Ownership, hegemony, and resistance in Ethiopia’s rural drinking water governance

Research, part of a special feature on The Next Wave in Water Governance

INTRODUCTION

Decentralization continues to be the dominant paradigm in global environmental governance (see, e.g., Ribot et al. 2006, Zulu 2012). The core principles of decentralized governance include the rollback of the state, increased private sector involvement, and imaginations of autonomous subjects that can operate freely as per market logic (Batterbury and Fernando 2006, Zimmerer 2006). In rural water governance, the principles of decentralization have been reflected in policies pursuing community-based management (CBM) in many countries. Since the 1980s, following a push from global donors and neoliberal financial institutions for water sector reforms in Global South states (Goldman 2007, Ashtana 2013), the ideas of CBM have gained significant ground in rural water governance (Lockwood 2002). The approach emphasizes the retreat of the state, with rural communities being appointed responsible for managing water points in the form of community-managed operation and maintenance (CMOM) (Cornwall and Gaventa 2000, Cornwall 2002, Harvey and Reed 2007). A long-term commitment to operation and maintenance is envisioned through the creation of a sense of ownership (e.g., Whittington et al. 2009). The placement of individualizing responsibilities of self-monitoring, self-conducting, and self-restricting is a pervasive feature of a governance landscape reflecting global neoliberal forces.

After receiving initial enthusiasm, the community-based model for governing water started to fail in delivering on its promises (Meinzen-Dick and Zwarteveen 1998, Cleaver 1999, Cleaver and Toner 2006, Harvey and Reed 2007, Brown 2011, Jones 2011, Golooba-Mutebi 2012, O’Reilly and Dhanju 2012, Chowns 2014, van den Broek and Brown 2015, RWSN 2017, Whaley and Cleaver 2017, Etongo et al. 2018, Annala 2021). The lucrative ideas of empowerment, sustainability, effectiveness, and ownership pertaining to CBM—once justifying its widespread recognition—have come to receive piercing criticism (Whaley et al. 2021). In this article we focus on ownership creation within CMOM. Previous studies have focused on empowerment (e.g., Kevany and Huisingh 2013, Tantoh and McKay 2020), sustainability (e.g., Schweitzer and Mihelcic 2012, Hutchings et al. 2015), and effectiveness (e.g., Chowns 2015, Senbeta and Shu 2019) of CBM, but the concept of ownership has received scant attention (Marks and Davis 2012). A sense of ownership, as argued, is created when community members take key decisions and contribute finances and labor during planning and construction activities (Marks and Davis 2012).

In this article, we center the contradictions and implications of adopting neoliberal tools like those promoted in decentralized rural water governance programs in the name of ownership in Ethiopia. We ask: how and why is ownership of rural water services resisted by rural communities in Ethiopia? For our analysis on the relation between ownership that has been thrust upon or demanded of rural communities in the national One WASH program (WASH program hereafter), and water users’ resistance, we use a Gramscian-inspired theoretical lens of hegemony. In applying this lens, it is important to highlight that even though the underlying principles of the WASH program reflect neoliberal water governance, its implementation involves both neoliberal and authoritarian actors at the local and international level. We show how hegemonic ownership within rural CMOM through authoritarian state-society relations transpires through discourses and practices of wider neoliberalism and the Ethiopian developmental state model. We argue that, although the ownership discourse suggests a transfer of power and consequent empowerment, the way ownership comes to be constituted in practice reflects and reinforces multiple interests of the state and its development partners. The rhetoric of ownership, we argue, comes to be discursively inflicted on users. It serves as an instrument for furthering hegemonic neoliberal ideals in the realm of water (Sneddon 2013), strengthening the interests of both international and local dominant groups even as it claims to do otherwise. Through our empirical research study, we argue and show how the notion of ownership is conceptualized and operationalized by elite groups and applied to processes of CMOM across the Amhara region of Ethiopia through different community management models. However, this exercise of power does not go unchallenged, and end users show different forms of resistance, resisting and complying selectively, resulting in various ways of managing the financing for rural water supplies.

Ownership and resistance through the lens of hegemony

A core tenet of the structural adjustment programs imposed by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank on many African economies in the 1980s and 1990s was the neoliberal rolling back of the state (Ake 1996). The consequent decentralization of governance mechanisms resulted in governments changing from the role of service provider to service facilitator (Cleaver and Elson 1995). Government expenditures were reduced by making maintenance officials obsolete, emphasizing the need for local community members to take ownership of the operation and maintenance of their water points, or to contract private providers to do so (Whaley et al. 2019). This helped governments and donors to outsource their responsibility for maintenance and operation to communities while simultaneously claiming to contribute to the empowerment of communities (Blaikie 2006, van den Broek and Brown 2015). However, as Whaley et al. (2019) argue, the local ownership agenda was not only a part of neoliberalism-inspired ideologies, it was also encouraged by people-centered approaches of leftist developmentalists who argued it to be an alternative to privatization (Bakker 2008). Such hybrid ideological underpinnings of political interests partially explain the endurance of ownership as a development paradigm (Harper-Shipman 2017), and ownership-promoting approaches within CMOM, despite the lack of empirical evidence supporting its virtuous claims (Whaley et al. 2021). The notion of a community representing spaces where inequality ceases to exist and the idea of homogenous and equitable ownership among all members has been derided for its vagueness (Mohan and Stokke 2000). Nevertheless, the importance of ownership on furthering sustainability of water services remains (Fielmua 2020).

