[DEBATE] : (Fwd) After the Cochabamba water war: no easy victory

[Patrick Bond]

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Beyond water wars: lessons on forming collaborative governance from 
Cochabamba

Travis Driessen

9 May 2008

The water war in Cochabamba, Bolivia, provided some of the first shots 
against privatisation of water services heard around world, but 
necessary institutional and cultural changes, as opposed to symbolic 
restructuring of the board of the public service institution, have not 
yet happened.

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The now famous Water War in Cochabamba, Bolivia, provided some of the 
first shots against privatisation of water services heard around world, 
as an awakened and politicized citizenry rose up to protest private 
participation in their water company SEMAPA and to reclaim their 
publicly provided water services. Cochabamba’s resistance to neo-liberal 
water policies and its calls for public water service quickly resonated 
in the emerging transnational social movement on water.

In the early months of 2000, tens of thousands of people participated in 
the massive popular protests. These protests forced the Bolivian 
government to cancel the highly contested service contract with the 
private water provider, Aguas Del Tunari (1), and to return the public 
water company SEMAPA to the state. While the state company SEMAPA was 
known to be inefficient, corrupt and controlled by party politics, the 
newly politicised and engaged public aspired to recreate their water 
company by reorganising it to include a new participatory democratic 
form of governance called “social control”.

Eight years later, there are important lessons to be learned from the 
struggle to achieve participatory democratic water governance in 
Cochabamba. Because they involve reconfiguring power relationships, 
participatory processes can face intense resistance and possible 
co-optation from those who benefited from past forms of company 
organisation. Corruption and political elite control represent two of 
the greatest factors in poor performing water companies. They are also 
the key obstacles to creating new forms of transparency and expanding 
citizen involvement in decision-making. Moreover, the technical bias 
that traditionally exists among the professional staff of water 
companies often challenges greater community participation in the 
technical aspects of the service provision. Lastly, contentious social 
groups may struggle to create effective participatory institutions, 
develop new capacities, and form strategic relationships with company 
officials in order to effectively participate in collective governance.

Participatory democratic approaches to public service management: social 
control in SEMAPA

Social Control was envisioned by the actors of a social movement 
coalition that emerged during the Water War called the Coordinadora(2). 
In practice, social control attempts to provide the participatory 
democratic mechanisms and processes with which to engage and integrate 
citizen’s participation into strategic locales of the company’s 
decision-making structure. By encouraging participation on water 
policies and project priorities, participants define a broader social 
demand for the water company to serve as a tool for equity rather than a 
limited economic demand, determined and expressed according to the logic 
of the market (namely by those who can afford to pay for the service 
provision) under private operations. Moreover, social control attempts 
to improving planning by reducing clientalistic service provisioning and 
increasing the company performance by encouraging citizen monitoring and 
evaluation.

Creating social control in SEMAPA intended to provide a complimentary 
participatory decision-making presence to the existing technical 
responsibilities of the company’s management. Pushing for participation 
within the executive decision making body, the SEMAPA Board, was an 
attempt to empower citizens and take away the control of this 
institution from the various municipal politicians and company elites 
who have historically exploited SEMAPA for personal gain.

Faltering beginnings in institutionalizing social control

After the massive street demonstrations, negotiations between social 
movement leaders, company officials, and local politicians took place 
within the SEMAPA Directory. Moving the protest from the streets and 
into the formal arenas of the municipal government created many 
significant obstacles for the Coordinadora. Within this formal setting, 
the Coordinadora was challenged by maintaining broad-scale mobilization 
in order to effectively exert popular pressure on municipal elites 
ensuring their demands for reorganizing the company were met. Also the 
legal procedures under which negotiations could be made and decisions 
approved favoured the municipal political elites who supported the 
privatization in the first place. Creating new forms of transparency and 
expanding citizens’ control over decision making in SEMAPA ultimately 
requires empowering new actors, namely those who are traditionally 
marginalised, and, consequently, a loss of some control for others, 
namely municipal politicians and corrupt workers and managers. The 
control of the institution provides both a “botín político”(3) to 
politicians and illicit economic benefits for managers and workers of 
SEMAPA who participate in various forms of corruption to the detriment 
of the company. It is primarily for these reasons that developing, 
implementing, and practicing social control has been fiercely resisted 
by local elites, both in the municipality and within the actual company.

But fierce elite resistance is not the only challenge to creating 
participatory processes. Progressive social actors also bear the 
responsibility of developing effective collaborative governance models 
in cooperation with the public who is expected to utilize the new 
participatory institutions. In addition, social control implies a new 
logic of politics that often challenge contentious social organizations. 
Within collaborative governance, adversarial social organizations must 
develop new capacities and strategic relationships with company 
officials in order to be able to successfully negotiate service projects 
and monitor performance.

