Collaborative Research on Institutions and Land-Use Politics

该研究考察了地方土地使用政治背景下的制度变迁。从制度变迁的角度对土地使用政策选择进行概念化，使我们能够从制度理论中获得见解，以承担更广泛的政策变化主题。主要假设是，地方政府结构作为政治和经济力量的关键机构调解人，将以可预测的方式影响政策动态。对政治制度结构的关注是对产权和利益集团模型的重大背离，这些模型将政治制度视为对推动土地使用变化的潜在经济或政治力量基本透明的。为了强调制度，研究人员提出了一种制度变迁的“政治市场”理论，将产权的政治经济学理论与对地方政府结构的研究结合起来。由此产生的框架将制度变革概念化为社区变革的供给者和需求者之间动态契约过程的结果。政治制度与利益组织结构结合决定结果。不同类型的政治制度将有利于不同类型的利益，或增强或削弱利益影响土地使用政策的能力。政府形式是否会对地方政策产生影响的争论仍未解决，因为许多工作只关注财政产出，强调政府结构的叠加效应，而不是互动效应。研究人员的政治市场方法不仅关注地方制度结构如何直接影响土地使用决策，还关注产权和利益集团模型中确定的力量和利益如何受到地方制度的调解。由于土地使用制度是地方一级产权制度的核心，这项工作对土地使用治理具有重要意义。加强对土地使用决策动态的了解将有助于各级政府的决策者设计土地使用政策。通过调查行政和立法机构的角色，我们可以更好地了解地方机构对广泛的公共利益和公民参与作出反应的条件。通过让研究生和本科生直接参与研究过程，这也进一步实现了教育目标，从而为传统的讲座形式提供了另一种学习视角。

The research examines institutional change in the context of local land-use politics. Conceptualizing land-use policy choices in terms of institutional change allows us to bring insights from institutional theory to bear on the broader topic of policy change. The main hypothesis is that local government structures, as crucial institutional mediators of political and economic forces, will influence policy dynamics in predictable ways. The focus on the structure of political institutions is a significant departure from property rights and interest group models that treat political institutions as largely transparent to the underlying economic or political forces driving land-use change. To emphasize institutions, the researchers offer a "political market" theory of institutional change that combines political economy theories of property rights with work on local government structure. The resulting framework conceptualizes institutional change as the result of a dynamic contracting process between the suppliers and demanders of change in a community. Political institutions combine with the structure of interest organization to determine outcomes. Different types of political institutions will favor different types of interests, either enhancing or reducing the ability of interests to influence land-use policy. The debate whether form of government makes a difference for local policies remains unsettled because much of the work has focused only on fiscal outputs and has emphasized additive rather then interactive effects of government structure. The investigators' political market approach focuses not only on how the structure of local institutions directly influences land-use decisions, but also on how forces and interests identified in property rights and interest group models are mediated by local institutions. Because land use institutions are central to the system of property rights at the local level this work has important implications for land-use governance. An enhanced understanding of the dynamics of land-use decisions will assist policy makers at all levels of government in the design of land use polices. By investigating the role executive and legislative structures, we can better understand the conditions under which local institutions are responsive to broad public interests and citizen participation. This also furthers education objectives by involving graduate and undergraduate students directly in the research process, and thus provides an alternative learning perspective to the traditional lecture format class.