Introduction - The Politics of Water Institutional Reform in Neopatrimonial States - page 4

This thesis will focus on water as a productive resource; hence, it excludes the water and sani
tation sector. 3 The research in both case studies will focus on the agricultural sector. This is for
two main reasons: (1) Institutional reform programs in both countries concentrate on irrigation
management reform; (2) Agriculture worldwide consumes more water than any other sector.
Also in both case studies, agriculture counts in Kyrgyzstan for 90% and in Tajikistan for 84%
of total water consumption. Achieving more efficient water use in agriculture and coordinating
it with competing demands is one of the most pressing tasks.
Following this introduction, chapter 2 provides an overview of the discourse on water
governance and a definition of what is understood by the term 'water institutional reform'. It is
followed by the theoretical approach to institutions and institutional change that provides the
basic assumptions on water institutional reforms (chapter 3). Based on these considerations,
the problem statement is formulated and substantiated. Building on that, chapter 4 presents the
analytical and methodological framework. It begins with an exploration of the concept of neo
patrimonalism, which guides the analysis. The study combines three analytical approaches:
policy analysis, implementation research, and political anthropology. Each of these has certain
merits in addressing the research questions, and certain assumptions about factors influencing
the politics of water institutional reform arise from each. These assumptions are presented at
the end of the chapter. Chapter 5 presents the comparative research design. It introduces the
two case studies by describing first the context variables for water institutional reform and then
the independent and interfering variables. The chapter also describes and discusses the me
thods employed in empirical research and analysis. The subsequent chapters focus on the case
studies of Kyrgyzstan (chapter 6) and Tajikistan (chapter 7). For both countries, the contents,
actors, and processes of water institutional reform are described and then analyzed. The fol
lowing chapter 8 compares the results of the two case studies. It is divided into several sec
tions: First, it summarizes the insights of an analytical water governance approach. Second, the
water institutional reforms in both countries are compared under different aspects (monetari
zation, reorganization, democratization). Third, these results are fed back into the theoretical
framework in order to assess which general conclusions for institutional change can be drawn
from the comparative analysis. In the final part of the chapter, conclusions are drawn on what
can be learnt from the findings of this study for the practice of WIR in general. The last chap
ter summarizes the findings and gives an outlook on further research issues. The annex pro
vides additional information on the empirical research and data analysis. It includes a list of all
persons interviewed, the interview guidelines for semi structured expert interviews, the inter
view guidelines for the local case studies, and the code system of the qualitative data analysis.
3 The debate on institutional change in the water and sanitation sector refers to different discourses and concepts such
as privatization of the drinking water supply and access to water as a human right.