*3.3. Dynamics*

We identified institutional changes in the Mexican water sector that determined the prevalence of one stakeholder over another in different periods, the creation or emergence of new institutional arrangements, or the formalization of existing stakeholders (recognition in written laws) in post-revolutionary Mexico (nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries). These institutional changes in water governance in Mexico were framed in three periods: (1) pre-centralization, (2) centralization, and (3) decentralization [45–47] (Figure 5).

During the pre-centralization period at the beginning of the nineteenth century, colonial heritage prevailed, and water governance was considered a local matter to be handled between municipal governments, state governments, and individuals. The Mercedes (i.e., sanctioned use over a stream or spring), ordinances (i.e., the distribution of water to citizens by judges), and repartimiento (i.e., legal framework of the Repartimiento de Aguas established by the Spanish Crown in 1560) were recognized in the first Constitution of 1857. Article 27 of the National Constitution of 1857 guaranteed that the Mexican nation had to preserve property rights, including those over the water in rivers and springs [61].

The first law that gave the Federal Executive Branch control over rivers, canals, and navigable water bodies was the Ley de Vias Generales de Comunicación of 1888 [46]. However, its role regarding the ownership of national waters remained ambiguous [61]. For Rolland and Vega [48], the centralization process began with the first Ley de Aprovechamiento de Aguas de Jurisdicción Federal in 1910. This law established the Federal Executive Branch as the sole owner of all national waters. Centralization could be associated with the economic, social, and political power of controlling the water [60] and with the new technologies related to water use, health and hygiene, and distribution [62]. According to Escobar [50], municipal councils and states began to lose control over their waters with this law, as power was concentrated within a single national stakeholder. With the National Constitution of 1917, changes in water governance were introduced in article 27. These changes gave the federal governmen<sup>t</sup> the power to issue laws regulating national waters and collect a tax for their concessions [61]. The creation of the Secretariat of Hydraulic Resources (SHR) in 1948 and the issuance of the Regulation of the Federal Drinking Water Boards in 1949 executed the transfer of municipal or state control of the water supply system for domestic use to the federal governmen<sup>t</sup> through the Federal Water Boards (FWB) in the case of large cities, or Local Water Boards (LWB) in municipalities [62]. An LWB was made up of a municipal council member, town users, and a state governmen<sup>t</sup> representative who reported to the federal governmen<sup>t</sup> [63]. During federalization, most hydraulic infrastructure investments were made to bring water from sources (e.g., springs, wells, rivers, and lakes) to homes and were implemented by the now extinct Secretary of Hydraulic Resources [64]. The decentralization process began in 1980, when the federal governmen<sup>t</sup> handed all drinking water and sewage systems that it managed and operated through the FWB and LWB over to state or municipal governments [63]. The federal governmen<sup>t</sup> intended to partly correct the regional development imbalances caused during the centralization period [47], retaining the role of establishing regulations and the right of alienation by controlling water concessions [48]. The states created different operating bodies of the water supply system for domestic use within municipalities [62]. In many cases, control was strictly passed on to the municipality, and in others, the state maintained a water board model, creating State Water Boards (SWB) with broad collaboration from the municipal councils [63]. With the reform of article 115 in 1983, the responsibility of the water supply system was transferred solely to the municipalities [47]. Later, the Water Law reform of 1992 that established the decentralization process was reaffirmed by The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994. This change allowed municipal authorities to gran<sup>t</sup> licenses to private companies to supply water for domestic use. These licenses were granted in Mexico City, Cancun, Navojoa, Aguascalientes, and Puebla [45,65].

Parallel to the institutional changes regarding water at the national level, other national laws or reforms were also created by the end of the twentieth century, including LGEEPA in 1986 and constitutional reforms to Article 2 that recognized the inalienable rights of indigenous peoples in 1992, such as rights to natural resources (e.g., water) within their lands.

At the local level, 70 interviewees did not remember or mention institutional changes regarding the managemen<sup>t</sup> of the water supply system for domestic use in their communities. Notably, in the communities of La Mexicana, Santa Cruz Capulalpam, San Francisco Teopan, El Enebro, San Antonio Abad, Santa Cruz Corunda, San Miguel Aztatla, and Santiago Quiotepec, the interviewees mentioned that "it has always been like this," indicating that the stakeholder currently managing the water had done so for as long as they could remember. For example, a 55-year-old municipal agen<sup>t</sup> of San Miguel Aztatla said that "the water committee has been working for more than 100 years in our community [ . . . ], according to their uses and customs" (i.e., indigenous institution).

