Comparative Research Design - The Politics of Water Institutional Reform in Neopatrimonial States - page 85

5.6 Summary

In the previous chapters, the main factors influencing the politics of water institutional reform
were identified. Table 10 summarizes all of the variables that were discussed.
Table 10: Variables of water institutional reform in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan
Controlled context variables Independent variable set Dependent variable

Neopatrimonial political regime
Exogenous variables:

Water institutional reform:

Economic development and
structure

Formulation of new rules
of water governance

Institutions of decision
making Water resources and water

usage patterns

Implemention of new rules
of water governance

Institutional conditions of
the agricultural sector

Post-Soviet challenge to
water governance

Institutions of local
governance
Endogenous variable:

Water-institutional linkages
Interfering variable:

Donor policies

Source: own compilation.
The context variables present those factors that can be expected to have an impact on WIR.
As they occur in both countries with similar values, they are controlled for. Thus, it can be
ruled out that they account for the differences in the dependent variable. In the economic
realm, both countries are agrarian developing countries with only a small industrial sector.
Both have rich water resources at their disposal; hence they do not suffer from natural water
scarcity. In both countries, most of the water is used in agriculture, while hydropower plays a
role as well. Historically, in both countries similar water institutions evolved, especially during
their shared common past under Russian and Soviet rule. After independence, both countries
were confronted with similar challenges: developing a sovereign water policy and coping with
budget and capacity shortages.
The main research question is how a neopatrimonial context influences the politics the
processes of decision making and implementation of water institutional reform. It was
shown that both countries are characterized by a conflicting co existence of formal democratic
mechanisms on the one hand and authoritarian and personalistic leadership patterns, clientel
ism, and corruption on the other hand. Both countries therefore can be considered hybrid
neopatrimonial regimes. But they vary within this type: In Kyrgyzstan, democratization in
decision making, privatization in agriculture, and decentralization in local governance was
much more implemented than in Tajikistan, where these reforms mainly changed only the
façade. It can therefore be assumed that the institutional corridor in Kyrgyzstan is broader than
in Tajikistan, allowing for more change in water institutions. On the other hand, it was shown
that informal institutions in both countries play an important role and outlast formal changes.
To what degree and based on which mechanisms do these informal aspects modify formal
institutions? Finally, donors' strategies and project rules present an interfering variable that
interacts with all of the above mentioned factors and has to be considered in order to gain a
full understanding of the politics of water institutional reform. All of these aspects again have
an impact on water institutional linkages within the dependent variable.