| China is a great country setting up on the basis of agriculture. China's agricultural production have a special dependency on irrigation because of the unique natural climate and the geographical conditions, as well as food safety problem which caused by the huge population pressure, so irrigation agriculture is the foundation of our country. Irrigation can not be achieved without water resources, and water-control is closely related to the large-scale water conservancy irrigation system. As a response to those, China has been taking water governance as extremely important public affairs since the ancient times, and the evolution of irrigation system governance is endogenous of the evolution of water governance pattern. In the ancient, the authority single center had a highly authority centralization system which formed on the basis of water-control, as well as the society, the culture and the economic form which was endogenous of that. They had the inertia of self-implementation and self-strengthened, called"irrigation society"by scholars. In the present age, there is still having this system's profound mark. However,at present, China are experiencing an overall transition from the economic system to the social political system, the goal and the proposition, the technical conditions, the institutional environment, the ideology and so on of the irrigation system governance all have changed greatly. Although the traditional single-central governance pattern has already became more and more ineffective which is suitable to agricultural society, the new effective governance pattern was still in the process of inoculation, so China's irrigation system governance structure is being in a transition period from the old pattern to the new one. During the transformed period, China's agriculture irrigation is facing a"dual dilemma". On the one hand, it is facing a crisis of shortage of water resources. On the other hand, it has a problem that the irrigation water resources have been wasted seriously and the efficiency of using water are very weak. It is seemly that the dilemma is a crisis that shortage supplies of water resources and the irrigation project construction and the investment in maintenance are insufficient, but its essence is a crisis of governance, namely the governance mechanism of irrigation system has fallen behind the governance demand of irrigation system for a long time, and it is also the accumulated consequences of the mechanism which cannot adapt to the changed social economic conditions and the increasingly complicated governance environment, thus economic-interest relationships are not coordinate among the irrigation system and the environment (including nature, economy and social environment) and the stakeholders of irrigation system. In writer's opinion, China's irrigation system which sinks into the governance"difficult position"is facing"non-continuation"seriously. If we want to solve the non-continuation problem of China's irrigation system, the key point lies in the institutional factors. Its core lies in encouragement, its fundamental outlet lies in seeking a new irrigation governance pattern under China's overall transition, and changing stakeholders'bad encouragement in the process of irrigation governance so as to enhance irrigation performance and realize sustainable development of irrigation system.This dissertation just proceeds its research based on this thought, emphatically using the modern institutional analysis tool and method , through constructing a theory explanation frame of institution"demand - supply"based on the irrigation system attribute and encouragement analysis of stakeholders behavior , then analysis the deep level institutional root why China's agriculture irrigation system can not be governed sustainable in this transition period, inquiring about the bad incentive factors and their relevance about the supply of irrigation system and each link in the whole production involved in the present governance structure, so as to provide a new angle of view for understanding the massive economic phenomenon appeared in the governance transition of irrigation system of China in the transformation period. At the same time, in order to make beneficial contribution for the development of economic transition theory and the transition practice of economic society, the author designed a better substitution system in order to improve encouragement based on that, and reflect the institutional analysis method and the application value which have universal referential significance in the public domain. This dissertation carried out the research thought that"put forward the theory hypothesis - empirical application and tests - derived the policy implications". There are seven chapters altogether. The first chapter is introduction.The chapters from two to four are the fundamental research part. The 2nd chapter attempts to make a new viewpoint on the attribute of China's irrigation system in the transformation period. Generally speaking, irrigation system has the typical characteristic of common-pool resources, but each change of external restrictions have already caused fission of irrigation system internal attribute under the special background of China in the transition period. Author discovered that the economical attribute of irrigation system has clan feature through a new consideration. There are many levels between public-like goods and private-like goods formed a gradually changed pedigree. Correspondingly, property right of irrigation system has nesting layered characteristic. This inevitably requests the governance structure which adapts to it also to have hierarchical classification and occur heterogeneous governance fission, which are not to be done by the pure centralization and the pure market.The 3rd chapter aims at making a definition and definition of the stakeholders of irrigation system governance in transformation period of China, and differentiates the various links of supply and production of irrigation system, as well as main motivation and interactive game which the stakeholders are facing. The change of governance structure is essentially the reallocation of responsibility and right which is inevitably involves gambles and its balance of the interest relations among individuals. The governance of irrigation system is a complex process, its supply and production include numerous links of the decision-making, the plan, the financing, the construction, the maintenance, the management, the movement and so on, and it also involves many relevant decision-making subjects who are in different levels. In order to realize better institutional performance under the condition of saving transaction cost as much as possible, we must reduce"the friction"as far as possible and make their relationship harmonious. In the decision-making systems of the governance of China's irrigation system in this transition period, the water used peasant household and the central government are two poles of this system, and the intermediate zone involves many levels of decision-making subjects, including the Water User Associations of Farmers (WUA), the water supply organizations, the specialized management organizations of irrigation, all levels of local governments and their water administration department responsible for the work, as well as the private enterprises, the international assistance organizations and so on. Every main body has different domination and influence to the irrigation system, pursuing different goal and gain divergent interest in the complex long-term interdependence and gambling. The stakeholders'interactive gambling of irrigation system mainly involves the possibility of cooperative dilemma and independent negotiations among peasant household under the natural conditions; the double principal-agent