Bridging governance for water resilience: the role of organizational structures in enabling collective action

ABSTRACT Seven radar charts, one per country, showing mean scores on a 0 to 3 scale across six governance dimensions: Institutional Structure and Leadership, Water Allocation and Reallocation, Collectivity and Participation, Planning, Economic and Financial Instruments, and Innovation and Sustainability. Australia scores 2.4, 2.8, 2.3, 2.8, 2.2 and 2.8, forming a broad hexagon with its lowest point in economic instruments. Brazil scores 2.2, 2.2, 2.2, 2.3, 1.7 and 2.0, a moderate and fairly even shape, also lowest in economic instruments. Chile scores 2.0, 2.2, 2.5, 1.5, 1.5 and 1.5, with a peak in collectivity and participation and low scores in planning, economic instruments and innovation. Mexico scores 2.6, 2.2, 2.0, 2.0, 2.0 and 2.0, with its highest point in institutional structure and an otherwise even profile. Peru scores 2.2, 1.8, 2.0, 2.0, 2.0 and 2.0, a nearly even hexagon with a slight dip in water allocation and reallocation. Portugal scores 2.0, 2.4, 2.0, 2.7, 2.3 and 3.0, with its highest point in innovation and sustainability. Spain scores 2.4, 2.4, 2.7, 2.8, 2.2 and 2.8, a broad hexagon similar to Australia’s, with its lowest point in economic instruments. Water governance structures at the national level influence collective action, shaping the distribution of power and decision-making processes. This study examines how different governance typologies, government-led, market-oriented, and collective governance, influence coordination between national authorities and local actors. Using a theory-based evaluation framework, the analysis focuses on seven national-level case studies, identifying mechanisms that enable or constrain collective participation and adaptive management. The results show that no single governance model performs uniformly across dimensions. Instead, outcomes depend on the alignment of leadership, basin-level authority, participation mechanisms, and water allocation and reallocation systems. The findings reveal how hybrid arrangements, where central oversight is coupled with delegated basin institutions, strengthen coherence and adaptive capacity, while fragmented or under-resourced systems struggle to sustain innovation and long-term planning. The findings contribute to ongoing debates on polycentric governance by highlighting the importance of institutional bridges that link national policy frameworks with basin and local implementation.