Water governance and management in Central Asia

***Description of this Reading***:
This is chapter six of my dissertation with only eleven pages available for preview here on Academia.edu.  It chronicles the beginning of Bethune's NCNW.  Readers gain a sense of her organizing principles, why she felt it was necessary to "pool" Black feminine political energy at this time, in the mid 1930s.  You will also get a sense of the friction she encountered from other Black activist women--an aspect of her political career that has not been properly examined.  In my narrative, archival/primary source research takes precedence.  Pulling particularly from newspapers of that era lend a more complete picture of the dynamics between these particular Black women activists.


***Near Future Plans for this Chapter***:
I am in the process of redeveloping this chapter to self-publish as part of a three-book series, "A Passion For Social Equality," covering Bethune's political activism during the 1930s and 1940s.  POLITICAL ADVOCACY FOR JUSTICE is the title of the third book, forthcoming.

POLITICAL ADVOCACY FOR JUSTICE will include an expanded narrative, interpretation, and analysis of Bethune's activism during the prewar period, from 1940-1941, and material regarding her activism during WWII.  (Some of the former material has already been published in my chapter two of THE ECONOMIC CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT; see http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415537360/.)

***On Book Series: "A Passion For Social Equality"***
The first book of this series has been published, entitled PUSHING THE LIMITS OF THE COLOR LINE: MARY McLEOD BETHUNE AND THE NEW DEAL.  It can be viewed at: https://www.createspace.com/4283303  or the Amazon link on this page.

تقدم هذه الوثيقة تصورا لأهم المبادئ التي تعمل بمقتضاها أجهزة الشرطة في المجتمع الديمقراطي من واقع قراءة وثائق ومدّونات وتشريعات دول الاتحاد الأوروبي فيما تطرحه من مقوّمات عمل الشرطة. وتعرض الوثيقة خمسة مبادئ أساسية تحدد الإطار الديمقراطي لعمل الشرطة لكي يصبح مؤهلا لخدمة الشعب وهى:التمسك بسيادة القانون، والدور الاجتماعي للشرطة، وحماية حقوق المواطنين وحرياتهم، ودور الشرطة في مواجهة الفساد، وقواعد التنظيم الجيد والإدارة الفعالة لجهاز الشرطة.

Power is present in each individual and in every relationship.  It is defined as the ability of a group to get another group to take some form of desired action, usually by consensual power and sometimes by force (Holmes, Hughes & Julian, 2007).

In society governments, organisations and an elite class of people make decisions that affect the lives of a large mass of other people.  A significant amount of research shows these decisions are often made to serve their own economic interests and values of which includes the means of production and property ownership (Holmes et al, 2007; Walters & Crook, 1995; Haralambos & Holborn, 1990; McGregor, 2000).

These decisions cause inequality in society and resentment from people who are excluded from the decision making process.  The unequalness of this decision-making and power allocation enables the fortunate to enforce their will on the less fortunate (Graetz, 2001, Walters & Crook, 1995).

This essay discusses power from two sociological views; the Conflict perspective, predominately from Karl Marx and the Elite theory perspective.  These theories show that power is distributed unequally in society where governments, a ruling class, media and business elites hold the majority of power over others.

Decades of political backroom deals of a small political cast has resulted in a political system vulnerable to abuse of office, a weak legal system as well as a very frail anti-corruption framework. Numerous corruption scandals, including dubious privatisation deals at Austrian Telekom, BUWOG, police radio etc.,scandals at Vienna airport, bank Hypo Alpe Adria and Kurier, as well as the conviction of Mr Strasser, a former minister, on corruption charges, are compounded by strong criticism from GRECO, the Council of Europe's anti-corruption committee.

This article examines five common misunderstandings about case-study research: (a) theoretical knowledge is more valuable than practical knowledge; (b) one cannot generalize from a single case, therefore, the single-case study cannot contribute to scientific development; (c) the case study is most useful for generating hypotheses, whereas other methods are more suitable for hypotheses testing and theory building; (d) the case study contains a bias toward verification; and (e) it is often difficult to summarize specific case studies. This article explains and corrects these misunderstandings one by one and concludes with the Kuhnian insight that a scientific discipline without a large number of thoroughly executed case studies is a discipline without systematic production of exemplars, and a discipline without exemplars is an ineffective one. Social science may be strengthened by the execution of a greater number of good case studies.

