Study On The Local Government Behavior Towards Guarding Against Land-expropriation-related Mass Incidents(LERMIs)

Land expropriation means the redefinition and reallocation of rural land wealth.It manifests the value of rural land as a kind of asset,at the same time brings a sensitive issue of rural land value-added income distribution,which makes it become the main source of rural social contradiction in the period of rapid urbanization.As the pernicious events initiated from slight contradictions,land-expropriation-related mass incidents(LERMIs)pose serious threats to social stability.Consequently,to implement the main body responsibility of maintaining social stability in the field of land expropriation,guarding against LERMIs is an important governance direction for local governments.Following the behavioral causal chain of "objective environment—intrinsic motivation-external expression-influential effect" and the social science research approach of"theoretical derivation-empirical test-policy implication",this paper conducts a specialized system research on the environment,motivation,expression,and effect of the local government behavior towards guarding against LERMIs.Firstly,this paper deconstructs and interprets the environmental elements that can affect the local government preventive behavior from the structural perspective.Secondly,using the new institutionalism theory,this paper constructs a multidimensional motivational system for the local government preventive behavior,and based on the methods of scaling and sample survey.further empirically tests it with the use of structural equation modeling.Thirdly,using the prospect theory,this paper gives an evolutionary analysis on the expression of local government preventive behavior,and from the hierarchical perspective,further evidences the logical deduction conclusions with multi cases.Lastly,on the basis of constructing a model for the evolution of a LERMI,using the method of computational sociology,this paper simulates the effects of local government preventive behavior,and then proposes corresponding strategies that will help to improve the effects.The main findings are as follows.(1)Eleven environmental elements that belong to four aspects(political,economic,social,and institutional)can affect the local government preventive behavior.Firstly,political environmental elements include the administrative bureaucracy under political centralization,the administrative concept of responsible government construction,and the political mobilization of implementing the "Safe China" strategy.Secondly,economic environmental elements include the demand for land expropriation during urbanization,the dependence on land finance under the pro-growth goal,and the distortion of land acquisition price related with urban bias policies.Thirdly,social environmental elements include the rural social situation reflected from frequent quantities of LERMIs,the rural social ecology constituted by trust tendency,relationship network,and resistance habit,and the social mentality of peasants characterized by the sense of right,deprivation,and resistance preference.Lastly,institutional environmental elements include the reform of land expropriation system outlined by safeguarding legitimate rights and interests of land-deprived peasants,the stability maintenance system centered on the accountability and one-vote veto.These various elements interactively affect the cognition,judgements,actions,and tactics of local governments towards guarding against LERMIs from different perspectives and paths.(2)The incentive-constrain structure faced by local governments when guarding against LERMIs has the attribute of "strong constraints,weak incentives".In response to the constraints and incentives,the multidimensional motivational system of local government preventive behavior includes six kinds of motives,namely,evade accountability,response to the society,anticipate risk,political promotion,self-fulfillment,and experience learning.The empirical test from the perspective of "motivation-tendency"shows that:firstly,the motivational source of cognitive tendency of local government preventive behavior is not in conformity with that of pay tendency.On one hand,impacted by the motive of response to the society and that of self-fulfillment,local government will psychologically acknowledge the importance of guarding against LERMIs,even it is not enough to lead their pay tendency.On the other hand,the motive of political promotion has a positive impact on the pay tendency of local government preventive behavior,while it makes no sense to their cognitive tendency.Secondly,the motive of evade accountability and that of anticipate risk are the two most important among the motivation system,they will influence both the cognitive tendency and the pay tendency,and the cognitive tendency acts as the mediator between motives and the pay tendency of local government preventive behavior.(3)The expression of local government preventive behavior presents the periodic characteristic.Before the emergence of land expropriation contradictions,as the risk loss of LERMIs perceived by local governments is weak,their preventive behavior is usually passive and formalistic.Once the contradiction occurs,the increased perceptive risk loss will make the preventive behavior of local governments become more active as an emergence response.The hierarchical deduction to the expression of local government preventive behavior shows that:in the policy-making stage of land expropriation,local governments normally bring the prevention of LERMIs into the goal system of land expropriation policies,and design the overall guidance to the preventive task from aspects of interest distribution,communication,risk warning,and conflict resolution.Yet,in the work deployment stage of land expropriation,the arrangements of local governments for land expropriation do not shed much light on guarding against LERMIs;compared with that of schedule requirement,the weight of preventive performance in the land expropriation assessment is relatively lower,only 15%and below.Furthermore,in the project implementation stage of land expropriation,representative preventive tactics adopted by local governments include the followings.1)the administrative contract system that based on the sink of principal responsibility;2)the "project-by-project"system that integrates law and reason,3)making the compliance of land expropriation behavior as a priority,4)the compensated maintenance of stability with the goal of dissolving land expropriation contradictions.(4)Dividing the local government preventive behavior into four categories,i.e.the behavior of increasing trust,the behavior of disintegrating groups,the behavior of dredging discontents,and the behavior of isolating leaders.They lead to a prevention effect through respectively intervening the internal factors that affect the evolution of LERMIs.The simulation results show that the current local government preventive behavior is effective in the short term,but it does not have an institutional basis that ensures the long-term effectiveness.To this end,local governments should firmly establish the preventive concept of addressing both the symptoms and root causes,and specifically implementing the evidence-based prevention,the inclusive prevention,the instrumental prevention,and the holistic prevention.The corresponding policy implications are:1)to implement the normal management to the cognition and attitudes of land-deprived peasants,2)to strengthen the construction of channels that can hold the appeals of land-deprived peasants,3)to attach importance to positively guiding and rationally utilizing rural elites,4)to achieve the unification among relevant departments as well as the policy coordination.