A common myth about the transfer from private to public hands was that 
the Coordinadora controlled the restructuring and implementation of the 
social control model in SEMAPA. Indeed a temporary Board was created to 
define, negotiate and implement the model of social control. This 
temporary board included two representatives of the Coordinadora out of 
five seats. Two other Directors represented the interests of the mayor 
and one represented the interests of the union. During this negotiation 
the actors representing the municipal power structure waged fierce 
battles both to discredit the temporary management of the company by the 
Coordinadora and to derail the social movement’s project for social 
control.

The Coordinadora’s strategies for institutionalising a participatory 
form of management focused on three levels. At the executive level, the 
Coordinadora proposed inserting citizen representatives within the Board 
in order to more directly represent the interests of the population. 
Their original demand was to have 14 Citizen Directors to represent each 
of the city’s districts. This demand however was rejected by the other 
board members. At the company level, the technical team of the 
Coordinadora proposed making institutional changes in SEMAPA operations 
that would create more cooperation between the engineers, workers, and 
the communities within the various stages of service provision. In 
particular, they proposed the creation of Technical Committees composed 
of representatives of the company and the community, which would oversee 
any service expansion project that SEMAPA implemented and evaluate its 
performance. This proposal, however, was denied by the then current 
General Manager. At the community level, the Coordinadora proposed 
creating participatory institutions called Basic Sanitation Committees. 
These committees would be organized at the neighbourhood level and allow 
water users to elaborate their demands and evaluate city wide proposals 
for water services. Political challenges in reforming the state 
participatory institutions called Base Territorial Organizations 
prevented their institutionalization. The presidents of these community 
organizations are known to practice a politics of clientelism with the 
local politicians in exchange for service provisions. The leaders feared 
opening their institutions up to broader participation would result in a 
loss of their control and therefore resisted creating the new basic 
service committees.

The model of social control which was finally approved by the board and 
implemented in SEMAPA reflected many concessions made by the social 
movements. It did not provide adequate institutional changes which would 
allow the integrated participation of the broader community into the 
daily operations of the water company. The final version also lacked 
mechanisms to empower citizen oversight of the work of representatives 
and administrators of the company. Within the negotiated model, the role 
of the broader community was less guaranteed.

One of the most important opportunities for change however has been the 
new addition of the Citizen Directors to the Board representing the 
various geo-political zones of the municipality. These Directors are 
universally elected by Cochabambinos (residents of Cochabamba). This 
small step towards building effective social control has been an 
important initial advance; however it yet lacks many supporting 
mechanisms to effectively interface community interests into the 
decision-making structure of SEMAPA.

Continuing elite control, corruption, and inefficiency

Whilst the Citizen Directors compose four out of the nine Board’s 
members, the new board is still embedded within a traditional 
governmental and institutional power structure of political party 
influence from above and blatant company corruption from below. To the 
despair of the social movements, by law the mayor still retains the 
presidency of the SEMAPA board. The resulting poor performance and 
administration of the company demonstrate the characteristics of what 
has been called an “elite captured public service”. Under this scenario, 
there is continuous evidence of political party influence determining 
who gets the service and when, as well as broad scale corruption.

Clientalistic politics affect service planning and the most efficient 
use of limited resources within public service companies by reducing the 
scope of the service provision to focus on a short-term limited 
political demand. This political demand represents the interests of 
incumbent elite representatives, rather than needs of society, 
represented by all of those without access to quality services. Under 
clientalistic planning, infrastructure expansion projects become a 
fragmented hodgepodge, governed more by geopolitical calculations of 
securing electoral support rather than a coherent and technically viable 
approach to provision. Clientalistic planning ultimately denies 
maximising the potential for redistributing limited state, company, and 
community economic resources in order to meet the current and future 
demand for services within a particular locale.

It is hard to determine the cost of corrupt practices to the company due 
to the culprits’ efforts to hide their activities. There is, however, no 
doubt that it is ubiquitous and perpetually present in the company. 
Within the last two years, the last two General Managers have both been 
fired for corruption charges that represent an economic impact of over 
$US one million. Several other representatives and company managers have 
also been fired for similar charges. In many cases, the corruption aims 
to provide infrastructure that is less technically viable and therefore 
less expensive so that the culprits can share in the profits. Under this 
form of contract corruption, company officials negotiate public works 
projects with less reputable companies in exchange for bribes. Nepotism, 
another form of corruption, contributes to the lack of technical 
capacity and experience of the managers and staff. Family members or 
political supporters are hired on the basis of family ties rather than 
merit and often lack expertise. In a recent interview a former manager 
estimated, “80% of the SEMAPA management staff is not qualified to 
perform their responsibilities.”

