Water Governance and Water Institutional Reform - The Politics of Water Institutional Reform in Neopatrimonial States - page 9

explores the role of institutions on the governance process by scrutinizing path dependencies
or by analyzing the institutional logics utilized in order to exert governance (Benz 2004: 21;
Pierre, Peters 2000: 43).
In the water governance discourse, this analytical governance perspective is adopted by
the understanding that the former water management perspective was too narrow. The defini
tion of water governance as first expressed by the Global Water Partnership and later adopted
and modified by the UN is:
“The governance of water in particular can be said to be made up of the range of political, social, economic and
administrative systems that are in place, which directly or indirectly affect the use, development and management
of water resources and the delivery of water services at different levels of society. Governance systems determine
who gets what water, when and how and decide who has the right to water and related services and benefits”
(UNESCO 2006: 47).
According to this definition, water governance encompasses all social, political, and economic
structures, formal as well as informal rules, and processes that influence water use and water
management. It involves the government, the civil society, and the private sector. The useful
ness of the emphasis on coordination by governance is obvious: Water has multiple economic
usages: irrigation, hydropower generation, sanitation and communal water supply, industrial
water needs, fishery, navigation and transport, recreation and tourism etc. Hence it affects
different policy fields. Their coordination is one of the big challenges. Pure hierarchical state
centred management has obviously failed in the past. A complete privatization while wel
comed by some is not in line with the perception of water as a public good, even less with
access to water as a human right. Water governance hence provides a comprehensive perspec
tive on water usage and regulation, one that allows taking into account the interests and stakes
of different economic sectors and of actors at multiple administrative political levels: “Gov
ernance addresses the relationship between organizations and social groups involved in water
decision making, both horizontally, across sectors and between urban and rural areas, and
vertically, from local to international levels” (UNESCO 2006: 48). The governance perspective
hence provides for new insights and also new solution strategies in addressing what is labeled
the 'water crisis': “The framing of water challenges in terms of governance has allowed a
broadening of the water agenda to include the scrutiny of democratization processes, corrup
tion, power imbalances between rich and poor countries and between rich and poor people”
(UNESCO 2006: 50). However, this analytical governance approach has plaid a minor role in
the water governance discourse. The normative notion of good water governance is of much
greater importance.

2.1.2.2

The Normative Perspective

As noted above, analytical and normative aspects of the water governance concept are often
interchanged. The latter ones are often not explicitly stated or sometimes also termed “effec
tive water governance” (e.g. UNESCO 2006: 49). In order to achieve more clarity, I will use
the term water governance for the analytical usage and the term good water governance for the norma
tive one.
The declaration of the 2 nd World Water Forum in The Hague in 2000 used a relatively
narrow definition of Good Water Governance as water resource management involving public
interest and stakeholder participation. At the 2001 Bonn Freshwater Conference this definition