Integration – scale, power, and democratization

The working group is led by Xu Jianchu from ICRAF, China. Email: jxu@mail.kib.ac.cn

Purpose and Approach

The sectoral and cross-cutting themes or research areas in the M-POWER program already provide substantial opportunities for synthesis and integration across experiences in different places and contexts. This theme aims to help pull the insights from research done by different working groups in each of these other areas even more closely together. There are of course many possible integrative themes that could be chosen. Initially we have adopted three – scale, power and democratization – reflecting the overall objectives and initial impetus for the creation of the M-POWER program in the first place and our thoughts about where our group could make a significant contribution.

 
Improving understanding of scale requires being able to shift analysis and real engagement with policy issues across levels. Within the network of activities supporting M-POWER this means relating activities carried out among, and by, local water user groups, watershed networks or small communities with national and international initiatives. Most studies of governance are ultimately about getting a better understanding of how power is exercised and power relations changed whether through the behavior of actors in particular circumstances or the institutionalization of social practices. Likewise much informed activism to address injustices refers to strategies which empower disadvantaged groups or reduce the influence and control of others viewed as too powerful.

There are few issues which stimulate as much discussion as the issue of democracy. Our concern in M-POWER is with the broad articulation of democratization as a process of change that redistributes power. There is no particularly strong commitment to specific institutional forms, although issues of legitimacy, representation, and accountability matter. M-POWER is particularly interested in the potential and limitations of deliberative and local representative processes within the overall framework of multi-level water governance.

• When is it necessary to consider scale in designing, monitoring and evaluating water governance interventions? How is scale and level perceived by different actors and used to assume or endow authority? What are the institutional imperatives and other mechanisms through which multi-level governance of water empowers disadvantaged groups while at the same time contributing to resilience of social-ecological systems?
• In what ways is power exercised in the governance of water? Who has authority and influence? Whose knowledge is used? To what extent are water users and those affected by other’s uses control the factors that adversely affect them? What are the main ways in which empowerment of disadvantaged groups has been achieved and secured?
• What are the main ways in which democratization of water governance happens? How do such transformations become institutionalized? What circumstance and contexts enable democratization to deepen?
  
  

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