Managing Irrigation: Analyzing and Improving the Performance of Bureaucracies

by Norman Uphoff, Roy Steiner

Irrigation continues to be a vital component of human existence. The study of irrigation bureaucracy, however, is a new field for study. Defining and shaping this area of inquiry, Managing Irrigation offers analytical and prescriptive conclusions to improve the performance of bureaucracies responsible for irrigation management in developing countries. Uphoff and his colleagues envision irrigation as both a socio-technical and organizational-managerial enterprise; that considering cultural and organizational factors are as important as technological ones. Managing Irrigation develops a typology of irrigation systems and looks at differences in structures; considers objectives of irrigation management; and suggests alternatives, principles, and past experience to make irrigation agencies more effective. As such, policymakers, administrators, students, and scholars in development studies, Third World studies, political science, and sociology will find this volume most useful. "This book makes no claims to be definitive or complete: It emphasizes pragmatic approaches to problems which will be shaped by the physical, political and social characteristics of each specific irrigation scheme. This modest and sympathetic approach seems likely to reach and to influence its intended audience, and the authors are to be warmly congratulated." --Journal of Peasant Studies "It emphasizes pragmatic approaches to problems which will be shaped by the physical, political, and social characteristics of each specific irrigation scheme. This modest and sympathetic approach seems likely to reach and to influence its intended audience, and the authors are to be warmly congratulated." --Journal of Peasant Studies

264 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 1991