Path-dependent institutional change to collective land rights: The collective entrenched in urbanizing Guangzhou

摘要

Economic reform brings about socioeconomic and organizational changes, which give rise to institutional change as a result. Collective land rights are undergoing continuing institutional change in the context of dynamic, bottom-up, rural change and consequent problematic spatial fragmentation, ecological deterioration, exclusiveness of migrants, and land underutilization in the Pearl River Delta region. The implementation of the Renewal and Refurbishment Program in Panyu, a district in Guangzhou, reveals that the collective land use right, owned by the villages, has constituted an effective holding power to bargain for institutional change to the collective land rights in favor of the rural collective. As a result, path-dependent institutional change to the collective land rights leads to the collective entrenched in the urbanizing metropolis.