Vent’anni di ricerche della Missione italiana nel deserto del Karakum hanno rivelato come la regione del Murghab sia stata teatro dei primi scambi e interazioni tra le popolazioni sedentarie locali e i nomadi delle steppe euro-asiatiche ponendo le basi delle future caratteristiche geo-economiche della cosiddetta Via della Seta

This chapter covers the steps you must consider when crafting a strategy for exposing corruption and
mismanagement through social media. Along with practical advice and thought-provoking questions, it
examines several case studies which throw light upon how social media has been and is being used to
expose corruption around the world.

Phronetic organizational research is an approach to the study of management and organizations focusing on ethics and power. It is based on a contemporary interpretation of the Aristotelian concept phronesis, usually as ‘prudence’. Phronesis is the ability to think and act in relation to values, to deliberate about ‘things that are good or bad for humans’ in the words of Aristotle (1976:1140a24–b12). Phronetic organizational research effectively provides answers to the following four value-rational questions, for specific problematics in management and organization studies: 1. Where are we going with this specific management problematic? 2. Who gains and who loses, and by which mechanisms of power? 3. Is this development desirable? 4. What, if anything, should we do about it?

The Aalborg Project may be interpreted as a metaphor of modern politics, modern administration and planning, and of modernity itself. The basic idea of the project was comprehensive, coherent, and innovative, and it was based on rational and democratic argument. During implementation, however, when idea met reality, the play of Machiavellian princes, Nietzschean will to power, and Foucauldian rationality-as-rationalization resulted in the fragmentation of the project.

At the same time that case studies are widely used and have produced canonical texts, it may be observed that the case study as a methodology is generally held in low regard, or is simply ignored, within the academy. For example, only 2 of the 30 top-ranked U.S. graduate programs in political science require a dedicated graduate course in case study or qualitative methods, and a full third of these programs do not even offer such a course. In contrast, all of the top 30 programs offer courses in quantitative methods and almost all of them require training in such methods, often several courses. In identifying this paradox of the case study’s wide use and low regard, Gerring rightly remarks that the case study survives in a “curious methodological limbo,” and that the reason is that the method is poorly understood. In what follows, we will try to resolve Gerring’s paradox and help case study research gain wider use and acceptance.

Delhi is a metropolitan city growing at a tremendous pace in terms of population and its need for efficient and sustainable water services. Singapore is considered to be a successful water management model. It started its transformation in 1960s-1970s when it was entirely dependent on Malaysia for its bulk water requirements. That period of Singapore’s water problems and other issues strike resemblance to those Delhi faces in the present- dependence on other states for raw water, polluted water sources and many others. There are numerous positive elements in the Singapore success story that can be emulated in cities such as Delhi. This paper seeks to find out whether Delhi’s water reform process can match Singapore’s model in key principles and the critical conditions required for success of this process. The paper first reviews the Singapore water story- from a state with engraved problems of water services to establish itself as a water hub and successful model in water management. It assesses the reasons for success of efforts in Singapore. The next section discusses the Delhi water problems- the need for reforms, proposed reforms and what happened. The analysis draws on the information sourced from interviews with key stakeholders, documents available, and personal experience as a witness of the process. The paper concludes with presents key recommendations for Delhi to achieve efficient and sustainable water services taking lessons from the Singapore experience.

In this paper we argue that the use of the communicative theory of Jürgen Habermas in planning theory is problematic because it hampers an understanding of how power shapes planning. We posit an alternative approach based on the power analytics of Michel Foucault which focuses on ‘what is actually done’, as opposed to Habermas’s focus on ‘what should be done’. We discuss how the Foucauldian stance problematises planning, asking difficult questions about the treatment of legitimacy, rationality, knowledge and spatiality. We conclude that Foucault offers a type of analytic planning theory which offers better prospects than does Habermas for those interested in understanding and bringing about democratic social change through planning.

