Neoliberal Reformism and the Resilience of the Agrarian Irrigation Bureaucracy: A Case Study of Pakistan

ABSTRACT In 1980, the World Bank began to promote participatory irrigation management (PIM) reforms to overcome disparities in the distribution of public irrigation water for agricultural uses. Yet, in Pakistan as in other countries, PIM was unable to achieve its objectives of equitable resource distribution and financial sustainability. This paper examines how the neoliberal understanding of citizens' participation/participatory development as demonstrated in PIM fails because its underlying theory of change overlooks power asymmetry issues, institutional politics, and farmers' engagement processes. We argue that traditional irrigation bureaucracy, donor agency technocrats, and depoliticized participatory development approach intentionally or unintentionally ignore the muted voices of small and landless peasants in the reform process. Under such circumstances, reform cannot generate hydro‐solidarity, trust, and collective action from below. Moreover, the irrigation bureaucracy only mimics the institutions of participation under an externally assisted push because the PIM model was never adequately tested and implemented. We argue that without active farmers' agency—small and landless peasants, these paper organizations cannot create multilevel accountability in irrigation management. We elucidate an important but under‐theorized factor contributing to these failures: depoliticized irrigation management transfer processes that fail to redistribute social power. Donor articulations of the PIM “theory of change” do not make explicit that a shift in social power—not just management authority and responsibility—is necessary.