Institutional Analysis On Historical Evolution Of American Public Land Policy

At the end of the Revolutionary War, the new nation acquired property right ofsubstantial amounts of land, which became “public domain”. The new territory wasalmost vacant, and it could produce much opportunity for potential income. TheAmerican national land system was not concerned with the re-allocation andmanagement of developed land, but rather with the allocation and disposal of newlyacquired undeveloped land. Its core was the privatization of western public land. Themeans to privatization was by sale and free grant. From the end of Independent War tocivil war, the sale of land was the main means of land disposal.Acquiring the opportunity for potential income of western land disposal, it formedmany interest groups in America. They struggle with another for the policies aimed bythem. The land sale, seemingly simple, in fact, was very complicated. It involved a wholeset of conflicts and compromises between central government and state, East and West,North and South, new States and old States, the Rich and the Poor, and also betweenvarious political, economic and cultural forces. It also focused on such problems as towhom the land should be sold and how to be sold.At the beginning of the disposal of public land, there was unbalance between Eastand West for most of population settled in East, and the customer of public land wasneeded by eastern land merchants only. The public land policy of large scale, cash andauction was made, and it seemed reasonable. With the development of the West, personaldemand for western land and the influence of the existence of the western public landincreased. New demand for public land policy and interest groups formed. Theystruggled for new public policy by the institution supply system based on federalconstitutional convention and1787Northwest Ordinance.We build a framework of interest group theory, and use it to explain the type ofsupplying-oriented institution transformation, and how the change of institution supplysystem affect the supply cost, the price of demand, and change of public land policy.The following is the structure of the thesis.It consists of introduction and the other six chapters. The introduction outlines the topics of the background, research purposes and significance and so on. The secondchapter begins with Non neutral institution and study how the relative interest groupsform and capture the institution. This part also explains how the new force breaks themonopoly. The third chapter show how the federal public policy changes. The forthchapter discussed how institution supply system of American public land policy formedand changed and affected the institution change. It focuses on the change under thepolitical system of continental congress and the federal regime. The fifth chapteranalyzes how the American public land policy formed. During the process, a closedemand-supply system formed, and the policy was captured by specific group and thesale policy of large-scale sale, cash, and auction was drawn up. The sixth part explainsthat with the development of the western political force and the differentiation of easternforces, the ability of capturing public land policy of the East declined. So the demandersfor new public land policy can change it easily relatively. And the last one is theconclusions and suggestions.