduction with transport (0.833); and, between the lack of financing lines for small and medium producers and the lack of financing lines for agricultural warehouse (0.741).

The Logic of Collective Action for Rural Warehouse Condominiums

Background: Given several bottlenecks in Brazil in distribution logistics, mainly in transport and warehouse activities, some new forms of collective action have appeared. The Condominiums of Rural Warehouses was conceived of to overcome these bottlenecks and provide better income and competitiveness to small producers in agribusiness. This article aims to analyse aspects of collective action with the focus of Rural Condominiums in the context of Brazilian agribusiness. Methods: We conducted exploratory, descriptive and qualitative research under the Theory of Logic of Collective Action lens for this purpose. Besides conducting a literature review, we conducted a semi-structured interview with the managers of the Rural Warehouse Condominiums. We analysed the data through a Categorial Content Analysis. Results: The main results show an approximation of the rural model of the Condominiums of Rural Warehouses with the Theory of Logic of Collective Action, mainly for small producers. Conclusions: We highlight the feasibility of the warehouse structure collectively, as it strengthens and provides greater efficiency to rural business and producers, inserts and integrates the industry into a competitive market environment, provides economic and social benefits, leads to cost reduction, and increased profit. The economic, social and logistical determinants show the product’s commercialisation, logistical gains, and the producers’ association regarding the development and growth of rural collective action. This paper can be helpful for practitioners and researchers interested in this field.

Does Farmland Scale Management Promote Rural Collective Action? An Empirical Study of Canal Irrigation Systems in China

Farmland scale management represents an inevitable trend toward global modern agriculture. In the new development context, the key to solving the tough problem of the insufficient supply of rural public goods is to effectively improve the enthusiasm of farming households to participate in rural collective action in countries with a small arable area per capita, such as India, China and countries in Eastern Europe. This paper adopts the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework in the context of a land system with Chinese characteristics, and uses sample data of 3663 rural households in 17 provinces to study the impact of farmland scale and various relevant systems on farming households’ participation in rural collective action. We found that the advantages of collective action, such as reduced production costs, enhanced risk resistance and improved production efficiency, can offset the disadvantages incurred by free-riding behavior, and the expansion of farmland scale can significantly facilitate rural collective action. Additionally, as the farmland scale expands, stable farmland tenure and reasonable farmland tenure transfer can help to optimize the allocation of arable land resources, increase investment, and reduce free-riding behavior, thus effectively stimulating farming households to actively participate in collective action. However, since socialized agricultural services lead to the separation of the suppliers and the users of rural public goods, the expansion of farmland scale shows a negative effect. Therefore, in the context of the continuous migration of the rural population to cities, a stable farmland tenure adjustment mechanism should be established, while the balance between farmland tenure transfer and socialized agricultural services, in pushing forward rural collective action, should be emphasized, so as to ensure the effective supply of rural public goods in propelling farmland scale management. Especially in promoting the development of socialized agricultural services, more attention should be paid to specifying the responsibilities and obligations of the main provider of commercialized services in the supply of rural public goods.

Emergence of local collective action for land adjustment in land consolidation in China: An archetype analysis

Land consolidation (LC) is considered an effective instrument to respond to public demands in rural areas of China due to its evolution from a purely technical policy into a more comprehensive social project. As one of the most important steps in LC, land adjustment has a major impact on its success. Despite the broad heterogeneity of local contexts, land adjustment-related collective action has emerged nationwide as a public good. However, the generalized patterns explaining how and why such examples of local collective action occur remain poorly investigated. This study analyses configurations of the factors that generate land adjustment-related collective action in LC by drawing upon the archetype approach and using a social-ecological systems (SES) framework to conceptually decompose the many details of cases. Based on 34 systematically selected cases from eastern, central, and western China, the results show that there is a set of 23 configurations of factors that bear a causal relationship with collective action in land adjustment. These can be clustered into six archetypes. Some collective action conditions that are well known in the existing literature, such as group size, reciprocity, and trust, are reconfirmed in this analysis. Furthermore, several distinctive implications are drawn from the archetype analysis: 1) Local leadership combined with self-governance convention and institutionalized self-organization or powerful local leadership allied with goal congruence create favorable conditions for the local collective action of self-organized LCPs. 2) Leadership also plays a significant role in facilitating local collective action for land adjustment under government-led and enterprise-led modes as government and enterprises rely on local leadership to avoid the need to contact numerous scattered farmers and to save on transaction costs. 3) While excessive intervention by the government is restrained under self-organized and enterprise-led modes, the archetypes highlight that government participation facilitate local cooperation. 4) The government and enterprises likely engage in rural collective action through divergent mechanisms motivated by their political or economic goals. In general, these findings provide new insights into land-related local collective action and may benefit China and other regions for transition processes towards rural sustainability.

