Dams, democracy and development: Transnational struggles for power and water

By the 1950s, big dams had become the leading technology for water resources development in the world. Today, opposition erupts against virtually every big darn project proposed or under construction. And since the 1970s—despite being promoted by a range of transnationally allied, powerful interests including politicians and bureaucrats, landed elites and industrialists, multinational corporations and intergovernmental organizations—the global completion rate of big dams has fallen dramatically.; Although technical, financial and economic factors primarily caused this shift in the first world, a major explanation for the unexpectedly rapid decline in big dam building the third world has been the rise of transnationally allied opposition to these projects. In the past, domestic opposition to big dams failed to independently make a significant impact in developing countries. But since the 1970s, transnational coalitions and networks of environmental, human rights, and indigenous peoples' nongovemmental organizations linked with historically marginalized but progressively empowered local groups and grassroots movements have emerged to vigorously contest these projects.; The increasing success of these transnational coalitions and networks “from below” against the far more powerful proponents of big dams over time has been conditioned by the progressive global spread and international institutionalization of norms regarding indigenous peoples, human rights and environmental conservation. But the impact of struggles around dams has not been uniform across space. Such campaigns have been more effective in democratic regimes because of the greater opportunities to gain access to and leverage state institutions offered in these political systems. Cross-national variation in the likelihood of success has also depended on the degree and organization of domestic social mobilization against big dams.; This theoretical argument is evaluated through a combined cross-temporal and crosssectional empirical analysis based on original fieldwork. The cross-temporal comparisons involve within ‘case’ process-tracing of the historical trajectories of big dam building dynamics in India, Brazil, Indonesia, South Africa/Lesotho and China. The cross-sectional analysis involves comparison of big dam projects and conflicts across these countries as well as at the international level with respect to policies and practices of the international aid agencies, transnational professional organizations, and multinational corporations.