Fluid Governance: Reconceptualizing the Global Governance of Water

• In Event: 356 - Section on Global and Transnational Sociology Paper Session. Ties between Local and Global: Negotiating the Role of International Organizations

Abstract

This paper uses the case of the global water sector to reevaluate our understanding of global governance. We tend to think of global governance as involving deliberate and formal structures devised to manage global problems. However, all attempts to create such a system in the water domain have so far failed. Instead, we find a number of overlapping organizations and networks that some actors describe as chaotic. I argue that, in fact, the water sector has a form of global governance which is stable, involves a set of identifiable actors, and presents operational determinacy, and which I call fluid governance. This decentralized system presents itself as open and participatory, from which it acquires legitimacy. Yet I claim that power and inequality permeate fluid governance and allow it to push ideas and policies that threaten water access for the most vulnerable populations.

Author

• Oriol Mirosa, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee