Practical Authority: Agency and Institutional Change in Brazilian Water Politics

How do institutional arrangements established by law become operational in practice? It takes work for them to develop problem-solving capabilities and win recognition from others-what the authors call "practical authority." Drawing from a decade-long, multi-site study of efforts to transform freshwater management in Brazil, the authors show how an assortment of protagonists-from state officials to university professors to activists-struggled to breathe life into new institutional designs. Their account weaves together three decades of national and state law-making with experimentation in establishing new kinds of participatory water management organizations. Exploring this process in sixteen river basins, the authors examine why some of those organizations adapted creatively to challenges while others never got off the ground. To approach this complex, volatile, and non-linear process of transformation, the book develops a framework for investigating the actions and practices of institution-building.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements Abbreviations Prologue Chapter 1 -- Practical Authority, Institution-building, and Entanglement Chapter 2 -- Entangled Institutions and Layered Reform Narratives: Governing Water Resources in Historical Context Chapter 3 -- Institutional Design in Entangled Settings: How to Make an Unfinished Law Chapter 4 --Practicing Laws: Experiments with Institution Building Chapter 5 -- Becoming Committees: Diversity, Problems and Processes Chapter 6 -- Diversions of Authority: Power, Perseverance and Struggles over the Control of Water Resources Chapter 7 -- Building Practical Authority from Outside the State Conclusions Appendix 1: Methodological Narrative Appendix 2: List of interviews References

About the Author :
Rebecca Neaera Abers is Professor of Political Science at the University of Brasília. Margaret Keck is Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University.

Review :
Yale H. Ferguson Award co-winner "An attractive, compelling, and theoretically ambitious pragmatic account of agentic political actors struggling to construct new governance arrangements that span state, industry, and civil society, and balance the demands of environment, development, and fairness. This book will reward those seeking to understand the strategic and structural dynamics of institutional reform efforts."-Archon Fung, Harvard Kennedy School "In the hands of the authors, the emergence of innovative water management institutions in Brazil becomes an unparalleled opportunity to question how people construct new institutions. The authors generate a powerful response by combining a carefully crafted, highly original theoretical framework with a treasure chest of empirical observations. Everyone from theoreticians to policy makers and activists will find this book invaluable."-Peter Evans, UC Berkeley "Abers and Keck combine innovative concepts of how actors make and use institutions with a rich body of empirical material. The result is an intriguing story of how actors have created, shaped, and used institutions that are 'entangled' in a particularly complex environment. The authors show the importance of agency, of viewing institutions dynamically, and of following the messy process of creating the practical authority with which to govern."-Ken Conca, author of Governing Water "Practical Authority: Agency and Institutional Change in Brazilian Water Politics has a lot to say to water scholars. That said, the theory underlying this book is highly innovative and relevant to many other subjects besides water politics in Brazil."--Helen Ingram, University of California Irvine