Politics On Public Forest:Authority And Order In The Conflict And Governance Of Village Woodland

Property rights and governance are a pair of social relationships that are constantly evolving with the development of human society.The basic path of governance of property rights in the process of social and historical development is that land produces interests,interests lead to differences,differences lead to conflicts,conflicts need governance.Public property rights represented by public forest rights play a dual role in influencing the internal order of rural society.On the one hand,various production and management practices around public woodlands become the property rights foundation for forming and maintaining the internal public cohesion order in rural areas;On the other hand,members of the rural society have led to different forms of interest differentiation and social conflicts around the use of public forests.Public forests have long become "orderly barren forests" in the village society.Conflict and governance practices surrounding public forest rights have become an important part of China’s rural social property rights governance.The New Institutional Economics School believes that the core goal of property rights governance is to establish a property system with clear ownership and clear responsibilities,and property right governance should follow the rational guidance of system rationality and efficiency rationality.But the logic of micro-property governance in reality is often not the case.Different authority structures and authority rationality dominate the political order in the public forest and have a profound impact on the reform of public property right system and the governance form of rural property right.In this regard,this article adopts an empirical research method,taking a village in the north of Guangxi Province where a large number of Dong ethnic groups He Village as a case study village,through a diachronic study of various public forest conflicts and governance practices in this village in many historical periods since modern times,this paper further explores the political logic behind the public forest conflicts and governance,and focuses on the investigation of what kind of rationality and behavioral preferences dominate the micro property governance practices in rural society,which has led to the continuous occurrence of different forms of social conflicts on public forest grounds for a long time.The research focuses on the conflicts of public forest property rights and governance practices in rural society in different historical periods.Through the interpretation of the traditional social background of He village,this paper explains why the local public property rights come from and why they last for a long time.Then,by examining the conflicts of "private use of public forests"and their governance practices led by traditional authorities,the conflicts of "private occupation of public forests" and their governance practices in the construction of Guangxi’s "new Guixi" regime in the middle of the Republic of China,and the conflicts of "private management of public forests" and their governance practices surrounding the reform of collective forest right system in recent years,the paper explores and sorts out the realistic appearances and logical causes of the conflicts of public forests in village society,summarizes the influences of different authority structures,authority rationality and individual preferences on the micro-property right governance patterns,and then puts forward general conclusions that lead to the continuous occurrence of public forest conflicts.The main conclusions of the study are as follows:First,the generation and maintenance of public property rights in rural society depend on certain social background and endogenous needs.However,the imperfection of public property rights system has brought about unclear ownership relations and uneven distribution of benefits in public forest management,thus leading to various forms of interest differentiation,which has led to social internal differentiation and conflict practice.Secondly,in different historical periods,the practice of rural micro-property rights governance,including the creation,maintenance,adjustment and conflict mediation of property rights rules,is dominated by:different authoritative subjects.Under different authoritative sources and structures,the dominant rationality and behavioral preferences of the authority in property rights governance are different,thus causing different impacts on the micro-property rights form and the change of property rights system.Third,for a long time,all kinds of authoritative subjects in micro-property right governance often implement public property right governance activities not based on property right efficiency and system orientation.The existence of different forms of authoritative "functional rationality"behavioral preferences and governance orientation,such as public order rationality,organizational income rationality,and administrative goal rationality,makes the system defects existing in the public forest property right system itself unable to be effectively resolved for a long time,thus triggering a protracted public forest conflict.