Building Participatory Organizations for Common Pool Resource Management: Water User Group Promotion in Indonesia

Abstract

States are increasingly striving to create participatory local organizations for joint management of common pool resources. What local conditions determine success of such state efforts? What effect do these efforts have? Drawing on controlled comparisons between three districts in Indonesia and an original survey of 92 water user groups, I demonstrate that local political contexts condition the effectiveness of participatory irrigation policies. When irrigation is politically salient, local politicians pressure bureaucrats to better engage with farmers. The data also show that training programs are not as effective at increasing water user organization activity as frequent contact between bureaucrats and farmers.

Who counts, what counts: representation and accountability in water governance in the Upper Comoé sub‐basin, Burkina Faso

“…Evidence from comparative analyses of community‐based natural resource management (Shackleton et al ., ; Dyer et al ., ), decentralized service provision (Mody, ), river basin management (Lebel et al ., ; UNEP, ), and water user associations (Mustapha et al ., ; Ricks, ) show that sustainable development goals do not easily translate into feasible, sustainable, and effective practices at the local level. Identified operational constraints relative to IWRM include limited financial and human resources, poor data quality and availability, weak technical and managerial capacity, unclear mandates and defective organizational design, and limited project timeframes that do not foster institutional memory and learning (Mody, ; Lebel et al ., ; UNEP, ).…”

Institutions under pressure: East Asian states, global markets and national firms

“…His account of the shifts in state policies governing roads shows that getting roads built required direct state involvement, particularly after the transition from authoritarian rule to democracy. At least in this case, the institutional requirements for more market-oriented provision through privatization and public private partnerships were in fact more demanding than direct state intervention (also Ricks, 2016).…”

An Empirical Examination on the Role of Water User Associations for Irrigation Management in Rural China

“…Lam (, ) demonstrates that the goal of effective WUAs may be achieved when local irrigation officials have strong incentives to work closely with farmers. Using the case of Indonesia, Ricks () contend that more effective WUAs will be seen if irrigation officials develop close and enduring relationships with farmers. He found that local political contexts condition the effectiveness of participatory policies, suggesting that the success of WUA may have less to do with whether they are top‐down or bottom‐up and more to do with the local context and politics of implementation (also, see Pressman & Wildavsky, ).…”