A Preliminary Assessment of Water Institutions in India: An Institutional Design Perspective

Water institutions in India play a crucial role in managing scarce water resources and are central to economic development and poverty alleviation. Designing appropriate institutional mechanisms to allocate scarce water and river flows has been an enormous challenge due to the complex legal, constitutional, and social issues involved. The Indian water sector has been grappling with poor performance and deterioration of public (canal and tank) irrigation systems, high extraction levels of groundwater, and related economic and environmental problems. The objective of this article is to carry out a preliminary assessment of institutional mechanisms available to manage water resources in India. The article surveys various formal and informal institutional arrangements that are used at present and their design features in order to identify those institutions related to superior performance. The analysis indicates that crafting “winning institutions” and the policy frameworks to strengthen them should take into account not only the proven criteria of institutional design but also the changing socioeconomic, political, and cultural factors.     

The Professional Researcher as Change Agent in the Government–Performance Movement

Although academic and professional publications give the impression that performance measurement is a growing government practice, in actuality the use of this technology is not as deep or as widespread as it may appear. Even when performance measures are used, governments rarely integrate them into planning, budget, personnel, and other management processes. Most professional researchers located primarily in academic institutions, but also in research and government organizations, approach performance measurement as though governmental officials, elected or otherwise, are already sold on its usefulness. Instead, they need to function as "change agents," using a variety of strategies to gain acceptance and understanding of the strengths and limitations of performance measurement. This article draws on the authors' experiences with the Community Benchmarks Program of the Maxwell School in Onondaga County and a review of the current literature. It suggests guidelines for professional researchers who want to increase the use of performance measures by governments at all levels.     

Australian Antecedents of the Third Way

New Labour theorists have been prone to identify American New Progressivism as the proximate source of 'third way' ideas. In this article we argue that, if the focus is on the governing practice rather than on the naming of a governing orientation, a case can be made for seeing Australian Labor in government from 1983 to 1996 as a progenitor of third way thinking and as a specific source of New Labour policy development in a number of areas. Taking Stuart White's account of the main dimensions of third way programmatic realignment as our guide, we discuss the success of the Hawke/Keating Labor governments in reducing the direct provider role of state, developing new forms of collective provision, reforming the tax system, making social policy more employment-friendly and creating the institutions of an asset-based egalitarianism. We conclude by pointing out that, whilst there are many common themes in Australian Labor practice and New Labor rhetoric, and some evidence of specific policy transfer from one to the other, a plausible case can also be made for seeing many of the policy initiatives of the Hawke/Keating era as a reworking of an older Australian Labor tradition of regulatory state activism.     

Social Control in Cuba

Why has the Cuban government been so successful in its system of social control, and why might that system's effectiveness now be on the wane? This study argues that Cuba combines formal and informal systems of control that simultaneously emphasize openness and rigidity. The formal system is geared to block all antihegemonic acts, particularly those that, if left unchecked, could become symbolic acts encouraging similar behavior that the authorities deem undesirable. The system favors reactive rather than proactive approaches, as exemplified by the rapid action brigades. Noninstitutionalized collective behavior is also taking place, as is the emergence of civil society.