Water Policy – Water Politics -- Water Policy – Water Politics -- Global Norms and National Policies -- Towards Implementation of the World Commission on Dams Recommendations -- How Global Norms for Large Dams Reach Decision-Makers -- Global Environmental Governance and Its Influence on National Water Policies -- Global Water Governance: Managing complexity on a Global Scale -- Critical Debates Revisited -- Strategic Virtual Water Trade – A critical Analysis of the Debate -- The Debate on “Water as a Human Right” and its Implications for Development Assistance -- Rethinking IWRM Under Cultural Considerations -- Politics of Water Supply and Sanitation -- Private Sector Participation in Water Supply and Sanitation -- Sector Reforms for Sustainable Financing of Water and Wastewater Services -- The Political Economy of Water and Sanitation Services in Colombia -- Power Plays in Irrigation Reforms -- Political Power Play in Bulgaria’s Irrigation Sector Reform -- Two Steps Forward, One Step Back: Institutional Change in Kyrgyz Water Governance -- Development Cooperation -- The World Bank’s Water Sector Policy Reforms -- Challenges for German Development Cooperation in the Water Sector -- Addressing the Need for Water Service Delivery in Fragile States -- EU Water Initiative – A (non-) Innovative Form of Development Cooperation.

Whether people have access to drinking water, irrigation water and sanitation or not, whether water resources are used sustainably or overexploited, and whether emerging challenges for the water sector - such as adaptation to climate change – are tackled or not, in the end relies on politics. The importance of the political sphere for understanding and solving water sector problems is the basic rationale of this book, which is the outcome of the Fifth Dialogues on Water, organised at the German Development Institute, Bonn. It is not the first time that the Dialogues on Water have touched upon water politics. But these Dialogues, unlike earlier ones, focussed on the political processes of policy formulation and the strategic behaviour of the actors involved. The papers assembled in this book analyze debates and investigate water politics at the international, national and local level, each considering different aspects or different elements of policy formulation and implementation processes from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds. They examine policies as results from power plays of state and non-state actors alike over water resources and modalities of water service delivery and as a function of their respective means of influence. While some authors follow a constructivist line, elaborating on how global norms on water-related issues evolve and how international debates influence them, others apply a political economy or public choice perspective, adhering to a rational actor approach. In line with the general focus of the Dialogues on Water, specific attention is devoted to implications for development cooperation.