Buck, Susan J., and Gregory W. Gleason (1991) Legal Institutional Change in Irrigation Systems of Soviet Central Asia

Conference: Presented at the second annual conference of the International Association for the Study of Common Property (IASCP), Winnipeg, Manitoba, September 28, 1991.

Abstract: "This paper explains recent changes in irrigation water management regimes of Soviet Central Asia and predicts future developments. As centralized Soviet control over the Asian republics' water management regimes weakens, existing legal institutions must adjust to different channels of communication and decision-making. The theoretical framework to explain these changes is provided by two complementary approaches: first, current scholarship on development of property rights in water (Rose, 1990; Horwitz, 1977), which postulates that a new form of management regime (correlative rights) will evolve for a common pool resource that exhibits public good characteristics and high transaction costs in development; and second, institutional choice model (Ostrom, 1990), which is derived from rational choice theory. Data collected in the Amu-Darya and Syr-Darya river basins of Soviet Central Asia provide the empirical basis for the paper."