Suchergebnisse

AbstractThis article contributes to a growing body of literature that questions state-centred approaches to analysing politics, adopting a more de-centred and cultural perspective. It does so by presenting a situational analysis and detailed ethnography of a local election rally in Western Mexico. The analysis of this event as a cultural performance highlights the dramatic enactment of culturally significant acts as a central part of electoral behaviour and shows how everyday organisational life, resource flows, public ritual and passion play a part in politics. That such acts are not merely symbolic is demonstrated by what occurs behind the scenes of political ritual: a local political group appropriates a Water Users' Association and draws on its staff, facilities, resources and wider power relations for its political campaign. Such practices also indicate the unanticipated outcomes of recent administrative decentralisation reforms. New producer organisations created by these reforms to administer former government tasks more efficiently are appropriated politically, not simply in an instrumental, but also in a culturally specific manner.

This article argues that policy making is an interactive and ongoing process that transcends the spatio-temporal boundaries drawn by a linear, rational or instrumental model of policy. We construct this argument by analysing the making of the Irrigation Management Transfer (IMT) policy in Mexico in the early 1990s, focusing on different episodes of its re-emergence, standardisation, and acceleration. During this period a standardised policy package was developed, consisting of a set of specific policy technologies to effect the transfer to Water Users' Associations (WUAs). These technologies were assembled in response to geographically dispersed trials of strength: experiments, consultations and clashes in the field, and negotiations at the national and international level. A newly installed public water authority increasingly succeeded in coordinating the convergence and accumulation of dispersed experiences and ideas on how to make the transfer work. Our analysis shows how this composite package of policy technologies worked to include a network of support and to exclude opposition at different levels, while at the same time stabilising an interpretation of policy-related events. In this way the policy gathered momentum and was 'made to succeed'.

¿Cómo se hace la política pública para la gestión del agua en el Perú? Los ingenieros que trabajan en el Estado y las organizaciones de regantes juegan un papel protagónico. El rol de los ingenieros fue creciendo con la centralización de la gestión del agua, la expansión de la infraestructura de riego y la conformación de una burocracia hidráulica. Se conformó una cultura profesional influida por el origensocial, la formación universitaria y la carrera institucional de los profesionales. El artículo se concentra en dos coyunturas críticas en las que estos actores llegan a tener una influencia decisiva para orientar la política pública acerca del agua: 1) la transferencia de los sistemas de riego del Estado a las organizaciones de usuarios, en 1989, y 2) la promulgación de la nueva Ley de Recursos Hídricos en marzo de 2009.

Ecological and Economic Zoning (EEZ) is a Land Use Planning (LUP) methodology that aims at defining separate areas for productive uses and conservation. EEZ is designed as a method that balances different interests and it devises land use policy through stakeholder participation, technical expertise and GIS modelling. The article presents the case study of EEZ in Cajamarca, Peru to analyse the LUP process in a situation of conflicting interests over future land and water use. Cajamarca is a department with rich gold deposits in the headwater catchment area upstream of the city of Cajamarca. During the last decade, rural communities and urban populations have continuously protested against the opening of new open pit mines, as they fear this will affect their water supply. Therefore, the EEZ process became part of a controversy between a powerful pro-mining coalition lead by the central government and a conservation coalition lead by the regional government. We conclude that in these circumstances, LUP cannot, technically or politically, accommodate the different values attributed to the headwater catchment.

Poor performance of government-managed irrigation systems persists globally. This paper argues that addressing performance requires not simply more investment or different policy approaches, but reform of the bureaucracies responsible for irrigation management. Based on reform experiences in The Philippines, Mexico, Indonesia, and Uzbekistan, we argue that irrigation (policy) reform cannot be treated in isolation from the overall functioning of