Institutional Diversity or Isomorphism? Research on the Evolution of Collective-Owned Construction Land Marketization Reform since the 1990s—The Case of Shunde and Wujiang, China

Gaofeng Xu and Jian Liu ()
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Gaofeng Xu: School of Architecture and Design, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing 100044, China
Jian Liu: School of Architecture, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China

Land, 2023, vol. 12, issue 4, 1-18

Abstract: Collective-owned construction land (CCL) marketization is an important driving force for the rapid development of China’s rural economy and society. Recognizing the trends and logic of its institutional changes is important for better understanding the central-local interrelation and the new-round CCL reform. Throughout the process of rural land reform since China’s reform and opening up, together with the unified policy guidance from the central government, the diversity of local practices and the trend of convergence in the development process deserve attention. Based on the institutional isomorphism theory, this paper analyzes the evolution of the CCL system in Shunde, Guangdong Province, and Wujiang, Jiangsu Province, since the 1990s, empirically demonstrating the trend of convergence based on diversity and exploring the underlying influencing mechanisms. The study finds that the evolutionary practice is characterized by the trend of ephemeral convergence represented by the shared cooperative and the land reservation reform and that of coeval convergence represented by the construction land nationalization. Top-down coercive pressure, horizontal imitative learning pressure, and governance-embedded normative pressure jointly shape the evolutionary convergence. This paper argues that the diversity of local experiments should be allowed and encouraged based on local characteristics. Policy flexibility should be further considered by the central government when formulating uniform policies for local adaptability.

Keywords: collective-owned construction land; institutional isomorphism; path-dependence; the pearl river delta region; southern Jiangsu (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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