The neoliberal idea of ownership is conceived to promote freedom (Lane 2023). This brings us to our conceptual framing of hegemonic group relations and resistance in this paper. Earlier studies examined resistance within the realm of neoliberal political rationality, where individuals are considered to be freely positioning and acting on a specific path from the sets of paths provided by a governing neoliberal rationality (Lemke 2002, Birkenholtz 2009). Similarly, much of the research drawing on Foucauldian governmentality conceptualizes resistance as part of an individual’s subjectivity, i.e., the individual’s free choice not to act upon the provided set of paths (e.g., Foucault 1988, Birkenholtz 2009, Boelens et al. 2015, Gemechu 2018). In contrast to liberal states where the assumption of free subjectivity might sit more easily, the notion of subjectivity equates with different forms of ordering by the state rather than through individuals’ free will in non-liberal states (see Sigley 2006, Dean 2009). For instance, in authoritarian states such as Ethiopia (Vaughan 2011), the individual is primarily recognized not as an independent subject but as a member of hierarchical political socioeconomic groups (elaborated below). Accordingly, individuals’ free will and capacity to self-regulate is not autonomous. Instead, they become an expression of an individual’s group’s political economic position in relation to other groups. This critique points to the need to conceptually engage with group-level theoretical frameworks when studying resistance in a non-liberal context.

A relevant research stream that fills this gap in the analysis of power and resistance is Gramsci’s notion of hegemony. Gramsci examines the relations between the commons and the dominant fundamental groups or elites (Gramsci 2011). The dominant fundamental groups have access to and control over much of the means of production (the economic), which also gives them considerable power over the cultural (ideological and/or intellectual) fabric and over the state (the political). According to Gramsci, these groups’ interests are allied with those of the state, and they have the means to exercise hegemony over those who lack access (Gramsci 2011). These groups seek to articulate hegemony over the commons through either free will or force with the purpose of enhancing their cultural, intellectual, and economic dominance. What Gramsci refers to as hegemony is the point at which the elite’s intellectual ideas become common sense for all; this is “accomplished through ideological practices that shape individuals’ beliefs and actions” (Ekers and Loftus 2008:704). In Gramscian terms, consent and resistance are not only attributed to individuals’ subjectivity but are primarily associated with an individual’s subordination to a specific group, and his/her expression of this group’s position in relation to that of the fundamental group (Cox 1983).

Gramsci views power as fluid on a continuum that produces free consent at one end and resistance (often met by force) at the other. The subordinated either give consent to or resist these efforts selectively, exhibiting the instability of hegemony. In this sense, consent and resistance, and therefore hegemony, are constantly being rearticulated (Hall et al. 1977). For Gramsci, state-society relations follow directly from the leading group’s interests in the political, economic, and cultural realms. In addition, Gramsci’s analysis of these elite groups is not limited to local structures but extends to transnational political, economic, and cultural structures that are constantly shaped through the influence of global elite networks, with an emphasis on their political influence on the structured flow of power. For instance, Li (2007) pinpoints the significance of local structures in constituting decentralized environmental governance regulations into hegemonic state-society relations in Indonesia. She argues that while beneficiaries exhibit different forms of resistance, decentralized environmental governance practices encouraged by supranational modes of governing have reproduced problematic local governance structures that they were meant to replace.

The idea of resistance has found multiple meanings in the literature (Hollander and Einwohner 2004). In contrast to work that defines resistance in terms of organized, visible actions, Scott (1985) draws our attention to everyday, less visible acts of resistance that might occur in uncoordinated fashion in dispersed sites, particularly in authoritarian settings, arguing, “Most of the political life of subordinate groups is to be found neither in the overt collective defiance of powerholders nor in complete hegemonic compliance, but in the vast territory between these two polar opposites” (Scott 1985:136). Instead, the “weak” (in Scott’s nomenclature) can stick to assigned roles and languages even as they contest (without confronting) those prescribing them (Scott 1985). Mistrust of those who claim to possess hegemonic truths and dominant ideologies can also be considered a form of silent resistance (Butko 2006, Gramsci 2011). Birkenholtz (2009) uses a similar approach to show how the state’s decentralization efforts in rural water supply governance in Rajasthan (India) reworked historically embedded positions (such as caste, gender, etc., which produced unequal social relations) to constitute the dominant caste groups’ idea as common sense, which triggered resistance among other caste groups.

State-society relations in Ethiopia

Water services are a key site of negotiation and contestation within state-society relations (Mosse 2003). The fragility of state authority in providing water services to rural people (not to mention responsibilitizing or mobilizing marginalized farmers for infrastructural labor) has been questioned in several studies (e.g., Fantini et al. 2018, Harris 2020). Harris (2020) showed that contesting governmental water service deliveries is political and indicative of distrust within wider state-society relations. Even in contexts with very good water access and quality, end users nonetheless express resistance and dissensus as a form of distrust of the state.

