Decentralisation, Institutionalised Cooperation, and Forest Self-Governance in China: Theory and Experiment

Common-pool resources (CPR) often face the problem of overuse, which inherently involves the economic challenge of coordinating collective action. The "tragedy of the commons" proposed by Hardin has led many to believe that users of common-pool resources are incapable of internally achieving cooperative governance. There is a stronger inclination toward centralized approaches or the conversion of resources into private ownership to address the issue of overuse. However, resource scholars represented by Ostrom, through the analysis of actual self-governance cases, have concluded that CPR users can sustainably manage CPR resources through self-organization. Furthermore, scholars have summarized a series of institutional design principles for successful self-governance. This study examines China's collective forests as a common-pool resource, utilizing Ostrom's resource governance framework to analyze whether these institutional design principles are applicable in the Chinese context. The findings reveal that, at the current stage in China, it is not feasible to directly adopt Ostrom's self-governance design principles to form community-based self-governance. However, by drawing on the logic of the self-governance framework, this study proposes a governance model suited to the Chinese context—the "entrepreneur + local organization" approach. Therefore, this research not only offers an interpretation of issues specific to China but also contributes to the development of Ostrom's theory itself, demonstrating the robustness and adaptability of its design principles. These principles can integrate with market mechanisms and village-level administrative organizations to address emerging challenges.