‘Going with the grain’: accommodating local institutions in water governance

• Transformative power attributed to participatory approaches often fails to materialize.
• Development interventions often reproduce social stratifications and existing inequalities.
• Going with the grain governance ‘works’ when objectives are more in line with those of local elites.

Development agencies have often adhered to standardized models for interventions in the water sector of developing countries. The assumption is that the model and the associated institutions will substitute existing institutions. This approach has been criticized on the grounds that prevailing institutions are a mix of traditional and modern arrangements, resulting from a process of bricolage, through which norms, values and arrangements are locally moulded. In this paper we review the literature on institutions in water services governance and focus our discussion on the ‘going with the grain’ approach. By looking at provision of drinking water to the poor, we argue that although the approach may lead to more effective and environmentally sustainable water services, it also reproduces local power dynamics and existing inequalities. We conclude by linking this debate to the question of this special issue: how to deal with legal pluralism?