Game-Theoretical Analysis of Governance Dilemmas of Village Rules and Conventions and Suggestions for Institutional Design: A Case Study of Fangli Village in Liyang City

DOI: https://doi.org/10.62517/jmsd.202612415

Author(s)

Xuege Huang*

Affiliation(s)

Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Liyang, Changzhou, Jiangsu, China *Corresponding Author

Abstract

Village rules and customs offer support for rural governance. However, they often have weak enforcement and lack credibility in actual operation. Fangli Village in Liyang City, Jiangsu Province, is taken as the research case, and four typical game models are derived from the governance dilemmas through game theory: the collective-action dilemma under the Tragedy of the Commons, selective enforcement in the Chicken Game, path dependence in the Coordination Game, and trust deficit in the Signaling Game. Based on the above analysis, the root cause of the governance problem is incentive incompatibility and a failure of constraint mechanisms in the original game rules. Therefore, this paper puts forward four institutional design proposals: introducing selective incentives to address the collective-action problem, strengthening third-party enforcement and supervision to curb selective enforcement, promoting focal events and demonstration effects to break path dependence, and building a transparent information transmission mechanism to remedy trust deficits. Provide theoretical support and a practical path for changing village rules from written documents to living, effective norms.

Keywords

Village Rules and Conventions; Game Theory; Rural Governance; Institutional Design; Fangli Village

References

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