The institutional dynamics of water management in the low countries

Abstract

Institutionalisation' refers to ongoing processes of both renewal and stabilisation of policy practices. From this angle, water management is particularly interesting, because of its history it is one of the oldest community-based tasks in the Low Countries and because of its dynamics in recent times. Water institutions are both deeply rooted in historical traditions and contested in the last few years. In this chapter we want to describe and interpret the institutional dynamics, by means of comparing the water policy arrangements in the Netherlands and Flanders. The central empirical question in this chapter is: what impact does 'integrated water management' (IWM), as a new element in the discourse on water policy, have on the organizational dimensions of water policy arrangements? In both countries IWM was introduced, but the impact and the usage of the concept differ. Further, this empirical question is linked to theories of institutional change: what circumstances explain a different reception of IWM in both countries? Why do some of the dimensions of the policy arrangement show stability in time while others are more dynamic? And, are the institutional changes to be considered shallow or deep? The water policy arrangements are analysed on the level of the sector based, national policy arrangements, whereby Flemish policy replaces the Belgium level of governmental interference because of the country's federal structure. We could have chosen underlying aggregation levels, e.g. only water quality issues or only flooding management, and reach far more detail. For purposes of international comparison however, and to relate our findings to 'systemic' institutional changes, it is better to focus on the national level. After explaining our theoretical framework in the first section, the second section will 'set the scene' with a description of the characteristics of Flemish and Dutch water policy arrangements in the early 1990s. Section three focuses on the concept of IWM entering the policy stage. Sections four and five analyse the reception of the concept in the Netherlands and Flanders, and goes into the nature of changes, and their magnitude. The chapter winds up with our conclusions and we briefly reflect on the possibilities of combining the policy arrangement-approach with theories of institutional change. © 2006 Springer.