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WATER RESOURCES POLICY: OLD MODELS AND NEW REALITIES 1
Author(s) -
Cortner Hanna J.,
Auburg Joe
Publication year - 1988
Publication title -
jawra journal of the american water resources association
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.957
H-Index - 105
eISSN - 1752-1688
pISSN - 1093-474X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1752-1688.1988.tb03021.x
Subject(s) - principal (computer security) , process (computing) , government (linguistics) , public administration , public policy , rationality , water development , water resources , policy analysis , policy development , business , economics , political science , computer science , law , ecology , philosophy , linguistics , biology , operating system
Policy models are designed to help describe the principal actors and processes by which decisions are made, but they also have prescriptive roles. They advance some interests over others and reflect policy biases about the nature of the desired policy outputs. Historically, federal water resources development policy could be most easily explained by reference to subsystem government (or iron triangles), a policy model that describes how local water interests, federal water construction agencies, and public works committees coalesce to effectively dominate the decisionmaking process by which water projects are authorized and funded. Using the programs and activities of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, this paper explains how prescriptive elements of two other policy models, administrative rationality and market allocation, have affected the traditional alignment of actors and policy outputs.