Scholar-participated governance: Combating desertification and other dilemmas of collective action

This dissertation addresses the central issue of collective action by exploring an alternative to the classical models of collective action: central authority, privatization, and self-governance. This alternative model is temporarily named scholar-participated or intellect-driven governance.;In conclusion, this study demonstrates that in addition to Lindblom's observed intellectually guided society and preference-guided/volition-guided society, there may be the possibility of an intellect-driven society in which knowledge or intellect plays a larger role.;Through a series of game theoretic analyses of collective decision making, survey and interview studies of combating desertification in multiple counties in northwest China, and reviews of relevant case studies in other regions of the world, the author finds that the scholar-participated governance model is an alternative, or at least complementary, solution to the problem of collective action. The findings demonstrate that scholars who have comparative advantages in knowledge, and information over other social actors (such as herders and governments), can help decision makers resolve their collective action dilemmas under certain conditions. Scholars can either be information providers, entrepreneurs, self-interest pursuers, or government agents. In order for the scholar-participated governance model to work, seven working rules (or design principles) may apply: (1) sustained participation of field-based scholars; (2) federal organizational structure and concrete and stratified purposes; (3) democratic and collaborative management with the federal mechanism of appropriate awards and sanctions; (4) steady local scholar-entrepreneurship; (5) realization of expected benefits; (6) the Experiment-Extension method (social actors first do experiments in relatively small experimental areas or zones, and then extend them gradually to broader areas after obtaining adequate experience); and, (7) reliable external support. The more strongly these rules are abided by, the more successful this model of governance becomes.