In the context of Ethiopia’s rural water governance, CMOM was first implemented in the late 1980s, but only in the form of financial contributions for operations and maintenance (O&M). Later, in 2009, CMOM was nationally launched in an integrated manner to include physical (scheme operation), financial (cost sharing), social (community organization for water management), and technical (maintenance skills) aspects under the national WASH program (Behailu et al. 2015). The WASH program is a sector-wide approach based on the WASH Implementation Framework (WIF) and the memorandum of understanding signed by four federal-level ministries (Water, Irrigation and Electricity; Health; Education; and Finance and Economic Cooperation). The coordination office of the program lies within the federal Ministry for Water and Energy. The objectives of the program include targets for access to water, sanitation, and hygiene across urban and rural geographies, integrated into one common plan, one budget, and one report. The WASH program has been labeled as the government’s flagship program and throughout its years of existence (Phase I of the program ran from 2013 to 2015, Phase II continued from 2015 to 2020 and Phase III is running from 2021 to 2025), it has been financially supported by various development partners (World Bank, UNICEF, Foreign Commonwealth & Development Office, Saudi Fund, Government of Finland, Government of South Korea, et al.) and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The uniqueness of Ethiopia’s WASH program lies in its inter-ministerial collaboration, bringing comprehensive WASH targets under one nationwide program. Similar multi-stakeholder approaches in water governance have proliferated since the 2000s (Warner 2005), yet Ethiopia’s approach is aspiring to be the most comprehensive sector-wide approach to WASH (Goyol and Girma 2015).

Three aspects of the WASH program make it a typical neoliberal water governance program: the basic principles in the program were advocated by the state’s development partners; it emphasized increased community involvement; and it facilitated eventual rollback of the state and increased private sector involvement in service provision. The WASH program seeks to implement CMOM through emphasis on ownership with three decentralized modes of service delivery modalities: woreda-(district-) managed projects (WMP), community-managed projects (CMP), and NGO-managed projects (NMP)^[1] (Gemechu 2012, MOWE 2014). However, even though it is argued that CMOM strengthens implementation and sustained use of rural water points, it often fails in practice, making the state’s involvement in O&M inevitable (World Bank 2011, ADB 2016). Although this failure in terms of poor functionality of water points has often been attributed to the absence of ownership among water users for their supply schemes, the attribution remains underexamined and unpacked.

Ethiopian rural water supply does not stand autonomous of the surrounding political economic structures. It is rather an expression of the local authoritarian and global neoliberal motives and ways of ordering. Since the 1990s (and until Abiy Ahmed became the prime minister in 2018) the Ethiopian government was led by the multi-ethnic Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), i.e., the ruling authoritarian party that adopted a revolutionary democracy political rationality aiming to transform the state into a competitive developmental state. The competitive developmental state notion envisions the neoliberal free market system as an end to be attained through a neoliberal model of development, directed and regulated by Marxist/Leninist notions of vanguard party centralism and global development actors. This has made global development institutions key partners of the state and key enablers of the country’s policy-making and resource administration process (Bach 2011, Vaughan 2011). Following this political reform, the state conducted distinct forms of party-based hierarchical decentralization, hierarchical social reorganizations^[2] that extend to the household level and that advance the state’s political agenda^[3] (Bekele et al. 2016). These reorganizations developed hierarchical networks of elites (party members) that extend from the central to the household level. This highlights a top-down state-society relation, the ruling party’s authoritarian penetrative capacity into civil organizations, and the thin line between state and party (Molvaer 1995, Matfess 2015). The centralizing of the WASH program in an authoritarian context with its outreach to the community level through CBM is what we find problematic in our research study.

In Gramscian terms, it can be said that the hierarchical social groupings, together with the state’s development partners, constitute the fundamental dominant group or dominant elite networks, as they control much of the economic resources and maintain political, intellectual, and cultural dominance over the rest of the community. The role of these elite networks is also reflected in the country’s rural water supply in general and in the WASH program in particular. First, the 1990 social reorganization makes up the vital part of the WASH program’s organization platform (see WASH implementation framework in MOWE 2014). Second, as part of this platform, rural WASH is implemented through a multilayer of state and development partner institutions, extending from the federal to the rural village level. Third, in addition to the administrative structures, key financial institutions such as the micro-finance institutions involved in the implementation of WASH are controlled and mobilized by the elite groups. Given a constitutive relationship between local economic and political spheres and wider ideological ones, we contend that the Ethiopian authoritarian system does not exist independently of the wider neoliberal governmentality. It actually reproduces (and is reproduced by) the conditions that sustain the wider neoliberal relations. Consequently, the WASH program is embedded in both local authoritarian motives and international neoliberal thinking.

METHODOLOGY

To address the research objectives, we used interviews and focus-group discussions (FGDs) with community-level water, sanitation, and hygiene committees (WASHCOs) and governmental, non-governmental, and private actors in 10 woredas (i.e., districts) in the Amhara region as our primary methods for generating empirical material. Amhara is the first region in Ethiopia that had experience with CMOM (especially under the Rural Water Supply and Environmental Program; see Behailu et al. 2015) before it was launched as part of the WASH program. During the time of data collection, Amhara exhibited the country’s highest implementation of simple technology rural water supply schemes on the basis of CMOM (Gemechu 2012).^[4] However, according to sector professionals, the low sense of community ownership of water schemes (COWASH 2017) continues to be a problem in the region. In addition, even though the WASH program calls for a withdrawal of the state in the post-implementation phases of water point construction, the woreda-level administration continues to be involved in technical aspects, especially in the provision of maintenance services. The reasons for their involvement will be further expanded in the Findings section. These conditions made the WASH program in Amhara well suited for the study of processes of ownership creation and resistance in Ethiopia’s rural water supply governance.

