Mobilizing theory - Governing Transboundary Waters: Canada, the United States, and Indigenous Communities - page 30

a resource . The extension of abstracting water into a resource poses the risk of
commodification - a journey that political ecologists and critical geographers such
as Bakker (2005, 2013) consider a slippery slope. Similarly, for Indigenous peoples,
the abstraction of water into a commodity is fundamentally counter to the spiritual
elements of water as a lifesource (Phare, 2009).
Water governance
Broadly, water governance debates address the mechanisms and institutional
frameworks through which decisions about water are made. It is important to
emphasize here the distinction between government and governance, as the
decision-making frameworks discussed here (and elsewhere) extend far beyond
the reaches of conventional government mechanisms. Indeed, the differences
between government and governance hold significant implications for organiza-
tional structure and participating actors, particularly, but not solely, for Indigenous
communities. One way to distinguish between the two is that “government” often
refers to a branch or authority of a political authority (such as a nation, state, or
municipality) taken as representing a whole, whereas “governance” is the process
in which multiple actors, including civil servants and stakeholder groups, partici-
pate in the decision-making process (Bakker, 2010; Norman et al. , 2013). It is
important to note here that the procedural dimensions of governance are as much
about the processes of decision-making as they are about its outcomes (Norman
et al. , 2015).
Indeed, procedural differences are, in large part, how governance is defined.
Zimmer and Sakdapolrak (2012) categorize a variety of definitions of “governance”
into two groups: the descriptive and the analytic. Descriptive characterizations see
governance as focusing on “identifying, characterizing and explaining changes in
ways of steering and reformulates classical concerns of political science” (Zimmer
and Sakdapolrak, 2012, p. 327). This approach explores the emergence of new
actors, modes of communication, and organizational structures (i.e. Swyngedouw,
2005), as well as the inclusiveness of non-state actors (Biermann et al. , 2009; Norman
and Bakker, 2009). As Chandhoke (2003, p. 2959) reflects: “we have witnessed a
shift from hierarchical and rigid government to flexible forms of governance in
which the state is but one actor among several cooperating entities”. In other words,
a descriptive characterization of governance highlights the multiplicity of actors
involved in the governance process.
The second approach uses governance as an analytical concept. Scholars
employing this approach explore the processes that societies undertake to steer
themselves and how negotiating between actors informs this process (see for
example Schmidt, 2007; Harris and Alatout, 2010; Vogel, 2012). This approach
examines where and how governance takes place; from this vantage point, “there
has been no transition from government to governance; rather we have witnessed
a change in governance modes” (Zimmer and Sakdapolrak, 2012, p. 327). For
example, as Budds (2009) shows, governance occurs in daily interactions and