Collaborative Research on Institutions and Land-Use Politics

这项研究考察了当地土地使用政治背景下的制度变迁。从制度变革的角度对土地利用政策选择进行概念化，使我们能够将制度理论的见解运用到政策变革这一更广泛的主题上。主要假设是，地方政府结构作为政治和经济力量的关键制度调解人，将以可预测的方式影响政策动态。对政治机构结构的关注与财产权和利益集团模式有很大不同，这些模式将政治机构视为对推动土地使用变化的基本经济或政治力量基本上是透明的。为了强调制度，研究人员提出了制度变迁的“政治市场”理论，该理论将产权政治经济学理论与地方政府结构研究相结合。由此产生的框架将体制变化概念化，认为这是社区中变化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相结合，决定结果。不同类型的政治制度会偏向不同类型的利益，增强或削弱利益影响土地利用政策的能力。关于政府形式是否会对地方政策产生影响的辩论仍然悬而未决，因为许多工作只注重财政产出，强调政府结构的累加效应，而不是相互作用的影响。研究人员的政治市场方法不仅关注地方机构的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通过地方机构进行调解。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管理具有重要影响。加强对土地利用决策动态的了解，将有助于各级政府决策者制定土地利用政策。通过调查行政和立法结构的作用，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做出反应的条件。这也通过让研究生和本科生直接参与研究过程来进一步促进教育目标，从而提供了传统授课形式课堂的另一种学习视角。

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.