This article presents results from the first statistically significant study of cost escalation in transportation infrastructure projects. Based on a sample of 258 transportation infrastructure projects worth US$90 billion and representing different project types, geographical regions, and historical periods, it is found with overwhelming statistical significance that the cost estimates used to decide whether such projects should be built are highly and systematically misleading. Underestimation cannot be explained by error and is best explained by strategic misrepresentation, that is, lying. The policy implications are clear: legislators, administrators, investors, media representatives, and members of the public who value honest numbers should not trust cost estimates and cost-benefit analyses produced by project promoters and their analysts.

This paper expands on recent debates over the merits of online crowdfunding platforms (CFPs) by looking at the extent to which these sorts of funding sites have the potential to contribute to the development of civic society ideals in Europe. In particular, it looks at how online CFPs and other peer-to-peer lending sites are beginning to alter the way in which charities and non-governmental organisations finance their activities. In addition, it also discusses how these sorts of investment platforms have the capacity to affect the way in which individual actors engage with one another at both the local and transnational level. Overall, then, what this paper shows is that, aside from their evident financial and economic benefits, CFPs also have the capacity to help foster and strengthen non-parliamentary democratic structures and practices. As such, they should be supported and encouraged as part of a framework of further European democratisation and civic integration.

Throughout history, the Seleucid military might demonstrated
many times its importance for the maintenance, expansion and defense of the Empire. Rarely the Seleucid army was defeated in a campaign and it happened in front of the almighty Rome. After the defeat at Thermopylae and Magnesia, and following the imminent withdrawal must conquer the Ptolemaic Empire, the new king Antiochus IV Epiphanes held a military parade as never been done before, its real purpose is unknown, but the Seleucids showed the world the power that still had the Empire. Through the stories of several classic sources, we can come closer to this event and what
it could entail.

This article presents the theoretical and methodological considerations behind a research method which the author calls ‘phronetic planning research’. Such research sets out to answer four questions of power and values for specific instances of planning: (1) Where are we going with planning? (2) Who gains and who loses, and by which mechanisms of power? (3) Is this development desirable? (4) What, if anything, should we do about it? A central task of phronetic planning research is to provide concrete examples and detailed narratives of the ways in which power and values work in planning and with what consequences to whom, and to suggest how relations of power and values could be changed to work with other consequences. Insofar as planning situations become clear, they are clarified by detailed stories of who is doing what to whom. Clarifications of that kind are a principal concern for phronetic planning research and provide the main link to praxis.

The research focused on the management of stormwater and sewage generated in a
developed urban area - Federal University of Technology, Akure, Ondo State, Nigeria. This involved the design of sanitary sewers, stormwater collection networks and a central sewage treatment plant. The total estimate of the wastewater generated from various locations was 5.067 million litres per day based on the population of approximately 26,131. The existing sewage disposal system in use in the institution was the septic tank-soakaway arrangement for individual buildings. The design of the sanitary sewers and stormwater collection networks are based on the principles of hydraulics. The results obtained were used to analyze and design the drains and pipe sizes for the open channels and the closed conduits respectively. The size of the drains for stormwater collection networks was designed with the assumption of 0.75 and 1 meter width. Also, calculations were made for square drain (depth equals width)
to be able to select practicable sizes. For optimum size solution, pipe size of 100 mm was found to be suitable for wastewater conveyance from the office areas. The sizes of pipes calculated for flows from residential quarters are too small, hence available commercial pipe sizes were selected. Wastewater samples were collected at various locations and were determined through laboratory tests to ascertain the concentrations of significant physical, chemical and biological content of the wastewater for proper selection of appropriate treatment processes. A BOD concentration of 350 mg/l and 353 mg/l obtained for residential and office areas respectively translated to high pollution load requires treatment before ultimate discharge into the receiving stream. The proposed sewage treatment plant was sited
at the lowest topographical level, far enough from the office and residential quarters. This would allow flow by gravity from the various points. The sewage treatment plant components selected include screen chamber, grit chamber, skimming tank and rectangular/circular primary settling/sedimentation tank (PST), which are designed to optimal dimensions.

