Participation has become a basic principle in public water management and governance policies. The European Union Water Framework Directive encourages member states to develop river basin management plans through participatory processes that inform, consult, and actively involve all stakeholders (Demetropoulou et al., 2010; Jager et al., 2016). Similarly, “integrated urban water resources management” strategies aim to involve citizens in service delivery and decision-making in cities, covering the entire water cycle (Mukhtarov et al., 2018). In development cooperation policies, it is also assumed that the involvement of local communities could contribute to sustainable and equitable access to safe drinking water (Jones, 2011). In all cases, the assumption is that participation contributes to more effective natural resource management. It involves considering the interests of different stakeholders.

However, the principle of participation has very different meanings in practice. In the field of international cooperation, it is initially associated with the idea that the provision of (water) infrastructure is not sufficient to contribute to local development, but that it is necessary at the same time to pay attention to the forms of organization and the decision-making process (Tropp, 2007). Thus, speaking of governance implies moving from an almost exclusive focus on infrastructure to the consideration of social factors. Nevertheless, this opens up a wide variety of potential forms of citizen involvement, on a gradient from informing or consulting local community representatives, to joint deliberation in public forums or more demanding modes of co-governance, among others (Margerum, 2008; Mukhtarov et al., 2018). It is to be expected that each form of participation will have its dynamics and generate different results.

A key distinction is to differentiate between formal government-driven participation and participation that emerges, bottom-up, in community contexts (Van Buuren et al., 2019). On the one hand, public administration frequently resorts to the involvement of civil society to improve policy acceptance and to prevent conflict between different stakeholders (Newig and Fritsch, 2009). Participatory water basin councils are a clear example of this type of initiative, where multiple stakeholders are usually invited to collaborate in decision-making and the allocation of scarce water resources (Mancilla-García and Bodin, 2019). On the other hand, there are occasions when participatory spaces are the result of community self-organization, either in reaction to government initiatives or to respond to local needs (Romano, 2019). A paradigmatic case is water user associations, which usually resort to self-regulation, understood as “the decentralized collective management of groundwater resources” (Van Steenbergen and Shah, 2003, p. 242). As we can see, there is a wide and diverse typology of institutional arrangements through which participation can be channeled.

Likewise, assuming a participatory approach does not necessarily imply obtaining the intended results. It is a political process, which ultimately depends on the ability to influence or form alliances. Even when the composition of public forums is designed inclusively, stakeholders do not always have the technical knowledge that allows them to participate effectively (Mancilla-García and Bodin, 2019). Water management often involves mastering complex issues that unbalance the influence capacity of the different members of the decision-making committees. At other times, it is the centralized structure of the state itself that becomes an impediment to an adequate level of community involvement (Demetropoulou et al., 2010). Consequently, not every time participation is deemed necessary is sufficient to trigger the desired changesFootnote 1.

This makes it necessary to pay attention to the conditions under which participation takes place. In this regard, three types of factors to take into account have been identified, which refer respectively to (1) the capacities of participating actors, (2) the interaction of public authorities with participants, and (3) the adaptability of public institutions to community initiatives and, in general, to participatory processes (Van Buuren et al., 2019). This means that the achievement of positive results may depend, among other factors, on leadership, the internal social capital of the participating organizations, transparency, capacity for dialog, or the degree of trust among stakeholders. Effective participation is based on the motivation and skills of participants, deployed persistently in an organizational context (often community-based associations and initiatives) that allows the development of strong personal relationships (Maya-Jariego et al., 2023). Each participatory process has a unique history. When it comes to effective water governance, this necessarily leads us to complement the generic references to participation with the operationalization and traceability of the conditions under which it occurs.

Therefore, there are different forms of participation and one way to characterize them is to evaluate the structure of the collaboration patterns between the different actors involved. That is why network analysis can be useful, as we explain in the next section.

