Abstract
Institutional reform is a complex process that requires the introduction of new elements designed to expand public participation and ensure policy implementation. How do new actors build institutions, implement reforms, and develop the authority needed to carry out their mandates? Most research on institutional change focuses on structural outcomes, examining whether or not institutions succeed or fail within certain contexts, ignoring the role of agency in institution-building. In their book Practical Authority: Agency and Institutional Change in Brazilian Water Politics, Rebecca Neaera Abers and Margaret E. Keck move beyond a static approach to examine the micro-processes of institution-building. In doing so, they develop a new theory of institutions where ideas, resources, and relationships play a central role.
By exploring institutional change in Brazilian water policy, Abers and Keck underscore the complex and dynamic process of institutional becoming or how organizations and actors build power and influence policy. The case of water policy reforms is even more complex not only because Brazil has “the largest endowment of freshwater resources” globally (p. 42), but also because water has multiple uses, encompasses a diverse range of stakeholders—dominated by the energy, irrigation, and sanitation policy sectors—and is regulated by a wide array of often competing agencies.
Social scientists are increasingly interested in delving into the black box of institution-building to understand the complex processes that shape institutional reform. Abers and Keck take up this task in their exploration of institution-building and policy changes in Brazilian water resource management. Specifically, the authors seek to understand how actors build practical authority to influence policy arenas by generating new ideas, mobilizing resources, and building relationships. Drawing on twelve years of in-depth field work examining the creation of river basin committees in Brazil, they provide a micro-analysis of the processes and mechanisms that shape how actors build new forms of institutional power within a complex and entangled policy arena.
In Chapter One, Abers and Keck stress the interplay between “ideational and material realms” and expand their focus beyond the way actors think to include “the material side of structuration” (p. 9). In other words, they examine not just how actors create new ideas, but how they draw on resources to build new institutional arrangements. They argue that institutional change involves a complex process of creating new ideas, assembling resources, and building relationships. Actors who begin with small-scale experimentation and build up to and engage with multiple scales of action and governance are more likely to build the kind of practical authority to carry out their mandate and create change.
Chapter Two provides an overview of the historical context of institutional and policy reforms that shaped the transformation of Brazilian politics and the creation of new regulatory institutions, specifically in the realm of water policy. Abers and Keck trace the current state of water policy reforms in Brazil from the 1930s, when the control of water rights was transferred to the federal government. Subsequently, large-scale hydroelectric dam projects were built, beginning in 1940 and continuing to the 1990s, when the push for integrated water management emerged on the policy scene. The authors discuss the role of two powerful narratives that shaped the development of new institutions and emerged during this latter period of increasing foreign debt, inflation, and economic recession. First, democratization emphasized the need for a more just and participatory society, strengthening the role of civil society and participatory policy-making. Second, liberalization introduced a new era of neoliberal reforms, decentralization, and deregulation, impacting water management across Brazil. Water reforms included the promotion of market-based solutions, decentralization of power, collaborative governance, and planning at the level of the river basin. As a result, a mix of overlapping institutions emerged—from private sector companies toregulatory agencies and participatory councils—while older institutions remained entrenched, creating a complex entanglement for actors to navigate in their quest to reform water policy.
In Chapters Three through Seven, Abers and Keck draw on specific cases of the development of river basin committees in various regions of Brazil to illustrate how actors navigate complexity to build new institutions and instigate policy reforms. Chapter Three focuses on the creation of new laws to regulate water and the conflict over ideas, resources, and relationships. Using the case of São Paulo state—which eventually became a model for the rest of the country—they describe the strategies utilized by reform activists to shape legislation, including creating a space to debate new ideas and promote innovation and disseminating information to water experts through social network ties.
Four central ideas underpinned the institutional design for water reform, including the integration of diverse uses, more inclusive participation in decision-making, pricing water to pay for infrastructure and services, and decentralization to the level of the river basin. While these principles were eventually adopted and scaled up to other regions, because of the complexity of institutions and actors involved, the final legislation lacked clear mechanisms to guarantee implementation, particularly when it came to pricing water. At the same time, the formal recognition of river basin committees set the stage for future institution-building processes throughout the country.
Chapter Four examines how water reformpolicies are implemented, including howlocal actors and committees creatively evaluate and adapt federal laws in ways that make sense on the ground, especially for ensuring pricing for high-volume users. Through experimentation with small-scale projects and engagement with ideas and agencies at the sub-national level, local reform activists were able to make pricing water politically viable. Abers and Keck highlight the importance of the local political processes and demonstrate that the implementation of national water laws requires the mobilization of government agencies and capacity-building by activists at the local level.
Chapters Five through Seven examine the emergence and development of river basin committees and the challenges they faced working to mobilize power and build authority outside of the State. The cases explored in these chapters highlight the critical role of non-state actors in building public institutions. Abers and Keck argue that river basin committee actors must accomplish three tasks to build practical authority and receive recognition from the state. First, they must frame the problem and solutions in ways that make sense to the local context. Second, they must build strong and effective organizations with a sustained pool of resources. Finally, river basin committees need to embed their organizations in a “supportive local environment” (p. 124). Through a comparison of diverse river basin committees’ struggle to gain power, the authors demonstrate that a key strategy for building practical authority is to generate power from the ground up, rather than seize it from an existing agency or institutional sector.
Overall, Abers and Keck demonstrate that institution-building is an unpredictable process, fraught with negotiation and dependent on the creative ways that actors generate new ideas, draw on resources, and build relationships. This complexity requires the use of a different methodological approach than the typical comparison of discrete cases, where researchers are often able to treat conditions as independent and control for similarities and differences. Beyond the usual structural or static approach that involves examining external factors that shape institutional change, Abers and Keck convincingly argue for a new way of understanding institution-building that sheds light on the on-the-ground processes that explain how actors gain influence in the policy arena. The new institutional framework they offer allows scholars to bring agency back as a central focus of inquiry. While this approach is not particularly novel for sociologists, especially scholars who study social movements, it offers important methodological and theoretical insights for those who study institution-building and organizational change.
Overall, the book is well written and based on rigorous research collected during more than ten years in the field. It should be of interest to political scientists, sociologists, geographers, and other scholars interested in the micro-processes and complexity of institution-building, as well as students at the graduate level.