ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with the observation that much of the history of irrigation development has been an interplay of state and locality initiatives and actions. A fundamental institutional issue for irrigation development in the Asian region involves finding the appropriate mix that will differ from place to place and that will likely change over time. The structure of hydraulic property rights is not uniformly obvious across irrigation schemes. One category of systems with particularly explicit ownership patterns are those we can term "share" systems. While the property underpinnings of the social organization of irrigation are easily revealed in share systems, these property arrangements may be either unformulated or simply less conspicuous in other places. A large portion of contemporary irrigation development involves either the rehabilitation of existing facilities or, as a variation of this, the incorporation of existing small systems into larger public networks.
