Dias Tadeu, Natalia

In recent years, studies have analyzed governance dynamics taking in weakly institutionalized contexts, for example, by focusing on how stakeholders develop different strategies to participate in policy venues within polycentric systems. Other studies have also shown how collaborative decision-making venues in weakly institutionalized settings face challenges in emerging as the go-to spaces for addressing policy crises. This is particularly salient in the context of environmental governance, where multiple stakeholders with varying degrees of authority and power coexist. However, the empirical evidence surrounding these claims has been limited largely to cross-sectional analysis, with limited work paying attention to the role of participatory venues in facilitating discussions, fostering dialogue, and building consensus regarding policy problems. In this manuscript, we assess the role of one of such venues, the Santa Lucia River Basin committee in Uruguay, from a longitudinal perspective. The Santa Lucia River Basin committee was created in 2013 to foster collaboration and dialogue among a variety of stakeholders involved in water governance related issues in the basin that provides drinking water to 60% of the population of Uruguay. Over the last decade, the basin committee served as a space for debating water governance issues (including, most recently, one of the country’s most intense water crisis in history) and large infrastructure works. Using data from 22 meeting minutes covering a span of ten years, we apply social network analysis techniques to assess hypotheses regarding the interactions among stakeholders participating in the basin committee’s meetings, as well as the role of the committee as a venue for facilitating such interactions. Our study is among the first to provide a longitudinal and quantitative analysis of discursive dynamics within a basin committee in a weakly institutionalized setting. In doing so, we highlight the challenges and opportunities for the development of long-lasting participatory venues for the governance of water resources in weakly institutionalized settings.