Patterns of rural collective action in contemporary China: An archetype analysis of rural construction land consolidation

Abstract The objective of this study is to identify and explain the underlying patterns for rural collective action based on the practices of rural construction land consolidation (RCLC) in contemporary China. To that end, an analytical framework is developed to decompose rural collective action into diagnostic attributes, design attributes and outcomes. Then, an archetype analysis is performed, and a total of eight patterns regarding the collective action for RCLC are extracted from 30 first-hand cases in eastern, central and western China. These patterns jointly demonstrate that the alignment between the diagnostic attributes of rural construction land and rural households and the design attributes of institutional mechanisms contributes to the collective action for RCLC. The research findings corroborate the classic theoretical propositions of rural collective action, including small group size, coercive power, exclusive incentives and unequal interest. More importantly, several distinctive implications are drawn: 1) the sizes, locations and quality of rural construction land raise governance demand or create favorable conditions for rural collective action; 2) despite the small group size, the government and enterprises, as external actors, still engage in RCLC motivated by their political and economic goals in the transitional context of China, and they contribute to divergent pathways to rural collective action; 3) self-governance mechanisms consisting of community control, decision-making and coordination differ to prevent opportunistic behavior, mitigate conflicts of interest and reach consensus, depending on group sizes, whether RCLC is implemented within a village group or an administrative village as well as the extent to which the social capital accumulates in a rural community; 4) given the small group size but the large area of rural construction land involved, government participation or the formal and institutionalized self-governance mechanisms with powerful rural leadership can overcome “the tragedy of the anticommons”. In general, this study provides new insights into land-related rural collective action and references for subsequent research on other types of rural collective action or in other transitional countries.

Pockets of liberal media in authoritarian regimes: what the crackdown on emancipatory spaces means for rural social movements in Cambodia

ABSTRACTCambodia’s ruling party cracked down on the press, civil society, and opposition in the lead up to the 2018 national elections. Drawing on interviews with Cambodian journalists who lost their jobs, as well as long-standing research on rural struggles in Cambodia, we argue that the Cambodian state’s crackdown on media is part of an ongoing transformation of authoritarian populism that has reduced the space for rural collective action. The state’s repression and co-optation of media also signals a change in the ruling party’s brand of populist authoritarianism: from simultaneously courting and spreading fear amongst rural voters, to casting rural people aside. The media is a space of both emancipatory and authoritarian potential, and for the journalists who saw themselves as building the post-conflict democratic state, the crackdown signals the loss of a more emancipatory, democratic imaginary. This study contributes to analyses of authoritarianism as practice by drawing attention to the various scales and spaces in which it is produced, enacted, and imagined.

Trust, mental models and community participation in transition: Evidence from rural Ukraine

As participatory governance approaches find their way into the development agendas in transition countries, a key question is how to increase citizens’ participation rates. This study examines how social trust and mental models inherited from the communist past shape individual decisions to participate in rural collective action. Using unique data from rural Ukraine, I approach these questions empirically distinguishing different types of participation. I find that social trust and mental models about the roles of communities and the state stemming from the Soviet past affect participation with some reservations. Results suggest that community-driven initiatives should invest more in educational and awareness-raising activities.

REFLEXIONES TEÓRICAS EN TORNO A LA SOCIEDAD CIVIL RURAL EN MÉXICO

The main objective of this article is to discuss the current situation of rural collective action in Mexico from the scope and theory of civil society. More particularly, this text offers an analysis about if the concept of civil society is useful and sufficient to describe and to study the activities and practices of varied and diverse alternatives of organized action that are set in motion in the rural sphere in Mexico. This is a theoretical article in which, nonetheless, some empirical references are offered to think the present and future of rural Mexico in terms of human collectivities and the associative world.

DE LA ACCIÓN COLECTIVA EN EL CAMPO A LA SOCIEDAD CIVIL RURAL

This essay examines the existence of a rural civil society in Mexico. There is a basic link that joins the urban way of life with the notion of civil society. The opposition city - field has limited the recognition of genuine forms of rural collective action. The specialized literature on the civil society has ignored the pacific organization of sectors of the rural citizenship to obtain other aims that are not agricultural or the cancellation of an industrial project in his territory. In spite of this situation, we show that the organizations of the rural civil society are not always local expressions of an urban project.

Interdependencia económica mundial y procesos de resistencia campesina en un mundo globalizado: la experiencia de la Vía Campesina internacional

En el artículo analizaremos la globalización de la economía mundial y las formasde resistencia campesina generadas desde mediados de los años de 1990,problematizando así la emergencia de conflictos sociales desencadenados porlos procesos de globalización, y la novedad en el ámbito de la acción colectivarural que fue la creación de una organización internacional de campesinos.Analizaremos a La Vía Campesina (LVC), movimiento mundial que pretende nuclearpequeños productores rurales frente al accionar de instituciones como laOrganización Mundial del Comercio en la producción mundial de alimentos. Elobjetivo del trabajo es ver de manera breve cómo la globalización afecta las formasde vida campesinas en el mundo; cómo esos campesinos procuran resistira este proceso organizándose a escala mundial e internacionalizando su lucha.Para ello, examinaremos cómo se da el nacimiento de la organización a partirde documentos, entrevistas y sus cuestionamientos al proceso de globalizacióncapitalista-neoliberal.

