Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
implemented. In Kyrgyzstan, some even already got stuck in the decision making process. The
study identified four variables wherein the impact of the neopatrimonial framework conditions
on the water institutional reforms and their outcomes becomes effective:
(1) The institutions of decision making shape problem perception, agenda setting, and policy
formulation. It was shown that, while broad public participation lacked in both countries, the
processes are more democratic in Kyrgyzstan than in Tajikistan. However, due to administra
tive fragmentation, this also resulted in an inability to come to a compromise on fundamental
policy decisions.
(2) The institutional conditions of the agricultural sector limit the feasibility of certain reforms as
the necessary economic preconditions in both countries are not in place. In addition, informal
patronage relations have an undermining effect on reforms that rest on independent farmers
such as enhanced stakeholder participation through WUAs. In Tajikistan, where formal land
reform and privatization hardly changed the realities, patronage relations remain stronger than
in Kyrgyzstan.
(3) The institutions of local governance present the environment in which local water manage
ment is embedded. Of the informal ones, some are consistent with new water institutions;
however, others undermine them. Also here, patrimonial informal rules were more evident in
Tajikistan than in Kyrgyzstan, where dependency patterns relaxed through decentralization and
privatization of the former state and collective farms. However, formal local government struc
tures there tend to co opt new water organizations. Local governance and institutions of the
agricultural sector are closely interrelated and reinforce each other in their effects on the poli
tics of water institutional reform.
(4) Through water institutional linkages within and between water policy, water law, and wa
ter administration, the particular institutional elements influence each other during the reform
processes. Inconsistencies in reform programs lead to negative impacts, e.g. when new policies
are implemented without necessary changes in law. Water administration is not as much an
object of reform as law and policy and, consequently, preserves its old patrimonial institutional
logic, which presents an obstacle to overall reform in both countries.
In addition to these four variables, an interfering variable was identified: international do
nor organizations as actors and as rule setters interact with the four variables and in some cases
aggravate their aspects. They have a major impact on decision making through direct and indi
rect conditionalities they set. Furthermore, they tend to foster local patronage systems due to
their project design. Especially in Tajikistan, they disregard the water administration in their
projects while focusing on a one sided reform of water policy and law, which leads to inter
institutional discrepancies that present an obstacle to WIR in general.
The process of institutional change, which is formally decided, is in its realization im
peded by path dependencies. Power seeking actors try to preserve existing arrangements but
also try to use newly established institutions for their interest and thereby re interpret them. In
practice, new and old rules are mixed in a process of institutional bricolage. This means that
they do not exist next to each other and actors choose between them, but that they get a new
meaning and their logics are interwoven. While the impacts of patrimonialism are similar in
both countries, there is also an important difference: The political liberalization in Kyrgyzstan,
albeit short in time, enhanced the institutional setting and strengthened the legal rational di
mension, so that a broader choice for bricolage is available to social actors and also different
incentive sets exist. In contrast, in Tajikistan path dependent factors have more weight in con
straining options for institutional change.
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