Essays on Common-Pool Resources: Evaluation of Water Management and Conservation Programs

This dissertation is comprised of three essays that examine water management and conservation programs through the context of sustainable development. These essays are distinct case studies of national, state and local policies. Their common approach is that they all use common-pool resources theory to generate specific recommendations for policymaking and water management. The first essay explores opportunities for developing policy measures to prevent the collapse of the vital irrigation infrastructure in the Aral Sea region. The paper looks at the economic efficiency of various policy options, impacts on the country’s agricultural sector, and the regulations needed to make the cost-sharing irrigation system viable. The results define institutional changes necessary to make reforms feasible. The rationale for policy reform is based on the need to (i) facilitate the transition from a centrally planned agriculture to a market-oriented system; (ii) mediate, if not resolve, land tenure and water management issues; and (iii) analyze the importance of the irrigation infrastructure for sustainable agricultural development. The second essay examines opportunities for integrating conservation in Arkansas water policy. The paper defines institutional factors and rules-in-use as affecting actions at a state level policy for long-term water management. The findings identify the opportunities for integrating conservation in Arkansas water policy, and the need for re-conceptualizing the nature of state policy towards water resources. It proposes to identify goals and strategies, socioeconomic indicators, and resource indicators to determine if the state is moving toward sustainable water resources, as well as to categorize appropriate management tools. The third essay examines efforts to protect the environment and ensure adequate water to sustain irrigated agriculture in the Bayou Meto Basin, Arkansas. The paper analyses economic and distributional effects of the project to evaluate the policy outcomes in terms of benefits and costs on different stakeholder groups. The findings show the need for integrated water management and to account for opportunity costs of water, including costs associated with economic and environmental externalities. Kaldor-Hicks tableau displays net benefits and impact on all stakeholders, which can help to identify the right kinds of incentives for stakeholder participation to make the project politically feasible

Law, Social Norms and Welfare as Means of Public Administration: Case Study of Mahalla Institutions in Uzbekistan

Despite numerous challenges, since its independence, Uzbekistan, with the exception of the May 2005 Andijan events, has enjoyed extraordinary political stability and not recorded any considerable cases of interethnic or interfaith conflict, regime change or civil war, whereas neighboring Kyrgyzstan, labeled an “island of democracy” by the Western world, has experienced numerous conflicts and chaos, ranging from “color revolutions” to ethnic conflict. However, for understanding Uzbekistan’s ability to cope with internal and external challenges, little recourse is made to the post-independence discourse on public administration known as “mahalla reforms”. In spite of the significant existing body of literature on the mahalla, there has been little systematic scholarly investigation of the role of mahalla in maintaining political stability and security in Uzbekistan. Previous studies did not provide an account of how the law, social norms and welfare come to interplay in the mahalla system and how this influences the public administration developments in Uzbekistan. This paper begins to redress this lacuna by analyzing public-administration reforms in post-independence Uzbekistan, namely mahalla reforms, with an effort to show how political and social stability is established through mahalla, and to what extent those reforms have affected the position of individuals vis-à-vis the public-administration system. In undertaking this task, the paper employs three theoretical concepts: the theory of norms, the welfare-pentagon model and the theory of social control. In this paper, I argue that public-administration reforms since 1991 have transformed mahalla into a comprehensive system of social control; and therefore, mahalla can be places of democratic involvement or sites of authoritarianism in Uzbekistan

Food self-sufficiency or food sovereignty for Uzbekistan An analysis in context of water scarcity

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