Institutions of collective action for common pool resources management

Irrigation has played an important role in the development of Uzbekistan’s economy. But the sector collapsed with the fall of the Soviet Union, due to worsening of infrastructural conditions causing tensions among resource users. As a result, it has undergone several reforms through exogenously imposed institutional change in the form of top-down implementation of local Water Consumers Associations (WCAs). However, this institutional design has not produced the expected results of successful cooperation in common pool resources (CPR) management, and most associations have been undergoing a difficult transformation. Here I examine key problems Uzbek WCAs have been experiencing with regard to CPR management – irrigation infrastructure in particular – specifically focusing on existing challenges related to the maintenance of irrigation canals in WCA territories and the role of institutions in overcoming this collective action dilemma. During empirical field research in the Bukhara region of Uzbekistan, I held interviews with governmental officials, donor agencies, and local consulting firms working in the irrigation sector as well as WCA employees and actual resource users (farmers). Five main determinants were found to explain the existing lack of cooperation in the maintenance of irrigation canals: 1) poor WCA chairperson skills, 2) domination of institutionalized Soviet patterns of behavior, 3) incongruity between formal rules and informal practices, 4) absence of appropriate water allocation mechanisms, and 5) ineffective participatory governance. The results also illustrate the role of path dependence in relation to the traditional co-production of irrigation management.