ABSTRACT
This chapter considers how policy is formed through processes of bricolage. By tracking policy formation over time, it explores the role of policy-makers as bricoleurs and considers both the authoritative and negotiated nature of the process. Tensions between the received need for continuity and innovation in policy are considered. The chapter illustrates these points with examples drawn from the author's experience of attempting to shape water governance policy as formed and implemented by the British Department for International Development. To explore how knowledge is generated by various actors, pieced together through bricolage and amplified or muted through relations of power, the chapter considers the case of knowledge production about the Usangu plains in Tanzania. It explores how such processes work to shape a dominant consensus on water governance, the 2008 DFID water policy, and raises the question about how much room for manoeuvre there is within dominant policy models.