Practicing with social control

Social movements and participants in the Water War view the original 
protest events in 2000 ever more as the first battle in a broader, 
unfolding process and effort to reform SEMAPA, redefine the company’s 
technical and political relations, and to influence government policies 
on water and public services management. Social organisations are 
working to strengthen the existing participatory process and create new 
mechanisms to build the capacity of, and effectively engage, the public 
within the collective governance of the water institution. Their 
post-water war strategies can be classified in three categories: efforts 
to reform company statutes to improve social control, protests to fight 
corruption and political influence, and forming strategic relationships 
with Citizen Directors and various company professionals to advocate 
service projects and monitor company performance.

Attempts at reforming the statutes of SEMAPA regarding social control 
have been quite limited. Shortly after the transition to social control 
complaints from social organizations began to develop around the citizen 
directors. These critiques were that the representatives had too few 
responsibilities, they were not responsible to provide reports to update 
their constituencies on the performance of the company, and that they 
were not able to be sanctioned by citizens for poor performance. In 
2004, the Coordinadora submitted a regulatory proposal to the board 
outlining new responsibilities for the Citizen Directors in order to 
enhance the role and optimise their relations with water users. The 
Directory however rejected this proposal.

In 2005, various social movements entered the SEMAPA grounds to protest 
the corruption that was allegedly occurring by some of the union 
representatives. The protestors stormed the facility and demanded that 
the union representative position in the Board be removed. In front of 
the protestors, the board voted unanimously to remove the union 
representative from the decision making body. In this way, the social 
participation in the form of protest successfully put pressure on 
corrupt company workers and representatives to improve their performance.

The third form involves social organisations developing strategic 
relationships with the Citizen Directors and various company 
professionals in order to both propose infrastructure projects and 
access key company data used to evaluate management official’s 
performance. ASICA-Sur (4), the association of community water 
committees in the city’s marginalised southern zone, has led the way in 
creating pressure for improved water services. ASICA-Sur has 
continuously criticised the company’s poor performance and demanded a 
comprehensive non-politically determined plan for water expansion into 
the southern zone.

Shortly after the Water War this organisation worked with their citizen 
director representative to propose a plan for service expansion into the 
southern zone of the city. In 2003, the Directory approved the community 
backed proposal for the plan of expansion.

As a result, SEMAPA is now in the initial stages of executing a Plan of 
Expansion. For the first time in its history, it is focusing on 
providing water service infrastructure to a vast number of southern zone 
inhabitants where more than 60% are not yet connected to the municipal 
public water provider.

Another successful collaborative campaign was carried out in 2007. Over 
several months, key social organizations, the Citizen Directors, and 
several SEMAPA professionals conducted a joint investigation of the 
company management under Eduardo Rojas (General Manager 2006-2007). The 
widespread corruption allegedly occurring under Rojas’s direction had 
caused significant financial damage to the company making it difficult 
for it to pay employees and jeopardized the international loan from the 
Inter-American Development Bank that was financing the plan of 
expansion. Over a several month period, these diverse actors 
strategically combined their unique capacities and authority in order to 
collect and analyse the company’s financial data to prove widespread 
corruption was occurring in the company and Rojas was indeed 
responsible. After several months of pressuring union officials and 
local political representatives, who until this time still publicly 
supported Rojas, in October 2007, the Board voted unanimously to suspend 
and open an official investigation of the General Manager for charges of 
corruption.

Institutional and contextual constraints on exercising effective social 
control

Yet these advances by the participatory actors have been constrained by 
several factors relating to both institutional design and embedded 
cultural contexts. Citizen Directors have been significantly hindered by 
the fact that they receive no formal training when they enter their 
positions. Many of the Citizen Directors who begin energised and ready 
to create positive changes are quickly challenged by their inability to 
propose technically viable plans or effectively scrutinise their 
implementation.

Moreover, the expansion of the Board to include citizen representatives 
was not complemented by changes to the internal management of the 
company in order to accommodate these new actors, such as providing 
information suitable for non-expert actors in a format they can 
effectively comprehend in order to appropriately analyse company plans 
and performance reports.

Moreover, a technical bias generally exists within the technical and 
professional staff of water companies that discounts the value of 
contributions by ordinary citizens. The initial efforts to create the 
technical committees were rejected by the then current manager who was 
also a member of the Coordinadora. This internal disagreement within the 
Coordinadora demonstrated the strong division between socially and 
technically oriented players who formed the coalition. There is still a 
strong disconnect between company technicians and the general public.