Megaproject Planning and Management: Essential Readings contains the seminal articles from the growing body of research on megaproject planning and management along with an original introduction by the editor, Bent Flyvbjerg. The leading and most cited authority in the field, Flyvbjerg has used crowdsourcing and 25 years of experience to cherry-pick from several hundred articles and books the writings that define the field. This volume will be an indispensable source for those wishing to speak with authority about how megaprojects are prepared, delivered, and fought over. The target audience is students, academics, practitioners, and media pundits alike, as well as communities affected by megaprojects.

It has become a commonplace comment that the 20th century was about oil, while the 21st will be about water. As a complex and increasingly scarce resource, transboundary waters are both source of tensions and chance for enhanced cooperation among shareholding actors within a river basin. Decreasing water availability, compounded by the rising demands in areas which lack international cooperation on shared waters, is likely to increase tensions further.
Consequently, Water Diplomacy is on the rise to find measures to foster cooperation on, and joint management of common waters. Third-party actors such as the UN, NGOs and national organisations play a crucial role in enhancing technical abilities of local actors, and in promoting transboundary cooperation and coordination by supporting the establishment of joint international platforms: River Basin Organisations(RBOs).
This paper analyses the role of the European Union (EU) as a new emerging actor in the field of international Water Diplomacy. Since the Council declaration in July 2013, it has developed concrete strategies to foster transboundary water management in its priority areas: The Nile Basin and Central Asia, but also in the Lower Mekong region. Furthermore, the EU is supporting water related programs in the Sahel region and the Middle East. The EU strategy builds on the engagement and expertise of its member states, which the EU is closely cooperating with. Strategies and actions in EU Water Diplomacy are guided by UN-principles and its own experiences from European RBOs. Thus, the EU adopts the approach of the international community, calling for basin-wide organisation and collaboration to accompany international cooperation. The responsibility for establishing a functional framework among the shareholding parties of common waters rests in the hands of the riparian states, while third-party actors such as the EU aims to engage and enable local actors to overcome tensions over shared waters and collaborate.

Back cover text: If the new fin de siècle marks a recurrence of the real, Bent Flyvbjerg’s Rationality and Power epitomizes that development and sets new standards for social and political inquiry. The Danish town of Aalborg is to Flyvbjerg what Florence was to Machiavelli: a laboratory for understanding the real workings of power, and for grasping what they mean to our more general concerns of social and political organization. Politics, administration, and planning are examined in ways that allow  a rare, in-depth understanding. The reader witnesses, firsthand, the classic and endless drama which defines what modernity and democracy are and can be.

Back cover text: Megaprojects and Risk provides the first detailed examination of the phenomenon of megaprojects. It is a fascinating account of how the promoters of multi-billion dollar megaprojects systematically and self-servingly misinform parliaments, the public and the media in order to get projects approved and built. It shows, in unusual depth, how the formula for approval is an unhealthy cocktail of underestimated costs, overestimated revenues, undervalued environmental impacts and overvalued economic development effects. This results in projects that are extremely risky, but where the risk is concealed from MPs, taxpayers and investors. The authors not only explore the problems but also suggest practical solutions drawing on theory, experience and hard, scientific evidence from the several hundred projects in twenty nations and five continents that illustrate the book. Accessibly written, it will be the standard reference for students, scholars, planners, economists, auditors, politicians and interested citizens for many years to come.

"Radical Research explores the view that research is not a neutral tool to be employed without bias in the search for truth. Rather the radical roots of research are to be seen in the focus on freedom and emancipation from blind allegiance to tradition, ‘common sense’, religion, or powerful individuals and organisations.

Radical Research introduces and draws upon leading contemporary debates and data gathered from a diversity of funded projects in; health, education, police training, youth and community, schools, business, and the use of information technology.

This book presents a radical view of research in a way that enables both beginner and the experienced professional researcher to explore its approaches in the formation of their own views and practices. It progressively leads the reader from discussions of case studies to critical explorations of the philosophical and methodological concepts, theories and arguments that are central to contemporary debates. In essence, this book shows how to design, develop and write radical research under conditions where ‘normal’ research rules apply and it offers a ground-breaking and proven alternative to traditional research techniques."

