A Study On The Self-governance Mechanism Of WUA Based On Zhanghe Irrigation District

Irrigation is essential for ensuring the national food security objective. Irrigation system is a kind of common-pool resources that difficult to be divided. In principle, its supply has been dominated by the government. However, with the development of China’s market economy, the traditional irrigation system management mode can not meet the requirements of rural economic development, a more effective management mode is urgent needed. In the1990s, China introduced the "participatory" irrigation management mode. WUA as an main organization form has been vigorously promoted and developed in China. Practice has proved that WUA is effective in improving irrigation district management and water use efficiency. But there are still some controversy on whether this self-governance organization can keep its sustainable development and be completely considered as the direction of the irrigation management system reform.Therefore, the study on WUA’s sustainable development is very important to promote the progress of reform. Literature search found that there are not much research about WUA’s sustainable development, while there are even less research to investigate WUA’s inner operating mechanism. On the basis of a large number of case studies on common-pool resources, Elinor Ostrom, a representative of Indiana School, has summed up a set of self-governance theory, which has been widely used as a foundation to measure the sustainable development of self-governance organizations. So this paper will use Elinor Ostrom’s self-governance theory as a framework to analysis the WUA’s inner operating mechanism, in order to explore the WUA’s sustainable development and its applicability of our irrigation system.This research about the inner operating mechanism of WUA’s self-governance includes two aspects. First, using the game theory and building social capital theory model to study how the WUA overcame collective action dilemma and implements self-governance. Second, using Ostrom’s Eight Design Principles of self-governance organizations on sustainable development as a framework to analysis the the operating mechanism of WUA in Zhanghe Irrigation District. The results show that WUA has achieved self-governance inherent cooperative equilibrium conditions and its institutional arrangements has some differences with eight design principles. However, there are some forms of remedies for these differences during WUA’s operation, it does not affect the WUA’s sustainable development in our irrigation system management.