The data collection was conducted in three rounds. The first round of data collection was conducted in 2013 (5 April to 22 May) and the second in 2016 (2 February to 28 March). In 2025 (2 to 28 January), three additional interviews were conducted in Addis Abeba to better capture more recent developments regarding ownership, the WASH program, and resistance within CMOM in Ethiopia. Altogether, 46 interviews and 8 FGDs were conducted: 26 WASHCOs, 10 government / woreda officials, 3 government / regional and federal officials, 3 federal level development organizations, 1 artisan association, 4 suppliers of spare parts, 1 microfinance representative, 4 NGO representatives, and 1 national consultant. The detailed information of the empirical material is provided in Appendix 1.

The basis for selecting research participants in the Amhara region involved two steps of purposeful sampling (Patton 2002). First, woredas were selected on the basis of high and low district-level functionality rates while being representative of the different modes of implementation: community-managed projects (CMP, 3 woredas), woreda-managed projects (WMP, 3 woredas) and NGO-managed projects (4 woredas). For the selection of woredas we consulted WASH experts working with the CMP approach at the federal level. Second, the WASHCOs and water points were selected from kebeles (villages) on the basis of accessibility, distance, and a focus on water points that have required maintenance. This selection was undertaken jointly with woreda officials. Despite the tensions inherent in such a selection procedure because of federal project’s and woredas’ involvement, several critical discussions took place with the WASHCO representatives (more details in Appendix 1). We interviewed information-rich (Patton 2002) individuals who were responsible for a specific approach, i.e., water office directors and CMP officers at woreda levels, and WASHCO representatives at water points. Given the exploratory nature of the study, principles of emergent or opportunistic sampling (Eisenhardt 1989) were used to interview available individuals. In some cases, we were able to do these as interviews, but in other situations where several WASHCO representatives were present together, we conducted focus group discussions. Rather than a methodological choice, these decisions were made on the basis of events in the field. Most community members who were interviewed were WASHCO members. We were not able to interview other end users, a clear limitation of our study.

WASHCOs typically consist of five members, among whom three should be women. However, in most FGDs women were not present or were represented by their husbands. It was pointed out in the FGDs as well as in discussions with district officers that the community uses the “three women” principle only as a formality, but in actual day-to-day life husbands substitute for the women and perform the WASHCO tasks. Respondents were asked to discuss their understanding and concerns related to water supply as they see fit. The interviews and FGDs took 0.5 to 1.5 hours on average and were conducted in the local Amharic language.

The empirical data were recorded and transcribed. Secondary resources that provide information on the WASH program in general and on specific actors’ practices in particular were reviewed.^[5] We use insights offered in the narrative methodology (Hinchman and Hinchman 1997, Elliot 2005), an interpretative approach that helps to understand how different actors make sense of the WASH program through their stories. In general, narratives can be defined as forms of discourses that people draw on to make sense of themselves and others as well as to understand the world in a meaningful way (Hinchman and Hinchman 1997).

Data analysis was conducted in two phases during 2015 and 2016, with the most recent three interviews being analyzed in 2025. The first phase involved a detailed assessment of both primary and secondary data. Here, different actors’ understandings and expressions of their water supply and sense of ownership were thoroughly examined. In the second phase, antagonistic expressions were identified and mapped. These findings were then interpreted in relation to hegemony and resistance within the domain of a developmental authoritarian state.

CONTEXT

Description of WASHCO

WASHCOs are community-based groups selected for managing and maintaining local water sources and sanitation facilities. WASHCOs typically consist of five to seven members (depending on the region) and they practice quotas for including women as their members. WASHCO legalization has been a long process because of the authoritarian character of the state that does not wish to contribute to their autonomous status [51]. The WASHCOs are embedded in other local power structures and forms of organizing, with connections to governmental actors. Whaley et al. (2021) reported how iddirs, informal mutual aid organizations, are often involved in the management of water, resulting in a situation where it is hard to distinguish between the WASHCO and the iddir.

Woreda-managed project (WMP)

WMPs are directly overseen by the local government at the woreda level. The woreda water office is responsible for planning, implementation, and maintenance of rural water schemes. According to the WIF, the WMP modality does not fully responsibilitize the user community during planning and implementation, but only grants passive participation during the project planning phase. After project completion, the project is handed over to the respective WASHCO. The state and the World Bank are the dominant actors in WMPs. Providing 90% of the projects’ financing as well as technical inputs for building a regulatory framework overseeing all woredas, the bank is a key player in boosting water supply coverage through the provision of capital as well as in taking significant neoliberal regulatory steps. In its formal pronouncements, the bank seeks to boost water supply by facilitating decentralization of O&M. However, ensuring cost effectiveness of capital together with extending political and policy influence are also integral to the World Bank’s objectives. This implies that the final point of decentralization (i.e., key decision-making) remains at the woreda level, avoiding expenditure on personnel and threats to existing networks and political-economic relations.

Because of its support of the WMP approach, the World Bank is the largest donor providing loans through the WASH program. Their presence in the WASH program has also attracted several other donors to provide financing to the WMPs, because other donors trust the WMP approach on account of their stringent policies, procurement guidelines, and technical guidance [53].

