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Infrastructure under pressure: water management and state-making in Southern Iraq

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  • Mason, Michael

Abstract

Water infrastructure is an active element of state-making in southern Iraq, although major failings in water governance have in recent years triggered violent protests. Informed by scholarship on state clientelism and the political ecology of infrastructure, I examine the conflict-affected trajectories affecting public water management in Basra governorate. The degraded water treatment network manifests a post-2003 political system structured by embedded clientelism and politically sanctioned corruption. However, broad categorisations of clientelism can miss context-laden political effects produced by the spatial and technological configurations of infrastructure. I consider the state effects of water infrastructure practices in Basra governorate–how water supply networks and treatment technologies project state (in)capacity by means of volumetric and qualitative control over water flows. The empirical focus is on compact water treatment units (CWTUs), which are the main technology of public water supply in Basra governorate. I undertake an analysis of the deployment and management of CWTUs, as experienced by local actors responsible for, or politically contesting, the workings of water infrastructure in Basra city. Clientelist practices targeting public procurement and maintenance contracts have disrupted and delayed the upgrading of water infrastructure; yet these practices were enabled by neoliberal state-building that promoted the privatisation of public resources. Shortfalls in state capacity to provide clean drinking water in Basra are compounded by the growing hydro-climatic unpredictability of water flows.

Suggested Citation

  • Mason, Michael, 2022. "Infrastructure under pressure: water management and state-making in Southern Iraq," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 114909, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:114909
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    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/114909/
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    5. Joshua Mullenite, 2019. "Infrastructure and Authoritarianism in the Land of Waters: A Genealogy of Flood Control in Guyana," Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 109(2), pages 502-510, March.
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    7. Robert Coates & Anja Nygren, 2020. "Urban Floods, Clientelism, and the Political Ecology of the State in Latin America," Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 110(5), pages 1301-1317, September.
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    Cited by:

    1. Oleksandra Shumilova & Klement Tockner & Alexander Sukhodolov & Valentyn Khilchevskyi & Luc Meester & Sergiy Stepanenko & Ganna Trokhymenko & Juan Antonio Hernández-Agüero & Peter Gleick, 2023. "Impact of the Russia–Ukraine armed conflict on water resources and water infrastructure," Nature Sustainability, Nature, vol. 6(5), pages 578-586, May.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    infrastructure; clientelism; state effects; water management; Iraq;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • R14 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Land Use Patterns
    • J01 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - General - - - Labor Economics: General

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