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Hierarchical Structure of Water Governance

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Assessing Water Rights in China

Part of the book series: Water Resources Development and Management ((WRDM))

Abstract

This chapter first of all reviews the organizational theory of new institutional economics in order to pave the way in literature and methodology for the study of water governance structure. Then, it proceeds with the basic implications of water governance and finds that the most important output of water governance is to ensure water security. The collective actions for this purpose result in a continuum of governance structure. China’s “hierarchy” model is the highest level of hierarchical system in water governance structure, which is unique in the world. It contributed to the unification of the country in the Qin Dynasty more than 2000 years ago and has continued with the unified political system till today.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For instance, the 16-year-long drought in 1628–1644 caused dramatic drop of crop fields and people to die of famine in 13 provinces and cities including Shaanxi, Shanxi, Shandong, Henan and Jiangsu. The severe drought accelerated the collapse of the Ming Dynasty .

  2. 2.

    There are seven interstate agreements in the United States approved by the Congress and based on these agreements interstate water management organizations have been set up. They have different degrees of management authorities. The strongest is the Delaware River Basin Council (DRBC, http://www.state.nj.us/drbc/drbc.htm) and the Susquehanna River Basin Council (http://www.srbc.net/),followed by the New York—New Jersey-Connecticut Interstate Environmental Commission (http://www.iec-nynjct.org/) and the Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission (http://www.orsanco.org/). The other three are Potomac River Basin Commission ( http://www.potomacriver.org/), the Great Lakes Commission, (http://www.glc.org/), and the New England Interstate Water Pollution Control Commission (http://www.neiwpcc.org/),which have limited coercive powers.

  3. 3.

    Rivers subject to the management by the ‘hierarchy ’ model can also have basin organizations to coordinate the interests among different regions of the basins. The basin organizations are mainly acting on behalf of local interests. But in the coordination model, the basin councils or other organizations are something in between.

  4. 4.

    This is only a single tier analysis instead of multi-tier analysis. The five typical water governance structures mentioned in the book, arising from the level of cross-boundary regions, are applicable to collective action at every level of the hierarchy structure. In the tiered structure, the policy decision making entities at every level may have different models of collective action. For instance, for a cross-country river, the upper-most level is the agreement of national policy decision making entities while at the intermediate level, provincial decision making entities within a state adopt the coordination model. At lower levels within a province is still the hierarchy model. The bottom level adopts the consultation model again.

  5. 5.

    China’s empire started in the Qin Dynasty which unified the country. Before that, China had the features of federal states. What the centralized system pioneered by the Qin Dynasty was known as “province and county system” or unitary system.

  6. 6.

    In the more than 2000 years since the Qin Dynasty , China was in unity for two-thirds of the time and in disunity in one-third of the time. Even during the period of disunity, the popular feelings also pointed to unity. So, unity is the constant state of China. Such super stable centralized system that has continued for more than 2000 years is unique in the world history.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Public Policy and Management, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

    Yahua Wang

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  1. Yahua Wang
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Wang, Y. (2018). Hierarchical Structure of Water Governance. In: Assessing Water Rights in China. Water Resources Development and Management. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-5083-1_2

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