Constrained Collective Action Decentralization, Autonomy, and Institutionalized Cooperation in Shared River Basins

As noted in the Introduction, it is frequently assumed that the costs of collective action between political jurisdictions are lower when they are part of the same country. A web of shared institutions and relationships, the thinking goes, helps to lower these costs relative to the international level, where cooperation is likely to be rarer and costlier. But, as this chapter explains, where political power is extensively decentralized, considerable constraints are placed on interjurisdictional collective action. In particular, because it distributes power between different levels of government, decentralization exacerbates the interjurisdictional and intersectoral coordination problems that are inherent to water resource management. This chapter explains how existing institutions often fail to prevent and resolve interjurisdictional water conflicts. It proceeds in three sections. The first section sets the stage for this discussion by exploring in greater detail the relationship between shared institutions and conflict potential, particularly in relation to other proposed sources of water conflict like geography and scarcity. The second section explains why decentralization creates specific barriers to interjurisdictional collective action, especially at the river basin scale. In particular, bureaucratic fragmentation, electoral incentives, and information asymmetries often create disincentives to establish institutional structures for river basin management. The third section, finally, explains why, as a result, collective action in shared river basins is often ad hoc and confined to relatively simple issues like point-source pollution control, rather than more complex and contentious issues like allocation. In combination, these challenges explain why existing institutional mechanisms so often fail to prevent interjurisdictional water conflicts from arising and to resolve them once they begin. This primary purpose of this chapter is to explore the institutional dimensions of subnational hydropolitics and in particular the role of decentralization. Doing so requires first understanding how institutions influence conflict and cooperation over shared water resources, especially in contrast to factors like geography and scarcity. This section accordingly discusses the two primary theoretical traditions concerning the causes of water conflict.