Moreover even pressure by ASICA-Sur which is delivering service 
infrastructure expansions can not be described as a clear victory for 
social control. The process has often been manipulated by the Mayor and 
the Governor who seized the opportunity to energise their political 
bases and to marginalise the association and Citizen Directors from the 
project. It demonstrates the tendency of political elites to control 
service provisions in order to provide them to their electoral bases. 
Moreover, the lack of capacity amongst Citizen Directors and social 
organisations has prevented them from effectively proposing technical 
viable service plans and critiquing the formal plans created by company 
professionals and municipal technocrats.

Struggles against SEMAPA’s inefficiency and corruption have shown that 
whilst protests may deliver some results, they do not address the root 
causes and organisational problems which allow these types of acts to 
continue. It is clear, in the context of popular desire to participate, 
specific mechanisms must be established to strategically channel this 
interest. The continuing poor performance and corruption in SEMAPA have 
created significant mistrust between the social organisations, the 
municipal officials on the board, and the company managers. Although in 
some cases social organisations may be effective in collaborating with 
company and public officials, it remains to be seen if their relations 
will improve to encourage a more effective environment for collective 
governance and company performance for the benefit of the entire 
Cochabambino community.

Conclusion

Collective public service management based on social control intends to 
provide well performing water companies and equitable service 
provisions. This feat has not yet been achieved in Cochabamba. These 
profound institutional and cultural changes can not happen over the 
course of a water war or even less within a symbolic restructuring of 
the board of the public service institution.

Creating effective forms of social control require the creation of 
viable participatory institutions and long-term commitments and broad 
cooperation by engaged and active citizens to work diligently and 
strategically to develop consensual service demands and erode the 
political and organisational cultures of corruption and exploitation. In 
addition to the political will of the people, company decision making 
structures must be reformed in order to effectively accommodate 
citizens’ capacities. For example, collective governance in public 
service companies requires creating new forms of transparency that 
provide information to service users in a format that accommodates the 
needs and interests of non-expert participants. Moreover, contentious 
social organizations must work to develop new capacities and strategic 
relationships with company officials and local politicians in order to 
effectively enter and negotiate their demands for services and monitor 
company performance. Under these conditions, participatory democratic 
governing structures can provide well performing and equitable public 
service institutions that respect and respond to the social demand and 
needs of the entire community in which it is embedded and which it is 
meant to benefit.

Although the many setbacks in SEMAPA must be addressed in the broader 
debate on social control, it is equally important to focus in on its 
emerging strengths and the positive effects that merely attempting to 
develop this process have had, not only in Cochabamba, but within the 
global water justice movement as well. The experiments taking place 
within SEMAPA revitalise radical progressive debates on conceptualising 
collective governance models. As the world water movement matures and 
strengthens its demands for collective governance, these initial 
experiments are providing crucial experience and collective learning 
that can lay the groundwork for deepening activists’ strategies for 
building robust and sustainable empowered participatory governance 
within public service institutions worldwide.

Notes

(1) A subsidiary of the transnational corporation Bechtel with 
headquarters in San Francisco, California.

(2) Translated as ‘the Defense Coalition for Water and Life’.

(3) Translated as ‘political booty’. This Bolivian expression is used to 
describe the political benefits that politicians who control these 
institutions receive, in particular in two forms: rewarding political 
supporters with well-paying government jobs and providing service 
provisions to various constituencies in exchange for political support 
during election time.

(4) An association of water committees which includes the participation 
of over 120 committees, representing about 60,000 people in the southern 
zone.


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Travis Driessen is a cultural anthropology major from the University of 
Wisconsin Madison. His research is concerned with participatory 
democracy and common goods. His current investigations examine the 
institutional designs and cultural contexts of participatory budgeting 
processes in Cochabamba and Porto Alegre and in water and sanitation 
service organizations.

<http://www.aguabolivia.org/controlsocial/>The Working Group on Social 
Control is a social platform to encourage critical reflection and 
cooperation among various social organisations whose efforts relate to 
social control and citizen participation in Bolivia.

The two principal projects this network is involved with are designed to:

1) create better transparency and enhanced mechanisms for public 
scrutiny related to the management of SEMAPA and
2) increasing the public’s role in the planning, monitoring, and 
evaluation of policy and public budgets.

For further information, please visit: 
<http://www.aguabolivia.org>www.aguabolivia.org

For questions, comments, and critiques please write to tmdriessen at gmail.com

The article was first published in May 2008. It will be included in the 
Arabic edition of 
<http://www.tni.org/detail_pub.phtml?&&know_id=83&menu=05k>Reclaiming 
Public Water (Summer 2008).