relationships among the peasant household,WUA and the government with their agent organizations; the struggles for the"residual rights of control"between governments and their agent organizations in the departments'governance structure; the relations of"rent-seeking"under the condition of property right soft constraints between governments and enterprises; the mutual strengthening of similar stimulation between governments and international assistance organizations. It is possible that the different stakeholders who involve in the governance of irrigation system have rich and diverse choices, and the main body who participate in supplies does not necessarily participate in production. Correspondingly, may be each link of supplies and production suitable to different institutional arrangements so as to contain improper stimulation to stakeholders as much as possible. In chapter 2, we have discussed the economic attribute of irrigation system and the fission of property right structure, which are suitable to the nesting layered governance structure .Now we make a logic consistency to that.The 4th chapter is the core and main innovation part of this full paper. Starting with the two aspects of supplies and production of irrigation system, this chapter establishes a conceptive frame about the appraisal institution and performance based on transaction cost, then using this appraisal framework to compare and analyze the performance of these three basic governance structure: the centralized governance, the market governance and the social group self-governance .At last, we discover that we must pay remarkable cost for solving the problem of sustainable governance of irrigation system whatever anyone of the institutional arrangements, and anyone of the institutional arrangements is not all-powerful unique solution. It has relations of division and cooperation, mutually supplementary and mutual competition among the different institutions, but they constitute a close interactive organic whole. Therefore, based on the conception and derivation of above chapters, this paper has designed a better substitution system about the sustainable governance of China's irrigation system in the transition period - nesting layered polycentric governance structure. This governance structure is essentially a mutual restriction governance model between the civil society and market and the national power, its regulations and economic organizations have the characteristic of nesting layered. In this system, it has a written constitution in fact, and it provides a legal framework has the highest binding force for the different interest-related subjects'rights and obligation, under which it also has classified and categorized collective-choice rules or operation rules, and the latter rules are restrained by the previous rules, namely the rules nest each other and form a complete regular system so as to standard and restrain stakeholders'behavior and maintain the orderliness of governance structure. Under the constraint of this regular system, stakeholders realize their institutional centralization and decentralization, and choose different scale subjects or determine different"district"for irrigation system's supplies and production according to the standard that in what scale of the boundary range does the external effect of irrigation system can be integrate into"internalization"successfully. Main providers of irrigation system do not necessarily the main body of production. It is possibly that main providers choose to produce themselves or choose other main bodies to provide products in the form of using market contracts or producing with other main bodies. Although these main bodies of supplies and production or the"district"are also nesting layered, these organizations'nesting layered does not have the traditional significance administrative membership, but rather based on different scopes of scale economy. The authority is separated relatively in different"districts". In other words, the authority is polycentric, and the relations are mainly on the basis of motion rules and contractual relationships which provided law and standard, thus make irrigation system's supplies and production have the characteristic of irrigation service industry, and then the subjects of different types and scales can form a supplementary, competitive and restrictive relations so as to contain the bad stimulation as much as possible and realize the sustainability of irrigation system.The 5-6th chapters are the parts of demonstration research. In chapter 5, it gives a historical retrospection and carding about the changes of governance structure of China's irrigation system, and then uses research thoughts and framework provided by this dissertation to explain the logic of evolution of China's irrigation system governance structure theoretically. The evolution of China's irrigation system governance structure is the response of environmental constraints'changes. It has been evolving under the framework of authority single-central bureaucracy from ancient to now: the decision-making power of related transaction is organized by hierarchical orders, and central government is the ultimate authority center. The core is the evolution of irrigation system property rights, namely a process of defining property right of irrigation project and irrigation water resources unceasingly. Among them, evolution of the property right of irrigation water resources is also the most important inducement which causes the evolution of property rights of irrigation project. In the process of this evolution, government has the tendency of giving up the governance in microcosmic aspect gradually and turning to shrinkage of macroscopic aspect. And then it will introduce market in bureaucracy structure gradually, appearing a transition from the authority single center to the authority multi-centers. Pay more attention to the strengthening effect of institutional incentive to self-enforcing capability of irrigation system"good governance", which is the focus of governance reform of irrigation system from now to the future. The evolution of China's irrigation system governance structure has the typical characteristic of institutional innovations by the government. In the current rapid transformation of our society, due to the insufficient nurturing of civil organizations and the weak ability of public participation, pure induced institutional change is not to be occurred easily, so the government administrative strength is not suitable to withdraw too early and too quickly. Because of these reasons, the induced institutional changes still need to occupy the dominant position.Chapter 6 takes researches on typical cases of China's irrigation system in the transition period - irrigation district of Dujingyan and Bazhong's irrigation system, and holds comparative institutional analysis on them. Thus, it makes a further analysis to the realistic problems of China's governance reform of current irrigation system, and interpretes theoretically different transformation paths in different zones. Then the future reform orientation of sustainable governance of China irrigation system in the transition period is to be clearer.Chapter 7 is the conclusion and policy implication. On the basis of summarizing the full text, it forecast future orientation of the reform that sustainable governance structure of China agriculture irrigation system in the transition period, think that the flatter nesting layered polycentric governance structure will be the inevitable trend of transformation, and derive policy implication which has the general referential significance. In a word, the aim is to provide useful references to the reform practice of sustainable governance of China irrigation system in the transition period... |
PDF Full Text Request