Institutional diversity and the governance of irrigation commons in rural China : examining ostrom's design principles under Chinese fragmented authoritarianism

Abstract

China’s rapid urbanization and economic development have brought about drastic social-economic changes to its rural areas which, in turn, have posed new challenges to rural sustainability and prosperity. Amongst these challenges, the most arduous ones include increasing environmental pressure, an ageing and decreasing rural population as a result of rural-urban migration, and incentive changes associated with growing influences of neo-liberalization. These new challenges have changed the features and characters of collective actions involved in rural affairs, presenting novel institutional problems for rural communities and policymakers. Broadly, Ostrom’s design principles (DPs) are identified effective to analyze the successful governance for Common Pool Resources (CPRs), but the application of DPs theory can have substantially different outcomes while used in different contexts. So far, the widespread examined cases have been mostly from the western world that is grounded into “democratic water governance” while little attention has been paid to non-western authoritarian countries. Whether and to which extent Ostrom’s design principles can exist and contribute to effective self-governance under a non-democratic and underdeveloped regime? In this sense, China offers an interesting and important context for the study of collective action and institutional diversity owing to its rapid socio-economic transformation and fragmented authoritarian political setup. In order to improve the efficiency of Chinese irrigation management, it is essential to 1) specify how different institutional variables interplay with one another to account for particular outcomes and 2) to understand how institutions are crafted, selected and retained in different scenarios to adapt to the wider frame of governance. In this study, I analyze irrigation data obtained over 27 villages in Qingtongxia (QTX) irrigation district, Ningxia from 2016 to 2019. Through the analytical lens of institutional analysis and development (IAD) framework, I then classify five institutional variables according to Ostrom’s Design Principles (DPs): Boundary rules (B), Autonomous management (A), Monitoring and sanctioning (M), Conflict-resolution arenas (R) and Collective-choice mechanism (C). Further, I use two critical conditions of fragmented authoritarianism, intervention and coordination, to construct an analytical matrix for distinguishing four modalities: polycentric, monocentric, bureaucratic and fragmented. Next, we employ the crisp-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (csQCA) to help compare the configurations of institutional variables that lead to better or worse outcomes on water adequacy and equity. Meanwhile, we trace and unfold the combinatorial patterns between the four modalities and local institutions to make sense of their contextual sensitivity. I find that the absence of DPs, however, has not necessarily led to the poor performance of rural communities. Rather, many irrigation systems have sustained a viable irrigation management order with governmental intervention and self-governance working parallel to each other, simultaneously integrating measures of centralization and decentralization in the operation of local irrigation management against the context of rapid socio-economic changes in China. In this process, what kinds of institutional variables are being used for what goals and in whose interest is the key. Further, whether and how local institutions can bring a better or worse performance depends on how they configure with the broader context.