Expertise, Politics, and Water Governance in Brazil

GUTIÉRREZ, RICARDO A.

San Carlos de Bariloche

Taller; 2008 Isla Victoria International Workshop ? The Future of Water; 2008

Universidad Nacional de San Martín

This paper examines the interaction between experts, politics, and policy making by analyzing the launching and implementation of the water management reform in three Brazilian states (Ceará, Paraná, and Rio Grande do Sul). It argues that, despite the absence of strong political and social demand for reforming the water resources system, experts were able to start the reform and have it implemented. To explain how that was possible, the paper focuses on experts? political brokerage, i.e. experts? strategic use of knowledge and connections in order to gain political support for their policy proposals. It shows that experts engaged in either of two brokering tasks: programmatic packaging and coalition building, the incidence of which varied from one reform phase to the other and across states. It also shows that the way the reform was packaged within a government program and the type of coalition built bore upon the pace of implementation and the ultimate content of the reform.