Only nine interviewees provided relevant information that could be used to trace the trajectories of institutional changes within their communities, neighboring communities, and the Mixtecan Alta region. The nine interviewees were between the ages of 37 and 85 years old (Table 5). Based on their responses, we can identify the presence of the Papaloapan Commission (PC) between 1954 and 1979 in the Mixteca Alta region. Another stakeholder is the State Water Board (SWB) that controls the provisioning system in Concepción Buenavista, Santiago Ihuitlan Plumas, and other municipalities such as Santa Magdalena Jicotlan. In the case of Concepción Buenavista, a transition occurred from a water committee in 1983 to an SWB in 1985. The last recent change was from the SWB to fully municipal managemen<sup>t</sup> in 1999. In the case of Santiago Tepetlapa and San Juan de los Cues, a change from a water committee to municipal managemen<sup>t</sup> was reported in the last decade, which seems to have been motivated by endogenous issues in the communities, such as high rates of migration and the ability of the municipality to request funds for hydraulic works.

**Table 5.** Local knowledge of institutional changes in the managemen<sup>t</sup> of the water system for domestic use with implications in five communities of the Mixteca Alta region in Oaxaca, Mexico.


By comparing the information on institutional change at the national and local levels, we identified that periods of institutional change at the national level (pre-centralized, centralized, and decentralized) did not permeate in all communities at the local level, especially in communities where the municipal agen<sup>t</sup> or a water committee was responsible for the water supply system. In the case of municipalities, institutional changes at the national level permeated differently. For example, in Santiago Ihuitlan Plumas and possibly Santa Magdalena Jicotlan, institutional change coincided with change at the national level, where power was centralized through the LWB (with the Papaloapan Commission as

the federal representative) only to be later decentralized to the municipality. In the case of Concepción Buenavista, decentralization occurred in two phases. In the first phase, decentralization resulted in the responsibility of the water supply systems for domestic use to be passed to the state through the SWB. In the second phase, control passed entirely to the municipalities. Recent institutional changes regarding the rights of indigenous peoples and the environment at the national level have not had notable impacts to date on any institutional change related to water managemen<sup>t</sup> in the communities. Instead, these institutional changes at the national level have been made to formalize indigenous institutions (municipal agen<sup>t</sup> and water user assembly).

### *3.4. Intertwining Properties to Address the Complexity*

Using the Water Governance Complexity Framework, we cross-analyzed the results obtained from the different proxies of the properties of diversity, nestedness, and dynamics in the three jurisdictional levels (national, state, and local) and the four post-revolutionary periods of institutional change (Figure 6).

**Figure 6.** Intertwining the diversity, nestedness, and dynamics of stakeholders and institutions to understand the complexity of the governance of the domestic water supply system in Oaxaca, Mexico, under the Water Governance Complexity Framework. The current governance modes that resulted from the seven trajectories of institutional change are: ( **A**) Nonnested community-based mode, (**B**) Nested community-based mode, ( **C**) Nested hybrid mode, and ( **D**) Nested municipal or hierarchical–bureaucratic mode. Source: prepared by the authors.

We found a diversity of stakeholders and evaluated how stakeholders and institutions conduct operations and decision making for the water supply system for domestic use at

the local level. This diversity has allowed different arrangements of stakeholders in the first and second orders of governance. Likewise, these arrangements are differentiated by being nested or non-nested, given the types of cross-level interactions (which implies a hierarchical relationship between the jurisdictional levels) or interactions within the same level (in the community) between stakeholders. In this sense, we established four governance arrangements or modes that are presented in the water system for domestic use in Oaxaca, Mexico, at the local level (Figure 6):


According to the number of stakeholders that make up these governance modes, the least diverse is the nested municipal mode, followed by the non-nested communitybased mode. The two most diverse modes are the nested community-based and hybrid modes because they can incorporate all stakeholders of different jurisdictional levels into operations (Table 6, Figure 6). The substantial difference between the nested hybrid mode and the nested community-based mode can be seen in the second order of governance. In the nested hybrid mode, the municipality is involved in the first and second orders of governance. In the nested community-based mode, the municipality is only involved in the operations as a financier for hydraulic works that the community has decided it needs (Table 6). Secondly, according to national and state institutions, the hybrid nested mode emerges from the mix between indigenous institutions (e.g., water user assembly) and municipality management. National or state institutions do not consider this organizational operation of the water supply system.

