Resolving Douglass C. North's ‘puzzle’ concerning China's household responsibility system
探讨诺斯关于中国家庭联产承包责任制的产权谜题，提出‘分割所有权’和‘多中心治理’两个特征来解释其成功，对研究制度变迁和农村发展的学者有参考价值。
Abstract This paper considers Douglass C. North's ‘puzzle’ concerning China's household responsibility system (HRS) and offers a possible solution. China's HRS, which has evolved over the past four decades to become its dominant form of rural land ownership, has stimulated spectacular economic growth and poverty reduction; however, it is based on a type of ownership which is far removed from the property rights regime which North regarded as essential. Two features of the HRS merit attention. The first is ‘split ownership’: this refers to the allocation of different aspects of ownership, including rights of access, use, management, exclusion and alienation, to a range of individual and collective actors with interests in the land in question. The second is polycentric governance: rules governing land use are derived in part from community-level action and in part from state intervention. We argue that in explaining the functioning of the HRS we need to move beyond the narrow conception of legally enforced private property rights on which North relied. We should instead embrace understandings of ownership as an emergent, diverse and complex institution, of the kind emphasized by A.M. Honoré's legal theory of ownership and Elinor Ostrom's theories of the common-pool resource and polycentric governance.