An excellent eye-opener. Conca's study of water produces a compelling critique of prevailing modes of global governance and a hopeful exploration of a nonterritorialist, nonstatist, nonfunctionalist social ecology.
Jan Aart Scholte, Codirector, Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation, University of Warwick
This is an outstanding contribution to the study of international environmental politics and world politics more generally. In clear language and moving seamlessly between theory and cases, Conca takes us beyond regime theory to the guts of the messy struggles over power and meaning that shape practices, whose routinization may give rise to institutions. He does an admirable job of keeping domestic and international politics visible in the same lens. This is the best treatment I know of the increasingly important international politics of water.
Margaret Keck, Department of Political Science, John Hopkins University
This excellent book is a valuable contribution to our understanding of the shape and evolution of the global water regime. Authoritative, nuanced, and comprehensive in its coverage, it should be on the reading list of anyone concerned with water management and politics.
Ashok Swain, Department of Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University
Conca has convincingly captured the complex transnational dynamics and changing governance architectures of water in world affairs. Scholars, students, practitioners, and all those who care about sustainable development, human security, and democratization should read this book.
Sanjeev Khagram, Faculty Director, Lindenberg Center for International Development, University of Washington, and author of Dams and Development
A major achievement in rethinking the prospects for global environmental protection in general.
Paul Wapner, School of International Service, American University
The hydropolitics literature is characterized by basin-level studies, usually from areas of conflict, mostly written by scholars from disciplines other than IR. It therefore comes as a breath of fresh air when an empirical study is done at a global level of scale, by an IR specialist. This work is of great significance to both academic and water resource manager alike, because it shows deep insight into a complex subject. This contribution by Ken Conca to the field of Environmental Security and Hydropolitics is substantial.
Anthony Turton, Gibb-SERA Chair in IWRM, Environmentek, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), South Africa
There is hardly a more critical issue today than ensuring just and sustainable access to water. Governing Water explains the challenges of safeguarding such access and charts the emergence of genuinely innovative forms of global water governance. Theoretically sound and impressively researched, it represents a major achievement in rethinking the prospects for global environmental protection in general.
Paul Wapner, School of International Service, American University
Winner of the 2006 Harold and Margaret Sprout Award presented by the International Studies Association (ISA)
