Decentralization or Governance? Water, Institutionalization and Politics in the High Basin of the Cauca River (Colombia)

Abstract

At a time when the scope and capacity of the State to meet social and environmental demands, such as water supply, have been lost, polycentric governance is an alternative to the crisis of legitimacy of the public sector, partly driven by fiscal restrictions and a private initiative that threatens to monopolize natural resources, deepening redistributive problems. The aim of this research is to track the water degradation through its relations with the process of institutionalization of formal rules and their subsequent assembly into networks of polycentric governance. The study integrates a series of methods that, under the orientation of a pressure–state–response model, includes qualitative elements such as documentary analysis, as well as quantitative analysis such as econometric analysis and the study of graphs, very close to the development of topology. This study verifies that the slight levels of social organization positively affected the results in terms of reducing the degradation effect on water quality.