ABSTRACT
Water policies and reforms are mostly discussed in seemingly neutral terms, focusing on technical, administrative, legal or institutional means of allocating water most efficiently and effectively. The use of technical policy language makes water reforms appear as politically objective. Our aim with this chapter is to show that this is dangerously inaccurate. We argue that water reforms are, instead, deeply political. As we have argued elsewhere, this is because they entail far-reaching redistributions of water – and of water rights, water power and water-based profits (Boelens and Zwarteveen, 2005). But water reforms are also an intrinsic element of the larger project of neoliberalism. For a critical analysis of water reforms, then, there is merit in seeing water reforms as exponents of this larger project, as driven by the dream and mission to create a free market utopia.