A influência da Comissão Pastoral da Terra (CPT) na formação do Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST): breve análise teórico-documental do papel da religião nos conflitos sociais no Brasil (1954-1984)

This article seeks to relate the influence of the Pastoral Land Commission with its ties to Liberation Theology in. organizing the Landless Rural Workers of Brazil in 1984. That ecclesial model was one of the basic variables in the constitution of said social movement and its distinctive scale of national representation and socio-political coordination, which was to influence the methodology of rural collective action in Latin America in the decades that followed. The aim of the present project is thus to situate the debate regarding the agrarian issue in Brazilia during the military dictatorship, emphasizing the role of the Catholic Church in the process.

Do institutions evolve?

Elinor Ostrom subscribes to the view that institutions are the rules-of-the-game within which actors strategically choose actions. Specifically, she defines institutions as rules of behavior that specify expected, permissible, and forbidden behavior together with the sanctions that follow “if forbidden actions are taken” (p. 11). Although institutionalized rules are designed, limited cognition implies that they evolve as unexpected events reveal their inefficacy. Ostrom thus conjectures that institutional evolution is similar to biological evolution in the sense that diversity and experimentation leads to progressively more effective institutions. One policy implication of this argument, she noted, is that it is best to leave rural collective action institutions free of governmental intervention so that evolution will take its course. In the absence of governmental intervention, progressively better rules will emerge and proliferate. There is no doubt that institutional design reflects our limited cognitive ability and miscomprehension of relevant environmental and causal factors. Institutions evolve. In fact, an important line of research has demonstrated the benefit of examining institutional dynamics from an evolutionary perspective. It has wonderfully demonstrated themerit of this perspective in studying such diverse phenomenon as humans’ capacity to be moral, preferences, gender discrimination, and language.1 But is institutional evolution in general analogous to biological evolution? Or is institutional evolution distinct?What are, if any, the fundamental distinctions between

The Rural Collective Action in the Dynamics Productives Systems

The objective of this article is to present an approach to a logical formalization of collective rural action that makes it possible to measure change dynamics intensity in a productive system as a consequence of the synergy of social capital structures working towards a common goal. To this end I have identified and quantified the various forms of social capital that emerge from the social actors linked to a horticultural productive system. I conclude that the relations of cooperation and trust, the level of organization, and the informal institutions are expressions of social capital that, in their synergistic state, make it possible to advance common objectives within a productive system and take the shape of an index.

The Logic of Survival Culture of Rural Collective Action in China: A Preliminary Study Framework

This paper focuses on the formation of the Water Association in River Village after the People’s Commune through a framework of “Understanding Knowledge”. It starts from the perspective of rural people's daily life, using a narrative explanation way of the Experience Ethnography. In the life history between written history and oral history, the paper shows a picture of “collective in the rural society” to everyone. And then, the paper discusses the logic of collective on its generation process in the view of culture from the perspective of people’s daily life. Key words: Chinese Rural; Daily Life; Collective Actions; Survival Culture Resume: Cet article se concentre sur la formation de l'Association de l'eau dans le Village de riviere apres la Commune populaire a travers un cadre de connaissance de comprehension. Il commence par la perspective de la vie quotidienne des populations rurales, en utilisant un moyen d'explication narrative de l'experience ethnographique. Dans l'histoire de la vie entre l'histoire ecrite et l'histoire orale, l'etude montre une image des actions collectives dans la societe rurale a tout le monde. Et puis, le document examine la logique des collectives dans son processus de generation d'un point de vue culturel a partir de la perspective de la vie quotidienne des gens. Mots-cles: Chine Rurale; Vie Quotidienne; Actions Collectives; Culture De Survie

From Local Experiments to National Policy: The Origins of China's Distinctive Policy Process

China's national policy formulation undergone economic transformation and shaped the making of policies in promotion of private business and stock market regulation. China's distinctive process of central-local interaction in policy generation is one of its core strengths in reforming its economy.

When Peasants Sue En Masse: Large-scale Collective ALL Suits in Rural China

Employment of the Administrative Litigation Law (ALL) by aggrieved Chinese peasants against local governments has drawn increased attention in recent years. Current literature reveals an emerging set of practices, including various tactics employed by litigants and defendants against each other. This article focuses on the phenomenon of large-scale rural collective action in administrative litigation. While such cases remain the exception, their scale and impact are potentially phenomenal. Through a statistical analysis of selected case studies and a contextual analysis of the famous 1997 case in Hebian Township, Sichuan, this study examines the emergence and efficacy of large-scale rural collective action in the ALL.