Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-m6dg7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T15:20:10.220Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Formal Rules in Institutional Transitions: An Examination Based on the Meiji Restoration and the Xinhai Revolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 March 2014

Masahiko AOKI
Masahiko AOKI*
Affiliation:
Tomoye and Henri Takahashi Professor Emeritus, Senior Fellow, Stanford University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper focuses on the roles of formal rules (laws) in institutional emergence, sustenance, crisis, and transition based on an examination of the Meiji Restoration and the Xinhai Revolution. It describes how formal rules in the polities of Qing China and Tokugawa Japan were enforced, supplemented, or modified by the strategic interactions among the ruler, the intermediate organizations, and the peasantry. It then discusses how the strategic complementarities between the ruler and the intermediate organizations were transformed into strategic rivalries in response to changes in the economic and foreign environments, resulting in the demise of dynastic rule in each country. The post-transition constitutional design was affected by the ways in which the strategic reconfigurations had led to the demise of the dynastic rulers. This historical narrative suggests that formal rules per se do not necessarily create institutions in the sense of an integral pattern and process of social behaviour and ideas. A formal rule can function as a substantive form of an institutional process if, and only if, it mediates between a recursive state of strategic interactions among agents and individual belief formation in order to sustain the social order.

Keywords

formal ruleendogenous institutional changeinstitutional complementarityMeiji RestorationXinhai Revolution
Type
Comparative and Empirical Approaches of Socio–Legal Research on Asia
Information
Asian Journal of Law and Society , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , May 2014 , pp. 31 - 54
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press and KoGuan Law School, Shanghai Jiao Tong University 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

Earlier versions of this paper were presented at Stanford University, Harvard Business School, University of Tokyo, GRIPS (Tokyo), Jiaotong University (Shanghai), European University Institute (Italy), and the 2013 GROE Workshop at the University of Hertfordshire. I thank the participants at these workshops/seminars for discussions, as well as Debin Ma, Wolfgang Keller, Carsten Herrmann-Pillath, Francis Fukuyama, and Ji Weidong for helpful discussions and critical comments on earlier drafts. I also benefited from careful and competent editorial work by Nancy Hearst. Of course, I alone am responsible for all the statements in the paper as well as for any possible remaining errors.

