Forest tenure decision under imperfect village democracy

This paper uses a collective decision model framework to analyze the outcomes of China’s forest tenure reform. The reform essentially allows redistribution of residual clamant rights over collective owned forests, through a bargaining process between two groups, the village elites and the ordinary farmers. We specify a set of distribution factors which determine bargaining powers for the respective groups, which in turn determine the final outcomes of the reform. Using data collected through two rounds of nationwide surveys, we identify that community level social capital, policy transparency, and farmers’ outside options, along with other socio-economic conditions, are critical to determine ordinary villagers’ share of forestland, while the long-term established authority and managerial ability of the village leaders, etc. are strong determining factors for the share of forestland remained under collective leadership control. Policy implications point to the need for regular and high-quality village election, if policy makers would like to see greater decentralization of forest tenure in rural society.