Practical Authority
Agency and Institutional Change in Brazilian Water Politics
1st Edition
Published on 1. August 2013
336 pages
978-0-19-998528-9 (ISBN)
Description
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.
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Additional editions
Rebecca Neaera Abers | Margaret E. Keck
Practical Authority
Agency and Institutional Change in Brazilian Water Politics
Book
09/2013
Oxford University Press Inc
€210.70
Shipment within 15-20 days
Rebecca Neaera Abers | Margaret E. Keck
Practical Authority
Agency and Institutional Change in Brazilian Water Politics
Book
09/2013
Oxford University Press Inc
€57.20
Shipment within 15-20 days
Persons
Rebecca Neaera Abers is Professor of Political Science at the University of Brasília.
Margaret Keck is Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University.
Content
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