References

REFERENCES

Acemoglu, Daron, & Robinson, James A. (2012) Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty, New York: Crown Business.Google Scholar
Aoki, Masahiko (2001) Toward a Comparative Institutional Analysis, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Aoki, Masahiko (2011) “Institutions as Cognitive Media between Strategic Interactions and Individual Beliefs.” 79 Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 20–34.Google Scholar
Aoki, Masahiko (2012) “The Five Phases of Economic Development and Institutional Evolution in China, Japan and Korea,” in M. Aoki, T. Kuran, & G. Roland, eds., Institutions and Comparative Economic Development, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 13–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aoki, Masahiko (2013a) “Historical Sources of Institutional Trajectories in Economic Development: China, Japan and Korea Compared.” 11 Socio-Economic Review 233–263.Google Scholar
Aoki, Masahiko (2013b) Comparative Institutional Analysis: Theory, Corporations and East Asia. Selected Papers of Masahiko Aoki, Cheltenham and Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar.Google Scholar
Aoki, Masahiko (2014) “Transitions from a Pre-modern to a Modern State of Politico-economic Play Analyzed through the Meiji Restoration and Xinhai Revolution,” online: <http://ssrn.com/abstract=2384942> (last accessed 24 Feburary 2014).CrossRef+(last+accessed+24+Feburary+2014).>Google Scholar
Baker, Hugh D.R. (1979) Chinese Family and Kinship, New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Banno, Junji (2008) History of Constitutional Polity in Japan [in Japanese], Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press.Google Scholar
Banno, Junji, & Ohno, Ken (2010) The Meiji Restoration, 1858–1881 [in Japanese], Tokyo: Kodansha.Google Scholar
Berman, Harold J., & Saliba, Samir N. (2009) The Nature and Functions of Law, New York: Thomson Reuters/Foundation Press.Google Scholar
Brandt, Loren (1989) Commercialization and Agricultural Development: Central and Eastern China 1870–1937, New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Brandt, Loren, Ma, Debin, & Rawski, Thomas G. (2014) “From Divergence to Convergence: Re-evaluating the History Behind China’s Economic Boom.” Journal of Economic Literature. (Forthcoming).Google Scholar
Chang, Chung-li (1955) The Chinese Gentry: Studies on Their Role in Nineteenth-Century Chinese Society, Seattle: University of Washington Press.Google Scholar
Chang, Jung (2013) The Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China, New York: Alfred A. Knopf.Google Scholar
Chen, Leslie H. Dingyan (1999) Chen Jiongming and the Federalist Movement: Regional Leadership and Nation Building in Early Republican China, Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan.Google Scholar
Ch’en, Jerome (1979) The Military-Gentry Coalition: China Under the Warlords, Toronto: University of Toronto–York University Joint Centre on Modern East Asia.Google Scholar
Duan, Yunzhang, & Ni, Junming (2009) Chen Jiongming [in Chinese], Guangdong: Guangdong People’s Publishing Co.Google Scholar
Esherick, Joseph W. (1981) “Number Games: A Note on Land Distribution in Prerevolutionary China.” 7 Modern China 387–411.Google Scholar
Esherick, Joseph W., & Rankin, Mary Backus (1990) Chinese Local Elites and Patterns of Dominance, Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Hatano, Yoshihiro (1973) Studies on the Warlords of Republican China [in Japanese], Tokyo: Shobō Shinsha.Google Scholar
Hayami, Akira (2009) Historical Demography of Early-Modern Japan [in Japanese], Tokyo: Fujiwara Publishing Co.Google Scholar
Hayami, Akira, Saito, Osamu, & Toby, Ronald P., eds. (2004) Economic History of Japan: 1600–1990s: Volume 1: The Emergence of Economic Society in Japan, 1600–1859, Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hayami, Yujiro, & Otsuka, Keijiro (1993) The Economics of Contract Choice: An Agrarian Perspective, Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Herrmann-Pillath, Carsten (2009) “Social Capital, Chinese Style: Individualism, Relational Collectivism and the Cultural Embeddedness of the Institutions-Performance Link.” 2 China Economic Journal 325–350.Google Scholar
Herrmann-Pillath, Carsten, & Boldyrev, Ivan (2014) Hegel, Institutions and Economics: Performing the Social, London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Huang, Philip C.C. (1993) “‘Public Sphere’/‘Civil Society’ in China? The Third Realm Between State and Society.” 19 Modern China 216–240.Google Scholar
Hung, Ho-fung (2011) Protest with Chinese Characteristics: Demonstrations, Riots, and Petitions in the Mid-Qing Dynasty, New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Ishii, Shirō (1966) Power and Land Ownership [in Japanese], Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press.Google Scholar
Kasaya, Kazuhiko (1988) The Structure of the “Oshikomi” of Lords [in Japanese], Tokyo: Heibonsha.Google Scholar
Keller, Wolfgang, Li, Ben, & Shuie, Carol H. (2012) “The Evolution of Domestic Trade Flows When Foreign Trade is Liberalized: Evidence from the Chinese Maritime Customs Services,” in M. Aoki, T. Kuran, & G. Roland, eds., Institutions and Comparative Economic Development, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 152–172.Google Scholar
Kishimoto, Mio (2012) A Reconsideration of the Theory of Local Society: Collected Essays on Ming-Qing History, Volume 2 [in Japanese], Tokyo: Kenbun Shoten.Google Scholar
Kitaoka, Shin’ichi (1993) “The Army as a Bureaucracy: Japanese Militarism Revisited.” 57 Journal of Military History 67–86.Google Scholar