Community-managed project (CMP)

This modality envisions making the user community fully responsible for the planning and implementation of projects, without direct NGO or government involvement and, thus, without final project hand over. WASHCOs are responsible for conducting the procurement of necessary construction materials and respective services, managing the construction process and quality control. The key actors in CMP are the Ethiopian government and the Government of Finland, operating as a bilateral partner to the Government of Ethiopia (GOE). Unlike the bank in WMP, the Finnish Government has invested primarily in capacity development, seeing its role as a development enabler. In contrast to WMP, CMP extends decentralization to WASHCO level, giving WASHCOs full decision-making power over implementation as well as financial management on paper. Moreover, unlike WMP, there is at least one CMP official at the woreda level tasked with regulating WASHCOs’ activities closely.

NGO-managed project

Projects under these modalities are implemented by non-governmental organizations (NGOs), often in collaboration with local governments and communities. NGOs (such as CARE, World Vision, Organization for Rehabilitation, and Development in Amhara) provide financial resources, technical expertise, and capacity-building training. Although NGOs initiate and oversee the project, implementation is often by the woreda water office. After implementation, the project is handed over to WASHCOs.

The role of the government

As WASH policies articulate, the primary interest of the Ethiopian government is to boost water supply coverage and to develop control over water resource management. The GOE operates through its hierarchical structures that extend from the Ministry of Water to the Woreda Office of Finance and Economic Development (WOFED), as well as woreda water offices (WWO) at the woreda level. In driving policies, GOE also opens the political and social spaces for global development actors, NGOs, and global financial and political institutions such as the World Bank. Further, they influence design elements, including community participation or the use of local labor, material, and financial resources.

Through its choices, the state has maintained control over water resources by retaining key decision-making at the woreda level regardless of the WASH program’s objective for decentralized service delivery. A clear marker of this is making the Amhara Credit and Savings Institute (ACSI), the ruling party–owned financial institute, an integral part of WASH’s service delivery structure.

Despite the formal appearance of increasing decentralization, in practice its implementation and post-implementation management remained largely under the woreda, creating tensions in granting WASHCOs their financial and implementation autonomy. Among others, as we elaborate later, this reflects the nature of development liberalism in viewing certain groups as constantly requiring intervention and never worthy of being liberated from external interventions. Ethiopia has a long history of such interventions, and farmers are very used to being summoned by government officials for various forced activities such as terracing and reforestation, resulting in a situation where the possibility of meaningful participation seems surreal to many rural dwellers (see Segers et al. 2009).

FINDINGS

The main objectives of the WASH program include ambitious targets for improving safe access to water supply and for improving sanitation and hygiene practices across Ethiopia. One of the objectives has been to boost rural water supply coverage through increased scheme construction, and to cultivate ownership among users (MoWE 2011, WASH Program Operational Manual/POM 2014). In line with the government’s policy to decentralize and devolve responsibility (MoWE 2011:23), the users are expected to take on the responsibility of O&M management in accordance with WASH regulations. In doing so, WASH purportedly promotes the ideals of a “smaller” state, the decentralization of decision-making to the community level, and more cost-effective O&M. It passes on the responsibilities of O&M to user communities to efficiently utilize locally manageable simple technologies: typically hand pumps and gravity-based spring developments. To assist, the program also claimed to invest in the capacity-building of local communities, drawing on the involvement of non-governmental and private actors as well as microfinance institutions in rural water supply (MOWE 2013, 2014). The underlying liberal principles are further reflected in the way the program constitutes ownership, which leads to a paradox where those supposedly being granted ownership resist it, contradicting a fundamental tenet supporting neoliberal ideas of development.

What does ownership mean?

The WIF describes ownership as a social value to be gained through monetary, material, and resource exchange. The end users are expected to participate in the planning and implementation phases of water supply scheme construction through monetary (15% to 20% of project cost depending on each modality), labor, material, and time contributions to develop a sense of ownership (MOWE 2014, Behailu et al. 2015, Suominen 2016).

Foundational accounts of ownership in the sector seek to define it “not just ownership of pipes and projects, but ownership of the whole problem and the means of finding the solution” (Schouten and Moriarty 2003:93). In practice, ownership is constructed in the program as the ticking of a set of checkboxes, with the boxes themselves determined by dominant actors purportedly transferring ownership to a set of new actors who have little autonomy to determine the terms of ownership themselves. For instance, the program outlines specific dimensions on which ownership is measured and evaluated (MOWE 2011, 2013, 2014). Water users are assumed to have developed ownership if:

• they conduct periodic meetings to discuss their water points (social);
• they make periodic O&M financial contributions and deposit the money in their microfinance account to build a maintenance reserve (financial):
• they take care of their water point by constructing a fence and gate around their water point, control appropriate scheme usage and frequency and hire a guard to protect the scheme from theft and misuse (physical);
• they conduct the necessary maintenance in case of breakdowns or buy the required services and materials with their maintenance reserve (technical).

Community management... the process, it is a good idea. It is a very nice idea, because the more communities are contributing to the project, the ownership will also be perfect for the communities, because they spend more money for that one. Federal level WASH expert [53]

While the hegemonic idea of ownership is imposed on communities, questions around decentralization of resources come to be silenced. Paradoxically, the failure to transfer substantive ownership is explained by the absence of resources to lower levels:

They [kebele, i.e., village government] may give technical support, they may oversee and they may assist the communities or the WASH committee to manage, but they cannot be involved in the day-to-day activity. So, decentralization, it’s very important. Federal WASH expert [52]

As the form of ownership described above places demands on communities, it appears to place few formal obligations and changes in formal structures that would impinge on the dominant actors themselves. For instance, even though the WASHCOs are set up as alternate structures to existing forms of local governance, they have yet to achieve formal legal recognition in many parts of Ethiopia.

