Water Governance and Water Institutional Reform - The Politics of Water Institutional Reform in Neopatrimonial States - page 13

The disregard of politics can be ascribed to the perception that water management would be a
merely technical system based on rational decision making and implementation by experts
(engineers and 'hydrocrats') a view that dominated all approaches to water management
before the political institutional one (see above ch. 2.1.1). Jamie Linton (2006) has shown con
vincingly how the general perception of water as a resource evolving in the beginning of the
20 th century removed water from the political to the technical sphere: “A resource, then, turns
out to be a way of avoiding politics by translating questions of access and use into a language
of calculation and techniques” (Linton 2006: [34]). Even in the water governance discourse,
politics was at least initially not a central topic. Rogers and Hall (2003: 23f), two authors
associated with the Global Water Partnership, one of the main promoters of the water gover
nance concept, regard politics primarily as something external to water institutions: “The poli
tics of water governance are typically the sociological and economic factors (structures, institu
tions, etc) that lie outside the provision of water and reflect the more general political make up
of the country, the water institution's setting“ (emphasis added). Also in the first UNESCO
World Water Development Report of 2003, there was no explicit reference to politics in the
water governance chapter. Only in the 2 nd report of 2006, the role of politics for water gover
nance was acknowledged: “The representation of various interests in water decision making
and the role of politics are important components in addressing governance dynamics” (UN
ESCO 2006: 47).
The prevailing discourse has not only neglected these aspects, it is even assumed that it
“exerts a strong depoliticising effect by focusing on neutral concepts, which avoid controver
sies being developed and properly addressed” (WWC 2004: ii). Therefore, it is the aim of this
study to make a contribution to the emerging discussion about the inherent political nature of
water institutional reform and to contribute to a better understanding of the problems and
challenges of these reform processes in Central Asia and beyond. In this respect, I define water
politics in relation to Kerkvliet's (1990: 11) definition of politics concerning natural resources
use as a process in which numerous actors with differing values and beliefs compete and coo
perate in order to define, decide, and implement policies on the establishment respectively the
change of rules regulating control, allocation, and usage of water resources, with their scope of
action being constrained and enabled by the institutional setting. In this sense, politics refers to
the arena of policy making whose ideas and values are represented in policy decisions as
well as the arena of policy implementation who decides about what and who influences or
battles implementation of decisions in which way. 8 Water institutional reform hence encom
passes the formulation as well as the implementation of new rules. Both of these aspects form
together the dependent variable.
8 I use the term arena to clarify that it involves the process as well the actors. While the political field is water
governance in general, the arena can be defined as “an area within the field in which the researcher wants to
concentrate at a particular moment” (Lewellen 2003: 88). It is hence an analytical construct while in reality both levels
frequently overlap.