Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
ple be gender relations: On the domestic level it is generally the girls and women walking many
kilometers to fetch water from wells; at the same time they may be underrepresented or ex
cluded from decision making bodies. Endemic corruption as a feature of informal politics
influences decisions concerning water allocation or infrastructure projects in irrigation agricul
ture. Global market conditions lead to certain crop patterns affecting water use in agriculture.
Also non institutional factors shape conditions for the performance of water institutions. For
example, these can be strategies and priorities in other policy fields like agriculture, economy,
ecology, or in countries with transboundary water resources foreign policy. It is necessary
to include context factors into the analysis as they are part of water governance, though they
might have an unintentional impact.
3.3
Institutional Change and Continuity
The analysis of water institutional reform is an analysis of institutional change. A central ques
tion therefore is whether and how institutions can be changed by political programs and actors.
All approaches of new institutionalism have in common that more tools are provided to ana
lyze and explain resistance to change than change itself. This has often been criticized. Howev
er, the basic problem reform policies commonly face is that they are often implemented, that
change is impeded. The persistence of institutions, even under changing conditions and pres
sure from the political elite, is the puzzle to be explained. It is also important to note that for
mal institutions change differently from informal ones: Formal institutions can be designed
and changed by entitled actors. In contrast, informal institutions emerge by social dynamics
and do not posses a regulating or coordinating center (Lauth 2000: 24f). The relationship be
tween formal institutional change and its impact on informal institutions has so far only re
ceived limited attention, and if so mostly by scholars of syncretism and legal pluralism
(Helmke, Levitsky 2002: 28f).
For an analytical framing of these processes of change and continuity, this study refers to
two explanatory models: First, the concept of
path dependency
developed by scholars of HI,
which can explain why institutions persist. Second, the concept of
institutional bricolage,
which is
close to SI approaches. It can explain how change and persistence occur together and are in
terwoven. The latter concept especially frames the interrelatedness of formal and informal
institutions
.
3.3.1.1
Path Dependency and Critical Junctures
As the name suggests, historical institutionalists stress the importance of the historical back
ground in understanding the institutional setting that shapes the strategies and objectives of
political actors. Historical institutionalism discusses the interrelation of past and future with the
concepts of
critical junctures
and
path dependency.
Path dependency explains the continuity of institutions and the persistence to change: A
'path' is the way institutions “structure a nation's response to new challenges” (Hall, Taylor
1996: 941). Historical experiences and policy legacies frame present actions: behavior or identi
ties that have once proven to be successful and, have thus been established, will be used again
to meet new challenges. The concepts of
policy legacies
and
state capacities
are most popular in
framing these historical constraints. Legacies are, following Millar and Wolchik (1994: 1 2,
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