Acts of resistance

Resistance eludes a clear definition that has consensus (Hollander and Einwohner 2004). Nevertheless, as Shutzberg (2020:14) writes, “where power is exerted, resistance should be expected.” Power in our context is the coercive power not only of an authoritarian state (Vaughan and Tronvoll 2003), but also of a hegemonic neoliberal model of development, with which the state seeks to shed its responsibilities for development while simultaneously strengthening itself. Even as the different modes of governance try to shape and define groups and individuals in specific ways in their own imaginations, we find several accounts of resistance by the water users.

Most of the interviewed user groups reported holding periodical meetings about their water point, exhibiting prima facie compliance to the WASH program’s mandates and suggesting ownership. The more tangible directives are complied with at least partially: fences are constructed and guards are assigned to protect the scheme and regulate misuse. However, this obedience is accompanied by acts of self-described resistance.

One of the central ways ownership is measured is by the financial contributions of users to the infrastructure and management. Some form of contribution has to be done in cash or labor prior to construction of water points. Reported as widely practiced throughout the region, even as WASHCOs comply with these up-front contributions, they often do not contribute toward operation and maintenance. The stated reasons include:

• Strong frustrations stemming from the state’s continuous demand for different forms of contributions in other sectors. Community members do not always see their contributions to be in the community’s best interest but only in the interests of the state.

You cannot blame the community. You know, this community is exhausted with a number of repeated contributions. For example, in the previous socialist government we were only required to pay annual land tax. But under this government, we are required to make a number of yearly payments. For example, ADA [Amhara Development Association] and Red Cross contributions are compulsory. And we also pay for fertilizer every year. Therefore, on top of this, it is very difficult to ask the community to make additional contribution for water. Nobody would contribute. WASHCO representative [33]

In some cases, this has led to repressive counter-measures from the woreda. For instance, in Guangua woreda, the woreda officials responded to the community’s lack of financial contributions by threatening to use the woreda’s resources to shut down all WASH schemes. Although woreda officials technically have no authority and jurisdiction on this, it becomes possible in an authoritarian polity. In this case, Guangua woreda officials were able to force the community to make yearly contributions and deposit it in ACSI [27].

• Mistrust and low income: other WASHCOs claim that the limited resources of their members combined with mistrust within community and internal disputes around money had led members to contribute only when an actual problem occurs.

We used to contribute previously. We used to hold a meeting at least once a month to discuss issues related to the water point, and we tried to propose the idea of making monthly contributions over these meetings. But not all the people could afford to make contributions monthly. Some wanted to contribute, and others were unwilling...this created a conflict between us. And, in order to avoid this conflict the committee decided to make contributions only when maintenance is required. After a while, we also ceased to conduct the monthly meetings. WASHCO representative [14]

• Religious reasons: WASHCOs find the idea of placing economic value to the access to water problematic:

The mentality of the people... they have to pay for the water, in some cases is very difficult to... the water came from God, why are we paying? Some people say. God gave us, why are we paying? [53]

Among those groups where periodical contributions were made, resistance was expressed by keeping their money instead of depositing it at Amhara Credit and Savings Institution (ACSI). WASHCO representatives in these communities argued that keeping their money at ACSI is restrictive. That is, once they deposit it in ACSI they cannot withdraw it unless they get a written confirmation from the woreda. Interestingly, whereas some groups circulated the money in the form of microloans to community members needing them (with interest rates ranging from 50% to 100%), there was no circulation in others.

Resistance or lack of capacity?

Paradoxically, what WASHCO actors described as resistance and non-compliance with the state’s program is often described, by state and development partner officials, as a “lack of capacity” for ownership and management. This provides the rationale for the need for continuous capacity-building, like a treadmill with no demarcated end goal, proceeding as if capacity remains stagnant even after training.

Woreda officials’ describe this lack of capacity and ability to govern themselves in several ways during the different phases of the program and use it justify actions that diminish rather than enhance it.

1. Planning phase: The WASH program dictates that WASHCO members should be selected democratically. However, in several cases, woreda officials interfere in this election process, sometimes even handpicking most WASHCO members [54]. Moreover, when ownership creation is started from the beginning, the hope is that because of prolonged interaction between end users and woredas, the implementation and sustained use would not exhibit signs of resistance in terms of financial contributions for O&M [53].
2. Implementation phase: The CMP dictates that WASHCOs should manage all construction funds allocated from financers. However, some WASHCOs are not allowed to function independently; rather, they are forced to outsource many of their large-scale purchases to the woreda because of the supposed lack of capacity [28].
3. Post-implementation phase: WASHCOs are supposed to be free in managing their own savings for O&M. Again, attributing it to lack of awareness, WASHCOs are not allowed to mobilize their savings without woreda’s authorization [27].

Ironically, all of the interviewed woreda officials acknowledged that the technical capacity-building training does not aim to elevate the community’s capacity. Woreda officials contend that WASHCO caretakers may be able to dismantle pumps but cannot identify or resolve problems. WASHCO capacities are believed to be permanently lower than the specified standard to meet the program objective. Despite being aware of the limitations of the capacity-building programs, WASHCO representatives rationalized their lack of “capacity” by saying that they are farmers with little or no exposure to modern education, and they have never seen a dismantled handpump before in their lives [19].

