Comparing the Politics of Water Institutional Reform - The Politics of Water Institutional Reform in Neopatrimonial States - page 186

allocated before to the village elite. And the acceptance of WUA rests on a respected villager
being its head.
The relationship of institutions and power is not only manifested in power seeking actors
that shape institutions in pursuit of their own interests, but also in the population that expects
certain power structures and, hence, in the institutional environment and its logics. “The legi
timacy of power derives from the groups' political culture that is, the people's expectations
about the nature of power and how it should be attained.” (Lewellen 2003: 92). This is one
aspect that also has to be considered. The respective legitimacy of power affects institutions:
New institutions have to be correspondent to it or they will be transformed in a way that they
correspond.
The actual outcome of water institutional reforms includes different elements derived
from pre Soviet (clientelistic patronage as mode of resource distribution), Soviet (role of the
collective farm, free access to basic resources), and post Soviet ([pseudo ]participatory
processes as rules demanded by donors) institutions. This process of bricolage also shows the
complementary of different approaches of new institutionalism in explaining institutional
change as incentives (access to financial and technical resources of donors, enhancing of power
position as broker) as well as appropriateness (existing informal institutions) and path depen
dencies (administrative culture) play a role for the decision for or against an option. Hence,
even a context in transformation does not present a situation where institutions are completely
in flux and easily changed, but where path dependent continuities play a role (and may be
actively enforced by some actors), though there is also some space for actors who want to
modify the existing institutions. The size of this space depends on the degree of juncture in the
country. In Kyrgyzstan, the formal democratic structure is despite the backlash still stronger
than in Tajikistan. It accomplishes the patrimonial dimension and thereby constrains though

not rules out the impact of the patrimonial elements.
Consequently, while there are many similarities between both countries, it can be con
cluded that the institutional corridor is broader in Kyrgyzstan than in Tajikistan. In close and
overlapping institutional settings such as agriculture and local governance reforms were con
ducted, which broaden the options and strategies for actors beside the patrimonial ones the
juncture of the regime collapse developed to a more critical one than in Tajikistan. There, land
and decentralization reforms stayed merely cosmetic and many old structures remained unchal
lenged; hence, the elements of which actors can bricoler , which they can combine and interpret,
are much more restricted. If these simultaneous reforms continue in Kyrgyzstan, there is a
chance for a gradual path modification. However, to be successful, the design of water institu
tional reforms has to acknowledge the setting of reforms and the various logics and levels
involved in water governance. The next and last chapter will therefore present some inferences
that can be drawn from the analysis for the design of reform policies.

8.7

General Inferences and Strategies for Water Institutional Reform

This study examined the politics of water institutional reform in two countries with their spe
cific setting. The aim of the last chapter is to broaden the scope and ask which inferences can
be drawn for other countries, and to discuss some practical implications of the insights gained.
Can the findings of this study be generalized for other countries for other Central Asian
countries, for other neopatrimonial states, or even for all water institutional reforms? This
research was carried out in two countries without physical water scarcity in order to exclude