Infrastructure under pressure

Water management and state-making in southern Iraq

Bibliographic Data

ID8944973
AuthorsMichael Mason (0000-0002-8494-9891)
Year2022
Volume132
Pages52-61
Publication date2022-04-18
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueGeoforum (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0016-7185 • E-ISSN: 1872-9398
PublisherElsevier BV (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1016/j.geoforum.2022.04.006
OpenAlexW4223937692
LanguageEN
Citations received8
References cited43

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

Business · Clientelism · Context (archaeology · Corporate governance · Economic growth · Economics · Environmental governance · Geography · Language change · Political science · Politics · Procurement · Scholarship · State (computer science · Water supply · Engineering · Finance · Law · Public Administration · Transboundary Water Resource Management · Water Governance and Infrastructure · Water resources management and optimization

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