Conf

onflict is inevitable whenever groups form to reach decisions. Perfect agreement is both unusual and undesirable, because its absence characterizes a static society, bereft of new ideas and innovative capacity. Nonetheless, conflict can get out of hand and become unproductive. It must be managed if we are to enjoy its benefits but avoid unnecessary costs.

Federal water resources development has never been free of conflict. In recent years, however, this conflict seems to have become more intense and more pervasive. Also, there is little reason to believe that we are managing it well. The water resources planning process, within and around which much conflict occurs, has become longer, more costly, and more contentious. Its outcome is increasingly in doubt. Water resources agencies have experimented with new and more open planning methods, and even with some explicit conflict resolution techniques, such as mediation. No magic answers have appeared.

This article, which grew out of an unsuccessful attempt to apply conflict resolution techniques within a real water resource planning conflict, focuses on the institutional aspects of water resources decision making. The term “institutions" is used broadly, to mean any socially accepted ways of doing things. It includes laws, customs and patterns of political behavior. It does not mean organizations, in this sense. The aim of this article is to see whether there may be institutional obstacles to effective conflict management within the planning process; obstacles which may account for the seeming lack of general progress in resolving water conflicts. The ultimate conclusion is that there are structural aspects of existing institutions, both within the planning process itself and in the political structure within which planning is conducted, which militate against effective conflict management. No stones are cast. No agency, political

Dr. Lord is president of Policy Sciences Associates of Boulder, Colorado. He is a former staff economist in the Office of the Secretary of the Army. This article is adapted from a paper which appeared in the October 1979 issue of the Water Resources Bulletin and is based upon research funded by the Office of Water Research and Technology.

Federal water resources development has never been free of conflict.

body, or interest group is at fault. Instead, it seems that the decision-making structure which has evolved over many years is simply inappropriate to the problems it now faces. Dealing with this situation may be far more difficult and frustrating than finding a convenient devil to exorcise or finding a technical "quick fix," in the form of a new planning or conflict resolution technique.

Political Structure

Supposedly, the Congress establishes policy and the President implements it. It doesn't always work that way. In the field of water resources development we now see the Congress concerning itself primarily with specific water resource projects while the President attempts to establish a national water policy. The drama is not new, however. Only the names of the cast change from time to time. Water resources development is the classic example of what some political scientists call distributive politics. It is characterized by legislative proponents of separate and unrelated projects, and by building consensus through what has (perhaps unkindly) been called "log rolling," or "mutual backscratching.'

Distributive politics dominates whenever a program generates strong local interest because it is perceived to be a collection of local projects, rather than a unified national program serving a widely shared common interest. Such a perception is reinforced by generous cost-sharing rules which relieve local beneficiaries of the need to make hard choices because it is the Federal treasury, not their own scarce resources, which must foot most of the bill.

Strong local support for individual projects makes them attractive to legislators who are elected locally and who

Extensive negotiation is required before "proposed projects" become "construction starts."