The state and its development partners’ technical capacity-building trainings seek to “capacitate” community members about handpumps during only a two- to three-day training that the WASHCO representatives (despite their purported ignorance) recognized as not being practical.^[6] After this short period, there is no place or space for the newly trained caretakers to practice their skills. When maintenance is required, often a few years after construction, they are unable to remember what they were taught. Therefore, they are compelled to revert to woredas for technical assistance. Not surprisingly, WASHCO members often view the state’s technical training not as a learning process to acquire knowledge, but more as another item on the checklist that they need to tick to get a water point for their village. On top of the technical support, the woredas also intervene when communities do not have finances to cover the expenses of maintenance. In some woredas, revolving funds are utilized to procure spare parts for WASHCOs; in others, woreda officials take out surplus spare parts from pump sets and store them at the woreda, in case the state would not intervene financially. In some cases, the water users’ resistance may go as far as to abandon the water point:

If the woreda refused to help, then we would ask the community. But I believe it would be impossible to get that much money from the community. So, the only option seems to abandon the water point. It is very hard to get money from this community. You don’t know how much we suffered last time to collect the 500 birr from the community. This 500 birr was 10 birr per household. But nobody was willing to pay the 10 birr. WASHCO representative [33]

DISCUSSION

The idea of ownership has come to occupy a prominent place in development discourse in general (Harper-Shipman 2017), and in the CBM of rural water schemes in particular. Our study investigated how the idea of “ownership,” normalized as a mechanism to outsource responsibility to communities, has come to be hegemonic in the WASH program of Ethiopia. We showed how ownership is conceptualized and operationalized by the elite and applied to processes of CMOM across the Amhara region, encountering different forms of selective resistances.

The meanings and impacts of ownership are multi-faceted. The federal-level technical management of CBM would like to define ownership as a form of decentralized governance filling technical and managerial tasks, with the belief that these would translate to long-term sustainability of water schemes. Ideally, ownership would include not only financial, material, and labor contributions for the construction of the water point, but also decentralized decision-making in terms of technology selection, inclusion of local knowledge in site selection, and a longer term interaction between communities and the woreda. Such meanings translate to techno-managerial approaches where issues regarding the use of power by elites and subsequent resistances become invisible. Ownership for the communities, on the other hand, echoed the governmental discourses as the application of a concept that is rather new. Ethiopia does have a rich history of community-managed water systems, but as Behailu et al. (2016:9) write, “[W]hen it comes to the modern management, it can become incompatible with the local situation, and the communities remain observers, not actors in the system’s development and management.” Water itself may also be conceptualized as a gift from God, not requiring financial payments.

Our findings illustrate that despite its prominence, the principles underlying the idea of ownership do not go much further than rhetoric in the case of the WASH program, “One WASH” in Ethiopia. We argued that this failure must be examined by considering the relationship between hegemony and resistance in the context of an authoritarian polity. Gramsci’s hegemony concept has been studied primarily in a liberal context. In such contexts, Gramsci argues that as individuals become members of elite networks, they voluntarily reproduce the intellectual ideology of the elite, which becomes hegemonic. This suggests that individuals are free to choose whether they want to reproduce that ideology. In contrast, in an authoritarian structure, as in our studied context, it is assumed that the elite structure is maintained primarily through coercion and the exercise of physical force. Without denying the role of material forces, we point to how the discourse of “lack of capacity” not only undermines ideas of “ownership” but also maintains and reinforces authoritarian, hierarchical structures. It provides a rationale for keeping the “center” and “top” more powerful, undermining structures below. While liberal principles might envision autonomous WASHCOs, the failure to translate this in practice is justified by using discursive power.

The failure of the WASH program on this account, we argue, is not just a product of the program. Rather, it also needs to be understood as a manifestation of the larger political negotiations between actors such as the World Bank and GOE. The WASH program has evolved to be an instrument through which more community involvement or resources are being called for under the guise of decentralized management. However, this does not appear to be accompanied by any significant transfer of power. Yet the program continues with end users exhibiting resistance even in their compliance. We summarize some of the key elements below.

First, although the program designs on paper might suggest devolution of power, in practice they do not truly decentralize decision-making to the community level. As we have pointed out, there are several markers of this. These include: the fact that implementation is decentralized to the community level in CMP but cannot function without woreda authorization; communities’ O&M savings cannot be accessed without woreda approval; the woreda decides what democratic election is and the woreda still remains involved in O&M. Likewise, the state’s repeated refusal to allow WASHCOs to become legal entities weakens and delegitimizes the WASHCOs. In addition, the use of party-owned financial institutions, such as ACSI, in the WASH program shows how state and party interests converge in an authoritarian polity. Instead of decentralization, these mechanisms end up promoting state-wide consolidation of power over community resources (labor, material, financial, time, etc.) through the WASH program. In addition to strengthening the power of the state, other actors such as NGOs benefit from the low-cost forms of programming of CMOM. With their emphasis on quantitative metrics, i.e., numbers of constructed water points, with “handing over” processes to the communities, such approaches assume that water points will be maintained because initial contributions created a sense of obligation to pay for O&M in the future.