Kuhn, Philip A. (1970) Rebellion and its Enemies in Late Imperial China: Militarization and Social Structure, 1796–1864, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Kuroda, Akinobu (1994) The Structure of the Chinese Empire and the World Economy [in Japanese with an English summary], Nagoya: University of Nagoya Press.Google Scholar
Lewis, David (1969) Convention, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Li, Bozhong (1998) Agricultural Development in Jiangnan, 1620–1850, Basingstoke: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Ma, Debin (2011) “Rock, Scissors, Paper: The Problem of Incentives and Information in Traditional Chinese State and the Origin of Great Divergence.” Unpublished Paper.Google Scholar
Mao, Zedong (1920/92) “Reply to Zeng Yi from the Association for Promoting Reform in Hunan,” in S. R. Schram, ed., Mao’s Road to Power: Revolutionary Writings 1912–1949, Volume 1: The Pre-Marxist Period, 1912–1920, Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 526–530.Google Scholar
Motono, Eiichi (2004) The Collapse of the Traditional Chinese Commercial Order: The Unequal Treaty Regime and the English-Speaking Chinese [in Japanese], Nagoya: University of Nagoya Press.Google Scholar
Muramatsu, Yuji (1966) “A Documentary Study of Chinese Landlordism in Late Ch’ing and Early Republican Kiangnan.” 29 Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 566–599.Google Scholar
Muramatsu, Yuji (1970) The Landlord Bursary in Modern Jiangnan: A Documentary Study of Chinese Landlordism in the late Ch’ing and the Early Republican Kiangnan [in Japanese with an English summary], Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press.Google Scholar
Nishikawa, Shunsaku (1987) “The Economy of Chōshū on the Eve of Industrialization.” 38 Economic Studies Quarterly 323–337.Google Scholar
North, Douglass C. (1990) Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance, New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Oishi, Shinzaburō (1961) Economic Policy in the Kyoho Reform [in Japanese], Tokyo: Ochanomizu Shobō.Google Scholar
Oshima, Harry T. (1987) Economic Growth in Monsoon Asia: A Comparative Survey, Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press.Google Scholar
Perkins, Dwight H. (1969) Agricultural Development in China: 1368–1968, Chicago: Aldine.Google Scholar
Rankin, Mary Backus (1986) Elite Activism and Political Transformation in China: Zhejiang Province, 1865–1911, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Rosenthal, Jean-Laurent, & Wong, R. Bin (2011) Before and Beyond Divergence: The Politics of Economic Change in China and Europe, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Rowe, William T. (1984) Hankow: Commerce and Society in a Chinese City, 1796–1889, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Rowe, William T. (1989) Hankow: Conflict and Community in a Chinese City, 1796–1895, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Ruskola, Teemu (2000) “Conceptualizing Corporations and Kinship: Comparative Law and Development Theory in a Chinese Perspective.” 52 Stanford Law Review 1599–1730.Google Scholar
Russell, Bertrand (1922) The Problem of China, New York: Century.Google Scholar
Saito, Osamu (2005) “Wages, Inequality and Pre-industrial Growth in Japan, 1727–1894,” in R.C. Allen, T. Bengtsson, & M. Dribe, eds., Living Standards in the Past: New Perspectives on Well-Being in Asia and Europe, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 77–98.Google Scholar
Sangren, P. Steven (1984) “Traditional Chinese Corporations: Beyond Kinship.” 43 Journal of Asian Studies 391–415.Google Scholar
Schumpeter, Joseph (1918/91) “The Crisis of the Tax State,” in Richard Swedberg, ed., Joseph Schumpeter: The Economics and Sociology of Capitalism, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 99–140.Google Scholar
Smith, Adam (1759/1982) The Theory of Moral Sentiments, edited by D.D. Raphael, & A.L. Macfie, Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.Google Scholar
Smith, Thomas C. (1959) The Agrarian Origins of Modern Japan, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Smith, Thomas C. (1988) Native Sources of Japanese Industrialization, 1750–1920, Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Sng, Tuan-Hwee (2014) “Size and Dynastic Decline: The Principal Agent Problem in Late Imperial China, 1700–1850.” Journal of Economic History. (Forthcoming).Google Scholar
Sun, Yat-sen (1912) “An Expression of Political Views,” in Julie Lee Wei, Ramon H. Meyers, & Donald G. Gillin, eds., Prescriptions for Saving China: Selected Writings of Sun Yat-sen, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 102–110.Google Scholar
Wakeman, Frederic Jr. (1993) “The Civil Society and Public Sphere Debate: Western Reflections on Chinese Political Culture.” 19 Modern China 108–138.Google Scholar
Wong, R. Bin (1997) China Transformed: Historical Change and the Limits of European Experience, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Young, L. (1999) Japan’s Total Empire: Manchuria and the Culture of Wartime Imperialism, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Zelin, Madeleine (1984) The Magistrate’s Tael: Rationalizing Fiscal Reform in Eighteenth-Century Ch’ing China, Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Zelin, Madeleine (1991) “The Structure of the Chinese Economy during the Qing Period: Some Thoughts on the 150th Anniversary of the Opium War,” in K.L. Lieberthal, J. Kallgren, R. MacFarquhar, & F. Wakeman, Jr., eds., Perspectives on Modern China: Four Anniversaries, Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 31–67.Google Scholar
Zelin, Madeleine, Jonathan K. Ocko, & Robert Gardella, eds. (2004) Contract and Property in Early Modern China, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar