Institutional Change Of The Conservation Of Historic Water Towns South Of The Yangtze River During China's Transitional Period

The institutional change of the conservation of Chinese historic towns during the transitional period is a special institutional change under the background of China 's social-economic transition. It is a complex interaction between the subject (stakeholders) and the object (historic town) in the conservation of Chinese historic towns. The essence of this process is the change of related interest pattern. Its characteristics originate both from the special property rights of historic towns and from the specialty of China 's transition. In this paper historic town is regarded as special resources with compound quality in urban development. From the origin of its special nature of property rights, the author tries to find out the interrelationship between the game of stakeholders and the institutional change of conservation under the background of transition. The paper studies the intercourse dynamically by the integration of history and logic and by the integration of economic analysis and political analysis.Based on the economic principle of interest-maximizing, the institutional change is nothing but an intercourse between the demand and supply of the institutional arrangement in conservation. By using the method of cost-benefit analysis and neo-institutional economics, the author established a theoretical framework of the institutional change of conservation, including original mechanism, driving mechanism, developing path and inner logic. Historic town is a kind of communal property rights from the perspective of its historic and cultural value, because its nature is: exclusive to outside but non-exclusive inside. Based on its special communal property rights, the author analyses the stakeholders and points out that local town government is the best potential subject in conservation during the transitional period. But on the other hand, local town government has no enough power to get the resources needed in conservation. So the institutional of conservation is unbalanced.With the whole institutional change in China, market of the historic culture came into being and developed fast, which stimulated the supply of historic culture in the form of historic town conservation. When the local town government realized that conservation is more profitable than any other investment available, he would begin to conserve the historic town in order to obtain its potential benefit. The local town government tries to get the resources needed in conservation by way of institutional innovation and plays the most important role in the institutional change. In view of integrating theory and practice together and finding out the most influential factor in the institutional change, this paper probes into the cases of the Water Towns South of the Yangtze River by using the method of comparative institutional analysis. Then describes the institutional innovation in detail and makes a comparison between the six towns.The institutional change of conservation wouldn't happen without the domination of government, but government-dominating leads to a dual dilemma. One from the specific background of China 's transition and the other from the special property rights of historic towns. The local town government pushes the institutional change forward by pursuing its own interest, while its institutional innovation would not meet the social demand well because the limitations ofgovernment in transitional period. We should make a distinction between the rational and un-rational parts of the behavior of local town government and try to construct a balance between the government, the market and the society. Only by political democracy and market freedom can we obtain a better disposition of resources and a better distribution of rights in historic town conservation.