Second, the narratives of all actors related to lack of capacity further describe techniques of governing that reproduce hegemonic relations in the WASH program, and in local-regional-national-global relations more generally. This lack of capacity is not just the result of an improperly planned, top-down WASH program. Rather, we argue, it is an instrument of power in the wider hierarchy that regulates and reproduces the flow of knowledge and resources in accordance with the groups’ position in the hierarchy. Rather than an essential characteristic of the blamed community, the lack of capacity can be seen as emerging from both authoritarian and neoliberal technologies of domination that reproduce hierarchical power relations within which the subordinated have limited space to realize its effect and resist it. As the lack of capacity is ingrained in the fabric of wider state-society relations, there is no ground for lack of capacity to cease to exist regardless of the WASH program’s success. The lack of capacity implies that the woreda cannot cease to intervene and the user communities continue to be dependent on the woredas, believing that the woreda is knowledgeable or resourceful.

Third, this dependency does not translate to perfect compliance, either. The end users’ consent and resistance to the WASH program’s envisioned implementation is not merely a technical issue but an expression of their current cultural and economic position in relation to that of dominant groups. By governing the processes of engaging rural communities, the government also exerts power over the populations. Conducting themselves in accordance with the requirements of the WASH program, end users successfully rearticulate hegemonic ideas seeking to govern them. However, resistance by WASHCOs reminds us of the impermanent character of hegemony and also what ownership might truly look like. Paradoxically, this has made it natural for woredas to take it upon themselves to constantly intervene, regardless of the program objectives and despite lacking the necessary structural authority and jurisdiction. In some cases (for instance Guangua woreda), the intervention visibly displays the regime’s authoritarian character but is now legitimized through lack of capacity.

Fourth, the structural arrangement and power flow in the WASH program can be illustrative of state-community relations in terms of local resource control. The elite network seeks to maintain its dominance and control over resources as well as to sustain its dominant cultural and intellectual position (Vaughan 2011). Through the WASH program, this elite network aspires to reproduce its network by developing a community-level water elite called WASHCO that would be responsible for increasing the construction of physical water points. However, this effort has not been fully effective, either. Even though the WASH program brings the different actors’ representation it has not managed to successfully establish intellectual hegemony on decentralization or liberalization, because all modalities ended up intensifying authoritarian state-society relations in general and strict woreda control in particular.

The implications for ownership and processes of decentralization also showed positive outcomes regarding water security, although these were not the focus of our theoretical framing. Aligning with the idea of ownership, in some cases end users have created their own rules, protective measures, and sanctions to regulate water use. The pre-deposited financial contributions for O&M (an inherent component of ownership) shorten the time for quickly recovering water services within communities. In the techno-managerial sense, ownership does translate to more waterpoints constructed in a context where communities are taking on financial responsibility to complement limited government budgets. The implications of resistance, similarly, demonstrate a brighter side. Woreda water offices have had to develop innovative mechanisms to ensure water point functionality in the absence of spare parts (revolving funds, storing surplus spare parts; cf. Annala et al. 2019). Moreover, the resistance of end users also serves to mobilize the discourses of “lack of awareness” and “lack of capacity” on the side of the government, further justifying the need for trainings and monitoring activities that translate to per diem payments for woreda officials with salary levels far lower than fair wages.

To conclude, this article extends state-society discussions on Ethiopia’s rural water governance, with a particular emphasis on hegemony and resistance. The findings and discussions elaborate how the WASH program has become the product and reproducer of the authoritarian party’s continual effort to achieve intellectual, economic, and cultural dominance. The discussions also show how transnational political and economic structures, practices, and institutions do not challenge this dominance despite the rhetoric of liberalism.

As a considerable limitation of our study, most of the empirical data were generated more than 10 years ago. The recent civil war and continuous violent conflicts, economic reforms, and changes in the political regime have impacted the processes through which the WASH program continues to operate in Ethiopia. In the Amhara region, the relations between rural communities and government actors have become so tense that WASHCOs responsible for WASH facilities in schools are reportedly voicing their preferences to switch from the WMP approach to the CMP approach to try and avoid interactions with government officials [51]. The availability of spare parts for CMOM has also worsened in recent years because of road closures, weakening the already fragile system of spare part supply in Amhara [52]. We hope to see future studies that examine more recent dynamics of reproducing state-society relations in Ethiopia, and how such dynamics are negotiated between authoritarian regimes and globally mobilized best practice interventions in the WASH sector.

__________

^[1] WMP and CMP are sector wide approaches whereas NMPs are micro-level NGO-financed projects.
^[2] Social reorganization - National government > regional state > sub-region/zone > district/woreda > village/kebele (This point is the end point for the formal government structure and the beginning of communal structure) > sub-village/gote (10 development units) > development unit (6 cells) > cell (5 households) > household (Bekele et al. 2016).
^[3] The leader of each segment (starting from the cell level) has to be a member of the ruling party.
^[4] The actual program, Rural Water Supply and Environmental Program, is not continuing. A new federal level project COWASH is currently promoting the CMP approach at the Ministry of Water.
^[5] Secondary resources: Wash Implementation Framework (2011), Wash National Program document (2014), CMP and WMP project implementation manuals (2012), CARE Ethiopia and World Vision Ethiopia, WASH Implementation manual (2012).
^[6] There is no practical skill development for the trainee. Because of a shortage of resources the meaning of practical training is equivalent to visual demonstrations where the trainer conducts different forms of practical exercises on the item while the trainees only observe.

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