Comparative Research Design - The Politics of Water Institutional Reform in Neopatrimonial States - page 83

sum Tajikistan received (17 USD) (World Bank 2001: 314f). Although aid allotment to Tajikis
tan rose to 40 USD per capita in 2005, it reached 60 USD in Kyrgyzstan during that year. 94
Donor involvement in Kyrgyzstan reflected the initial interest to foster democracy and civil
society in the early 1990s. Much effort and money were invested to establish NGOs according
to Western models. The reason was beside donor priorities the political climate in Kyrgyzstan
that allowed the active promotion of democratic values.
In Tajikistan, donor involvement was restricted to mainly humanitarian assistance during
civil war (1992 1997) and during the following years. Only recently donors changed their policy
and have begun to support middle and long term development projects. Nevertheless, food
aid is still provided for about 71 Mio USD per year (in 2005). Proper development assistance in
Tajikistan started later than in Kyrgyzstan, and it had to address the severe social problems of a
post war country. In addition, it coincided with a change in the donors' strategies: In the late
1990s, the concept of community development re entered the development discourse of multi
and bi lateral donors and led to a focus on participatory practices at the grassroot level. The
new aim was not to establish professional, urban, advocacy oriented NGOs that would be able
to interact and deal with state structures (like the NGOs fostered in Kyrgyzstan) but to sup
port community based organizations (CBOs), consisting of volunteers primarily interested in
improving their communities' living conditions through small projects. This led to a stronger
focus on such institutions as mahalla committees, aksakal , or hashar that are often referred to as
communal or traditional civil society (Earle 2005: 246 251; Freizer 2005). In Kyrgyzstan, a
change toward more participatory and community based projects could be observed after the
initial focus on supporting Western style NGOs had been critized and poverty reduction be
came a main objective. In Tajikistan, this first phase of extensive support for the development
of civil society structures is more or less missing. From the beginning on, development coop
eration focused on social development and CBOs. Hence, the initial donor input in Kyrgyzstan
was dominated by the idea of democracy building and formal rules (NGOs). In contrast, in
Tajikistan, donors focused on poverty reduction and the establishment of bottom up informal
mechanisms (CBOs).

5.5.6 Water Institutional Linkages

Having introduced the three independent variables and the interfering variables, this section
will turn to the fourth independent variable. It is treated separately as it is essentially part of the
dependent variable and not of the neopatrimonial exogenous context like the other three inde
pendent variables.
As was outlined above, water institutions are defined as water policy, water law, and water
administration. These in turn consist of formal and informal institutions. Reform efforts ad
dress water institutions as a whole, but specific measures are directed at certain institutional
elements. For example, irrigation management transfer to water user associations (WUAs)
includes reforming the water policies (such as decisions on decentraliziation and participation),
water laws (such as legal regulations for WUAs, conflict resolution mechanisms, etc), and water
administration (such as change of organizational structures, new responsibilities of the staff,
etc.). These institutional elements are closely interrelated, as was depicted in Figure 3. Saleth
and Dinar (2004) conceptualized this interdependence of water institutional elements for gen
94 World Bank: World Development Indicators 2006, http://devdata.worldbank.org/data-query/ (accessed
06/10/2007).