**Table 6.** Diversity of stakeholders and institutions involved in the first and second orders of governance of the four modes of governance identified at the local level in Oaxaca and possibly in much of Mexico. Bold text indicates the entities responsible for operating and making decisions related to the water supply system for domestic use at the local level. Italic text indicates the stakeholders and institutions belonging to the local jurisdictional level, while Roman text indicates entities belonging to state and national jurisdictional levels. MC = municipal council, WC/MA = water committee/municipal agent, WUA = water users assembly, US = water users, CE/CBC = agrarian council, MWD = Migrant Water Users Directive, SG = State government, CO = National Water Commission, and S = Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources.


The current diversity of stakeholders belonging to different jurisdictional levels (national, state, and local) and governance modes results from the trajectories of institutional changes related to water and the prevalence of indigenous institutions at the local level. The different trajectories of institutional change at the local level allow us to explain how the different modes of governance found were formed at this level. We identified seven trajectories of institutional change framed in four post-revolutionary periods, of which five were found in the 13 communities (numbers 1 to 7 represent specific trajectories of institutional change in Figure 6). All the trajectories of institutional change began in the period before centralization, starting with stakeholder and institutional arrangements based on the community through a water committee, municipal agent, water user assembly, or municipal council:


The last two trajectories (6 and 7) were built under the assumption that institutional changes at the national level thoroughly permeate the local level. The multiple trajectories of institutional change resulted from nestedness and the interplay of stakeholders belonging to the different jurisdictional levels. Nestedness plays an essential role in permeating institutional changes at higher jurisdictional levels or institutions to the local level. We can observe the contrasting effect in the non-nested communities of Santa Cruz Corunda, San Miguel Aztatla, El Enebro, and San Antonio Abad that have kept their local water institutions unchanged to date.

However, the interplay of stakeholders at the local level with governmental stakeholders belonging to higher jurisdictional levels in the different periods of change reflects non-linear interactions due to the resistance or adaptation of stakeholders or institutions at the local level. The interplay of stakeholders belonging to different jurisdictional levels helps to explain why institutional change at the national level did not permeate in the same way in all communities, despite communities being nested. For example, during centralization, the water supply systems for domestic use governed by water committees, indigenous institutions, or municipal councils would have disappeared, and only the LWBs would have prevailed. However, only two of the thirteen communities studied reported this change, reflecting the inability of the national governmen<sup>t</sup> to take power away from stakeholders and local institutions over water matters. On the other hand, the resistance that local water institutions presented to change was imposed from the top down.

In the period of decentralization, there appears to be a return of water managemen<sup>t</sup> power to the local water institutions present in the communities prior to centralization. Nevertheless, the return of power to local water institutions was accompanied by the establishment of a hierarchy and a homogenization of the operation of the water supply system for domestic use at the local level for the municipalities, concentrating operations, and decision making in a single stakeholder. For this reason, in the case of municipalities, we differentiate between municipal council 1 as non-hierarchical and municipal council 2 as hierarchical in Figure 6. Secondly, for the non-municipal water institutions (water committee, municipal agent, or water user assembly), a multilevel linkage with the municipality and state and national institutions was established. Finally, the national governmen<sup>t</sup>

maintains the right to alienation, while the right of exclusion is limited to the local water institutions, although mainly in the case of municipalities. During decentralization, differences among the trajectories of institutional change were due to the recovery of traditional institutions that existed before centralization in communities and the adaptation of traditional institutions to a new nested structuring of state and national organizations.

In the current period, recent institutional change, as seen with the Santiago Tepetlapa and San Juan de los Cues communities, responds to the endogenous drivers. Additionally, this institutional change may reflect the capacity of stakeholders to choose between the different institutional arrangements based on the community or municipality, or to generate new institutions that mix mechanisms coming from the municipality and indigenous institutions, such as in hybrid modes.
