Decomposing the Institutional Structure of Interstate River Basins Using Institutional Grammar and Institutional Analysis and Development Framework

Abstract

Rules play a core role in building a water management institution. However, the rules for water resource regulation in subnational interstate river basins remain inadequately explored. Furthermore, a lack of tools for detailed and systematic analysis of these rules hinders water managers from developing better water management strategies. Accordingly, in this paper, we combine institutional grammar and the institutional analysis and development framework’s rule typology to identify the formal rules regulating the water resources of Australia’s Murray-Darling Basin (MDB) and generate insights regarding the characteristics and key actors in the MDB’s institutional structure. Specifically, we study the position, boundary, choice, aggregation, information, scope, and payoff rules that regulate water in different MDB contexts. Overall, the MDB’s institutional structure emphasizes the choice and information rules that control actors’ actions and the availability of information. Aggregation rules, which regulate collective action, are found in every context. Nevertheless, the composition of the identified rules differs across the basin’s contexts, indicating that the focus of the basin’s institutional instrument differs across situations. We further analyze choice and aggregation rules to investigate the basin actors’ roles and interdependencies. The results reveal that decisions concerning administration, water distribution, monitoring, and infrastructure development are made collectively, except with respect to basin plan development, where decision-making is the responsibility of a single actor. Our proposed approach can therefore be used to thoroughly analyze any complex interstate institutional water structure. Overall, our findings foster a comprehensive understanding of the structure of interstate water institutions while facilitating the development of a systematic water institution analysis tool.