ABSTRACT
The evolving international paradigm for water governance is, in its essence, about transforming the social relations of power over water. It is about new relationships between states and citizens as water users; between markets and states; between markets and citizens; and among interest groups. It is about new sets of actors relating to one another at the local water policy-making table or in planning long-term strategies for watersheds. In the flattened and participatory hierarchy envisioned, it is about the voices of marginalized groups – the colonia or favela dweller, the indigenous tribe, the small-scale communal farmer, the factory worker, the housewife – influencing the plans of policy makers. In the dreams of those with a particular vision who have led the development of this new paradigm, it is perhaps not reaching to say the new water agenda is fundamentally about the goal of democracy itself. Yet as Helen Ingram (Ingram 2008) has suggested, experience is teaching us that universal prescriptions for achieving this goal of a democratized water policy have not worked, and that we must look to context-specific construction of problems and their solutions. In this spirit, then, we turn to the specific case of Mexico.
