The Minority Determines The Majority: The Past And Present Of Rural Public Goods Supply From The Perspective Of Land

This dissertation examines the supply of rural public goods. It does so through field research in northern Guizhou on the implementation of the policies of "Fifty-year household contracts to land" and "Land should be neither added or subtracted from household contracts regardless of whether households grow or shrink." It describes in detail the situation of public goods supply and the series of problems it has encountered in one village over a thirty-year period, from 1980 to 2009. On this basis, the dissertation sketches the causes for and differences in the problems encountered by the supply of village public goods during two periods:before and after the abolition of agricultural taxes and fees. Finally it theorizes the logic shared by both of these periods, namely "the minority determines the majority."The dissertation investigates the present situation and plight of public goods supply from the perspective of three kinds of agent:the village, the villager team, and other supply agents. It then delves more deeply into the phenomenon of "the minority determines the majority" in the performance of various public goods, examining how this phenomenon gradually developed into a vicious circle after both village and villager team became hollowed out following the loosing the leverage of agricultural taxes and fees.The dissertation argues that the capacity of village communities to act collectively plays an extremely important role in the supply of rural public goods. Through detailed analysis of the situation of the public goods supply in Ming Village over the past three decades before and after the abolition of agricultural taxes and fees, and through an overview of the transformation of the village's land tenure system over the past six decades, the dissertation demonstrates how public goods fell into its present plight as the village community gradually lost its ability to act collectively, and how the present system of rural land tenure gave rise to the law of "the minority determines the majority."The dissertation concludes that under China's present national conditions, if the system of rural land tenure continues in its rigidity, the supply of public goods in rural areas will continue to be thwarted by the law of "the minority determines the majority" described here, rather than the "free-rider" scenario simplistically emphasized in existing literature on this subject.