The analysis of water governance networks

Social network analysis is one of the empirical approaches that enables us to “translate” the principle of participation in an operational way. The most common use has been to describe the patterns of collaboration among a set of relevant stakeholders in water governance. It is a structural approach. Mapping the inter-organizational networks of collaboration serves to identify the most central stakeholders, describe the relationships between existing subgroups, and assess the degree of transversal integration between the different sectors of the public administration. In Table 1 we have summarized some of the most productive applications of network analysis in participatory water governance. We review them below.

Table 1 Uses of network analysis in participatory water governance.
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The emphasis on the structural properties of a social system is particularly appropriate when we seek to describe multi-stakeholder governance arrangements. Participatory governance can be formulated as a collaborative network between government agencies, environmental groups, water user associations, and non-governmental organizations, among other relevant community stakeholders. Organizations are nodes that may be connected by information relationships, resource exchange, or shared projects. This way of reducing stakeholder collaboration allows the role of individual stakeholders to be examined and, at the same time, represents the performance of the water sector as a whole.

Individual centrality indicators indirectly reveal the distribution of power in water governance. It is common to find the dominant role of government agencies so that most of the power lies with the public sector (Fliervoet et al., 2016; Kharanagh et al., 2020). These are hierarchical structures where decision-making control is preferentially concentrated in the management units (Nabiafjadi et al., 2021). As a counterpart, there are other stakeholders, such as agricultural organizations, which sometimes play a marginal role despite the water demand they usually entail (Gatt, 2016). Something similar occurs in remote rural areas, which are often disconnected from the institutional spheres where decisions are made (Delgado et al., 2021). Although many users of network analysis resort to this tool to justify or induce patterns of collaborative governance, the results they obtain often paradoxically confront them with the limits of actual participatory processesFootnote 2.

On the other hand, if we focus on the structural properties as a whole, we obtain a comprehensive representation of how the relationships between the different stakeholders are articulated. The systemic vision provided by network analysis makes it a useful tool in the integration of different government agencies. For example, it can be used to coordinate (both vertically and horizontally) agencies responsible for water, energy, and food management (Kurian et al., 2018). It also allows organizations involved in the governance of rivers, lakes, and aquifers to be connected with those focused on soil moisture used by plantsFootnote 3 (Stein et al., 2011); or entities that coordinate flood protection with those focused on natural resource management (Fliervoet et al., 2016).

In this area, individuals or organizations that act as intermediaries and connect different areas of the network are usually identified, facilitating coordination between stakeholders. Intermediaries condition the flow of information and resources, facilitating the development of interactions and contributing to the construction of social capital and trust in the social system of reference (Maya-Jariego and Holgado, 2021). In lake co-management, it has been observed that intermediaries connect management with non-governmental stakeholders and sometimes link to external sources of information as well (Lakshmisha and Thiel, 2022). In water basins subject to heavy soil erosion, intermediaries connect local entities with others at the national level, generating credibility and trust among both farmers and hydropower producers (Vignola et al., 2013). In rural contexts, water user associations have been found to bring together stakeholders that are sometimes on the margins of institutionalized forums and that would be disconnected were it not for the key role of village leaders (Stein et al., 2011). In all these cases the role of intermediaries is critical to facilitate understanding and coordination between heterogeneous groups of stakeholders (Horning et al., 2016).

Other applications consist of integrating network analysis into action research or strategic planning processes. For this purpose, it can be combined with qualitative methodologies that facilitate the generation of a shared vision among participants (Ahmadi et al., 2019). The representation of relationships makes it possible to make visible all the stakeholders that are relevant in a given area (Jatel, 2013; Maya-Jariego, 2016; Ogada et al., 2017) and to monitor institutional transformation toward adaptive water governance models (Chaffin et al., 2016). The assessment of power relations between stakeholders can also support the undertaking of negotiations and conflict resolution processes (Reyhani and Grundmann, 2021), even in circumstances of high polarization (Rojas et al., 2020).

Therefore, network analysis provides a structural view of governance patterns, allows the distribution of power to be described, and serves to assess how the heterogeneity of stakeholders is integrated into the management of the socio-ecosystem (Fig. 1). In Box 1 we illustrate with a case from the Algarve, in southern Portugal, how the interaction with ecosystem services shapes the conflict and cooperation relationships of stakeholders sharing the same territory. In this case, a relevant and effective governance strategy would require promoting consensus in a context of potentially conflictive intergroup relations.

