Comparing the Politics of Water Institutional Reform - The Politics of Water Institutional Reform in Neopatrimonial States - page 182

and could protect water users' interests more easily. 298 This may be exactly the reason for resis
tance to reform. On the other hand, the empowerment idea of WUAs is easier to achieve in
established communities as people would prefer to organize in familiar structures than with
'strangers'. In this respect a trade off can obviously occur on local level between hydrographic
principle and empowerment of stakeholders for participation.

8.5

Establishing Democratic Mechanisms: from State-Command System to User
Participation

The last focus under which both countries are compared is the democratization of water go
vernance: the involvement of stakeholders and the decentralization of decision making and
implementation competencies to water user associations (WUAs). A fundamental observation
is that participation of non state stakeholders in both countries is more often than not re
stricted to implementation of policy objectives. Participation of civil society actors in decision
making, on the definition of general policy goals, hardly occurs. These are already defined by
the government, the donors, and some few other actors that can influence decision making.
Therefore, to assess participation local governance institutions are the main explanatory varia
ble, since participation, as fostered by reform policies and projects, is mainly restricted to the
local level. In this subsection, the focus is on the democracy aspect of the WUA reform.
A precondition of active stakeholder participation is the empowerment of water users to
make them able to effectively claim their interests. This task ultimately tackles the question of
whether democratic sector reform is possible in a non or partly democratic environment.
Thus, can democratic politics be achieved without a democratic polity? Likewise with other
laws, the WUA reforms also provide formally democratic mechanisms. The way they are rea
lized, however, mirror the general politics: formal democratic mechanisms are introduced but
undermined by informal patrimonial practices.
The decision making process on WUA reform is similar in both countries: it can be stated
that implementation started long before the actual decision making. In both countries, reforms
were initially based only on a government decree and are virtually exclusively implemented by
donors. The lack of a legal foundation for WUAs in their first years was an inter institutional
obstacle for reform. Donors obviously wanted to quickly put through their policy objectives
because they needed WUAs as counterparts for their rehabilitation projects. But the water law
component could not be changed as fast as the policy component. Subsequently, many WUAs
suffered from legal ambiguities. Only after the difficulties due to legal inconsistencies and gaps
became obvious, the law making process began. Unsurprisingly, and not very different from
the other reforms, donors were also actively involved in the drafting of the respective WUA
laws.
WUAs do not act as independent organizations, neither toward the local water agencies,
nor toward other local governance organizations. In general, WUAs are not established inde
pendently from these, but rather dominated by them. These governance structures are formally
the local government, but this is in both countries a newly introduced institution. Therefore,
the key actors of the former sovkhoz / kolkhoz and its various follow up organizations are still
major players. Additionally, (informal) local governance structures outlived the Soviet era and
gained importance during the unstable transition period. These are the court of elders ( sud

298 Author's interview with a university professor, Bishkek, 10/01/2003.