Discourse inertia and the governance of transboundary rivers in Asia

Bureaucratic inertia in dealing with annual forest fires in Indonesia

“…Bureaucratic inertia is often experienced by old and large institutions, which are prone to inertia owing to the 'sunk expense' reflected by their existing laws, practices, processes and internal contact, and authority network (Kumar et al 2007;Williams 2020). Owing to existing rules and procedures, the bureaucracy prevents any deviation from what was initially imposed by legislation and/or it only partly accepts reform at the single-office level, and the bureaucracy may be entirely absorbed by another bureaucracy (Tao 2016).…”

“…The purpose of the present study, therefore, is to explore the bureaucratic reluctance of local and central governments in resolving annual forest fires and to understand the activities conducted by government organisations regarding the annual rise in number of forest fires. The study of institutional inertia is essential to the analysis, which refers to collective power that creates an opposition to reform and lessens organisational capability and willingness to be more versatile, adaptable and efficient in terms of services or products (Williams 2020;Purnomo et al 2021a). In other aspects, all national and local government institutions can be versatile and adapt to the background and circumstances in which the agency operates to reduce forest fires.…”

Exploring discursive hydropolitics: a conceptual framework and research agenda

“…Hussein et al (2020), in identifying the tools used by states' elites to justify and legitimize large-scale hydraulic infrastructure in the Euphrates-Tigris and Nile rivers basins, vaguely defined discourses when referring to critical discourse analysis as a method focusing on 'the way in which language is constructed and used to shape norms and behavior' (p. 4). Williams (2020aWilliams ( , 2020b has been one of the few recent scholars to provide a detailed account of her interpretation. In an analysis of the role of discourse in transboundary water relations in the Mekong River basin, Williams subscribed to Hajer's (1995) conceptualization of discourse as an ensemble or group of 'ideas, concepts and categories that are produced, reproduced and transformed in a certain bundle of practices' (Williams, 2021, p. 727).…”

“…Going back to the basin with which we opened this paper, the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna River basin, we find several elements that indicate a connection between metanarratives and international hydropolitics. For instance, when examining the transboundary water governance of the Ganges-Brahmaputra River basin, Williams (2020b) found that infrastructureoriented development discourses, with an emphasis on command and control of the river, formed the basis of cooperation in the basin. Vij et al (2020) also analysed the power interplay between Bangladesh and India over the Brahmaputra River, concluding that India's passive (or non-) participation in the Brahmaputra Dialogue meetings stemmed from internal security and securitization narratives.…”

“…For instance, in her analysis of the Tanakpur Barrage project in the Ganges River basin, Mirumachi (2013) showed how the securitization discourse deployed by the Indian 'hydrocracy' ensured the compliance of the Nepali government with the construction of the hydraulic infrastructure in its territory. Most recently, Williams (2020b) revealed the emergence of a multilateral discourse, mainly from Bangladesh and China, as a way to contest the Indian hydro-hegemony in the basin. Therefore, focusing on how and by whom such discourses are produced, and why certain ones become dominant while others remain subjugated, provides a very different perspective on the nature of hydropolitics.…”