Comparing the Politics of Water Institutional Reform - The Politics of Water Institutional Reform in Neopatrimonial States - page 184

making processes. The establishment of WUAs did not change the institutional logic; it rather
was incorporated in it. This is thus a result of the way the reform is implemented as well as of
the local political culture.
This tendency is similar with the meso level of water administration. The reform would
have needed to change the hierarchical internal culture of water administration and train them
how to deal with WUAs as independent organizations. In Kyrgyzstan, the WUA reform in
volves WUA support departments for this task; in Tajikistan, the reform occurs without ad
dressing the water administration directly. This leads to serious intra institutional incoherencies
within the water administrative component. The inherited internal institutional structures
shape in both countries the way local water agencies interact with WUAs: They are mainly
perceived as subordinated and not as independent organizations. The technical aspects, like
their responsibilities for fee collection and O&M, are stressed while the empowerment aspects
get minor attention. The fact that WUAs are seen as 'assistants' to the state agencies without
real empowerment was also observed by Araral (2005: 147) in the Philippines: “In short, IAs
[Irrigation Associations] were a cost saving measure for NIA [National Irrigation Agency]
more so than institutions for developing authority and ownership.” The consequences of the
patron client relationship between the Irrigation Associations and the state agencies are finan
cial dependency on the state, insufficient means for O&M, and no governing capacities. These
characteristics also apply to our cases, especially to Kyrgyzstan, where many WUAs are in
debted to the state agencies due to non paid fees. 299
Under these conditions, independence of WUAs is hardly achieved, especially when con
nected to a lack of process related and legal knowledge on side of WUA representatives. The
observations at the WUA support department in Kyrgyzstan showed the dependency of WUA
representatives on the knowledge of procedures that the support department has. This is also a
reason why WUAs at least in the beginning are also dependent on the support departments
or on the donors that establish them and help them with all the formal requirements. Thus,
finance and knowledge are key aspects of WUA independence.

8.6 Reflections on Institutional Change

The preceding chapters showed how the neopatrimonial context influences the politics of
water institutional reform. This chapter will address the research question formulated in the
beginning of this thesis: Can Water Institutional Reforms be effective in achieving good water
governance in a neopatrimonial institutional context? Are they able to introduce democratic
governance mechanism? Or are they undermined by the patrimonial informal ones? In order to
address this question, this chapter will refer to the theoretical concepts of institutional change.
At the beginning of this thesis, several assumptions on institutional change and persistence
were formulated, based on historical and sociological new institutionalism. Factors of path
dependence could lead to persistence of old water institutional patterns and reform failure. On
the other hand, the political, economic, and societal change with the break down of the Soviet
Union could have provided a critical juncture with the potential of a path change in water
governance. Or, old and new elements could get combined and re interpreted in a process of
institutional bricolage. With the comparison of the two countries, it is possible to make infe
rences: Are the shared historical legacies in both countries so strong that they lead to path
299 For Tajikistan, no data on this were available. It can be assumed that the situation will develop in a similar vein once
WUAs are established on a large scale.