The article first describes characteristics of major infrastructure projects. Second, it documents a much neglected topic in economics: that ex ante estimates of costs and benefits are often very different from actual ex post costs and benefits. For large infrastructure projects the consequences are cost overruns, benefit shortfalls, and the systematic underestimation of risks. Third, implications for cost–benefit analysis are described, including that such analysis is not to be trusted for major infrastructure projects. Fourth, the article uncovers the causes of this state of affairs in terms of perverse incentives that encourage promoters to underestimate costs and overestimate benefits in the business cases for their projects. But the projects that are made to look best on paper are the projects that amass the highest cost overruns and benefit shortfalls in reality. The article depicts this situation as ‘survival of the unfittest’. Fifth, the article sets out to explain how the problem may be solved, with a view to arriving at more efficient and more democratic projects, and avoiding the scandals that often accompany major infrastructure investments. Finally, the article identifies current trends in major infrastructure development. It is argued that a rapid increase in stimulus spending, combined with more investments in emerging economies, combined with more spending on information technology is catapulting infrastructure investment from the frying pan into the fire.

A pesar de que el agua es el recurso más abundante en el planeta Tierra, ya que cubre el 80 por ciento de la superficie terrestre, solamente el 0.26% es agua dulce que se encuentra en lagos, lagunas, embalses o canales fluviales susceptible de ser usada para las actividades humanas. Por ello, el agua dulce es limitada y escasa, su distribución es inequitativa y es un recurso bastante vulnerable.

Al ser el agua un recurso elemental para la vida humana, se ha estipulado que el derecho al agua debe tomarse como un auténtico derecho humano. Por tanto, este derecho depende la responsabilidad de los Estados para eliminar cualquier situación que lo amenace y, ello incluiría la adopción de medidas para incrementar las expectativas de vida lo que implicaría garantizar las condiciones mínimas en materia de abastecimiento de agua potable, así como de los marcos jurídicos y de una eficiente y pertinente administración de los organismos operadores, sobre todo cuando se habla de espacios urbanos, que entre el siglo XX y XXI han prevalecido con una marcada transición poblacional mayoritariamente rural por una eminentemente urbana.

La hiperconcentración poblacional ha traído consigo mayor demanda de agua para consumo doméstico, industrial y comercial en las ciudades y por tanto mayor generación de aguas residuales, que en su mayoría carecen de un adecuado tratamiento.

Así, el fenómeno de concentración poblacional urbana que caracteriza al siglo XXI, plantea la necesidad de formas alternas de gestión administrativa del agua a fin de asegurar su equitativa distribución y con ello, dar respuesta a un derecho humano que es factor imprescindible para el desarrollo personal y social. Situación que conlleva a replantear las instituciones político-administrativas contemporáneas y a modificar los marcos normativos actuales que permitan responder a las demandas contemporáneas.

Ya que hoy en día las condiciones del reparto de ese vital líquido son inequitativas y por esto es necesario modificar las estructuras jurídico-institucionales actuales mediante las que se distribuye y se pretende dar acceso al agua.

Con las ideas anteriores, este trabajo pretende responder desde la trinchera del derecho a ¿cómo se puede garantizar el derecho humano al agua y por tanto el acceso equitativo al agua en las zonas metropolitanas en la actualidad?

This paper highlights the importance of reconsidering the meaning of the nationhood within artificially created borders in Central Asia in both theoretical and regional settings. This paper argues that there is a dichotomy in the images used to describe CA regional relations and nationhood in the IR discipline that either extensively relies on arguments along the lines of rivalry, domination, and spheres of influence or, alternatively, attempts to go beyond rationalist rhetoric by focusing on local understandings of various concepts and terms with little, dialog between these two theoretical camps. This paper emphasizes the way neighborhood in Central Asia is tightly integrated into the nationhood construction through the notions of brotherhood/fraternity (birodarlik/kardoshlik/baurlastyk) and of the shared norms of endurance (sabr) and informal collective decision-making (maslahat) for nationhood and region building. Unpacking these meanings contributes to the task of creating a more diverse and inclusive IR discipline reflective of various regional specificities.