治水与治国——治水派学说的新经济史学演绎

Water Governance and State Governance: An Explanation upon China's Unitarianism by Approaches of New Institutional Economics

以马克思—魏特夫—黄仁宇为代表的“治水派”学者的观点,是有关中国为何两千多年前走上大一统的一种有影响力的学说。利用交易成本经济学方法对该学说进行演绎,指出中国在文明早期,由于治水等跨区域公共事务供给面临高昂的合作成本,驱使国家治理利用纵向的行政控制代替横向的政治交易,以较高的管理成本为代价换取合作成本的节约,由此导致了大一统体制及其自我强化特性。提出有关中国“大一统之谜”的三个重要命题:大一统体制的形成是节约交易成本(合作成本)的产物;大一统体制的运行有降低交易成本(管理成本)的强大动力;大一统体制的解体是由于不能有效制约交易成本(管理成本和合作成本)的上升。在新的历史条件下,管理成本和合作成本的相对变动决定了,当代中国国家治理结构有从单一制向联邦制调整的趋向。

The Unitarianism （Da Yi Tong） is both one important character of Chinese civilization and a key to understand it. But there are a series puzzles upon China＇s Unitarianism. The theory of ＂water governance＂ school of thought represented by Karl Mark, Karl Wittfogel and Ray Huang is most influential in the explanation why China embarked on Unitarianism more than 2000 years ago. The paper tries to deduct this theory by the transaction cost approach. Basing itself on the related literatures, the paper constructs a choice model on governance structure, with the transaction cost of the management cost and cooperation cost that move in the opposite directions. Under the framework of this model, the paper has invoked historical materials as evidences to structure choice of China＇s water governance and, on this basis, explained how the hierarchical structure of water governance led to Unitarianism and in- terpreted the mechanism of the formation, operation and disintegration of China＇s Unitarianism. The relative movement of marginal curves of management cost and cooperation cost implicates a trend from unitary system to federal system in the state governance in contemporary China.