Fig. 1: Agricultural products are a tourist attraction, so there is a natural synergy between the influx of tourists and the primary sector.
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Environmental protection organizations consider that farms are the main consumers of water from aquifers and one of the main threats to the sustainability of the region. The relationship is more ambivalent with the tourism sector. Although tourism actors increase population pressure on water consumption, they are also an incentive to preserve the environmental and cultural heritage of the region. This makes tourism a sector with greater potential for intermediation between the different stakeholders.

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The case we present below illustrates how the identification of the relevant subgroups in the territory, as well as the relationships they maintain among themselves, allows the interests of different stakeholders to be integrated into a common policy. It is an example of the fifth and last strategy mentioned in Table 1.

Discussion

Citizen participation in water governance is expressed in different modalities and intensities. The same term of “participation” is used when information is provided to citizens, when certain proposals of the administration are submitted to public consultation when committees are created with a representation of different stakeholders, when models of co-management between government and civil society are developed, or when the structure of decision-making is transformed to empower marginalized groups (O’Faircheallaigh, 2010). Each modality (or degree) of participation may be more or less relevant depending on the problem to be addressed. In any case, it is important to specify what we mean when we talk about participation. In practice, sounding out the population’s opinion, promoting heterogeneous representation in decision-making forums, and empowering certain groups involve setting differentiated political processes in motion.

Being explicit and specific in the use of the concept has at least two implications: Not only does it call into question the assumption that “the more participation the better,” but it even pushes us to question whether participation is always the best option by default. A study with wide international coverage found that participation in water exchange, either as donors or recipients, was associated with an increased likelihood of perceived distress and conflict (Wutich et al., 2022). Although much academic research has focused on collaborative processes, there are many cases in which the existence of conflicting interests over the use of natural resources comes to the fore (Bodin et al., 2020). Thus, despite the observed benefits of cooperation in environmental governance, it seems justified to adopt a pragmatic perspective that assesses when participation is appropriate (and when it is not), what type of participation is relevant in each case, and what participation is expected to contribute to the policy process. Referring to participation in a generic way, as a panacea for all kinds of problems, is insensitive to the diversity of situations that water governance normally faces.

However, when we descend to an operational level, we have found that participation facilitates community inclusion in decision-making, can offset power imbalances, and contributes to taking a holistic view of the ecosystem. First, the mere inclusion of the community in water policies contributes to democratizing decision-making and improves the relevance of actions, especially concerning the most disadvantaged groups (Hossen, and Wagner, 2016). Community monitoring has been experimentally proven to improve common pool resource management in all types of socio-geographic contexts (Slough et al., 2021). Secondly, participation is a way to represent the diversity of interests that converge in the same socio-ecological scenario. It is paradoxical to repeatedly encounter the concentration of power in governmental stakeholders, even though collaborative governance is proposed as a horizontal alternative in decision-making. Part of the potential of network analysis lies precisely in serving as a tool to improve the representativeness of participating stakeholders and indirectly contribute to the distribution of power (Lienert et al., 2013). Thirdly, the consideration of different stakeholders facilitates the adoption of a systemic or bio-regional approach, which assumes an integrated view of all the resources of a river basin and promotes integrated water resources management (Huitema et al., 2009). As Megdal et al. (2017) point out, “water management and governance issues comprise many dynamically related components, which can only be adequately addressed by understanding their interconnections” (p. 6).

Citizen participation can improve the quality and legitimacy of political decisions (Ianniello et al., 2019; Newig et al., 2023). For this to happen, a series of conditions must be in place to facilitate the long-term interaction of a diverse set of stakeholders with an adequate level of institutional recognitionFootnote 4. Social network analysis provides us with insights into the characteristics of a network of actors that are relevant to the design of participation processes. As we have shown, adopting a structural perspective can be an effective means of improving the representativeness and integrated functioning of stakeholders in water governance.