American Westward Movement Of Institutional Change Research

Beginning from the end of the 18th century, Westward Movement was carried out to promote the development of the West and was of great historical significance to America's development as a country. Meanwhile, it can be regarded as a test of institution change, thus providing a rich material for social studies. Current researches on Westward Movement have proposed many valuable ideas from the perspective of histology, sociology and economics, but unfortunately, they failed to put it into the framework of institution change for analysis, which to a certain extent limits the persuasiveness of the factors contributing to the success of the Westward Movement, underestimates the role of the institution in such a process and ignores the significance of the Westward Movement serving as a meaningful sample for the theoretic models of institution change. By integrating historical institutionalism of New System School, models of New Classical Political Economics and empirical analysis, this paper puts the historical development of the Westward Movement into the theoretic framework of institution change and aims to present the unique mode of institution change during the Westward Movement period and its complicated effect, thus offering a new perspective on the success of the Movement.The paper points out that the Westward Movement was the primary stage of the country's growth and development. With a relatively weak administrative capacity, the U.S. government managed to establish the institution environment through promoting the changes of the "core institution", which actually realized_the effect of guided demand_and cultivated the market power. By analyzing the process of the institution changes in the Westward Movement, the paper discovered that the accumulated increase of the institution demand in the process of market improvement and maturity contributes to the periodic nature of institution change. In such a process, the government's effective institution supply also ensures the market growth. To further explain the complicated process of institution change in Westward Movement, the paper selects three typical types of institutions for analysis, that is, land institution, institution that improves traffic conditions and the self-governing institution of animal husbandry industry. At the same time, it is considered that there are three modes of institution change in Westward Movement, that is, soft institution transference, hard institution transference and self-innovated institution transference, which respond to the changing process of land institution, "traffic institution" and the institution of animal husbandry industry respectively. By analyzing the environment, the principal part and mechanism of the three types of institution changes, it is indicated that another characteristic of the institution changes of Westward Movement lies in the co-existence of various elements. Meanwhile, with the rise of the West, its institution environment interacted in a complex way with the national institution environment. On the one hand, the national institution environment and the game between the southern and northern institutions influenced the changes in the institutions of the West. On the other hand, such institution changes also "nurtured" the national institution selection and the development of national institution environment. Through describing the changing process of the terms of the U.S. Contract Right, the paper shows the relationship among the federal, state and local government as well as the influence of the constitutional institution of legislation, administration and jurisdiction on institution supply. Based on this, the paper clarifies the inner mechanism of how constitutional institution promotes institution change. Last but not the least, the power of the mindset, learning and dissemination played a basic guiding role in it as well.Working beyond the current understanding of the supply institution and putting forward a new perspective of the nation's role in guided demand, the paper proposes that the government should promote institution change when taking into consideration the market choice on the grounds of the changing mentality, accumulated increase in demand and the gradual increase of the national capacity. Characterized by co-existence of various elements and gradual transformation, the institution change provides great support to the success of the Westward Movement and actually is a key to the success. By studying the cases of institution change in the Westward Movement, the paper attributes the periodic nature of institution change to the accumulated increase in the institution and finds out the complicated interaction between the regional institution change and the external environment, namely, regional institution tends to nurture the environment, thus providing a new alternative to further understand the inner mechanism of institution change in its dynamic model.