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International relations theory and

water do mix: A response to Furlong's
troubled waters, hydro-hegemony
and int...
Jeroen Warner

Political Geography

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 Political Geography 27 (2008) 802e810
www.elsevier.com/locate/polgeo

International relations theory and water do mix:

A response to Furlong’s troubled waters, hydro-
hegemony and international water relations
Jeroen F. Warner a,b,*, Mark Zeitoun c,1
a
Centre for Sustainable Management of Resources, Faculty of Science, Radboud University Nijmegen, Heyendaalsweg
135, 6525 AJ NIJMEGEN, Netherlands
b
Disaster Studies, Social Science Department, Wageningen University, Hollandseweg 1, 6706 KN WAGENINGEN,
Netherlands
c
Centre of Environmental Policy and Governance, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK

Introduction

‘Water politics’ is not a popular phrase among water practitioners. A paper on the 2002 8th
Nile Basin Initiative Conference contrasted ‘hydropolitics’ with ‘hydro-cooperation‘ (Amare,
2000), as if cooperation excludes politics, and vice versa. Nevertheless, influential hydropolitical
authors such as Allan (2001) and Mollinga (2001) are finding increasing resonance in their
mission to explain to the water sector that politics matters. According to Allan (2001), you cannot
understand water issues in the Middle East until you understand the politics. The challenges and
the solutions, he states, lie not in the watershed but in the ‘problemshed’. Mollinga (2001: 733) is
even more succinct when he states in the very first line that water is politics. The messages are
reverberating in the global water community but cannot be said to be truly resonant yet.
These inroads were not made by political scientists. Allan’s background is in earth mapping
while Mollinga is an irrigation expert. The few studies conducted on international water
relations tend to be written by geographers, civil engineers and experts of law paying, cursory
attention at best to established IR theory or political science frameworks. Mollinga (2001) can

* Corresponding author. Centre for Sustainable Management of Resources, Faculty of Science, Radboud University
Nijmegen, Heyendaalsweg 135, 6525 AJ NIJMEGEN, Netherlands. Tel.: þ31 024 3652579; fax: þ31 24 3652263.
E-mail addresses: jeroenwarner@gmail.com, j.warner@science.ru.nl, Jeroen.warner@wur.nl (J.F. Warner),
m.zeitoun@lse.ac.uk (M. Zeitoun).
1
Tel.: þ44 (0) 774 686 3892.

0962-6298/$ - see front matter Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.polgeo.2008.08.006
 J.F. Warner, M. Zeitoun / Political Geography 27 (2008) 802e810 803

claim that ‘water is politics’ without finding it necessary to back up his argument, or to cite
a single political science source to define the ‘political’.
Perhaps the discipline itself is to blame for its poor image. Buzan and Little (2001) claim
that International Relations itself may well be to blame for its varied successes outside its own
orbit. Conceived as a multi-disciplinary field of endeavour, IR has been ‘on an island’. It has
poorly integrated outside strands of sociology, geography, law, etc. and has had limited success
at making its insights relevant outside its circle. Given this pedigree, it is unsurprising that the
impact of IR theory on studies of transboundary water interaction has been mixed.
While Lowi’s (1993) Water and power, for example, still ranks as a groundbreaking study of
Jordan basin politics from a Realist perspective, the number of serious studies applying IR
frameworks to transboundary water issues remains limited. Fewer still take a critical
perspective. More’s the pity, as the present authors (an IR specialist and an environmental
engineer) find that the two fields of endeavour have a lot to say to each other.

Mixing critical IR and water

Kathryn Furlong has commendably exposed such weak ties of interdisciplinary in her piece
Hidden theories, troubled waters: International relations, the ‘territorial trap’, and the Southern
African Development Community’s transboundary waters from Political Geography (2006). But
by focusing on the influence of International Relations and International Organisation theory on
mainstream water discourse, Furlong’s article would have the reader believe that the only
frameworks on offer in IR are (Neo)Realism and (Neo)liberalism. While in fairness few
scholars have thus far made inroads into the mainstream with studies of international hydro-
politics based on alternative IR frameworks, a notable body of critical and constructivist
scholarship has been overlooked.
To support the bulk of her argument Furlong chooses an article by Du Plessis (2000),
published by Mikhail Gorbachev’s Green Cross International, thus ensuring distribution beyond
ivory-tower academia. Du Plessis, a South African professor of IR, observes that ‘the water
discourse’ used by leading practitioners tends towards (implicit) rationalist and positivist
readings of IR. After Du Plessis, Furlong notes that the leading strands of neo-Realist and neo-
Liberal scholarship are merging into a seemingly dominant ‘neoeneo’ consensus on core tenets
between the two schools, for which Du Plessis refers to Wæver (1997).
It is instructive however to consider what Wæver himself had to say on the topic. He notes that
the dominance of Realism has become a (self-appointed) straw man for its critics at a time when in
fact, most IR scholars in American (and other) universities became fascinated by constructivism
and critical theory. As a consequence, despite often being associated with European scholarship,
critical analysis is no longer a marginal activity in US academia, either. Du Plessis (2000)
exemplifies this fascination, engaging with classics of the critical, post-positivist school of
thought in IR (e.g. Cox, 1981). Du Plessis approvingly quotes Cox’ well-known metatheoretical
claim that theories are never neutral, as they are always for an actor’s benefit.
Positionality in transboundary water affairs can likewise be expected to influence the topic
and process of research. Practitioners of water policy and water politics will select those
theories about the world that best suit and justify their agendas. Trottier makes the point well in
the context of the PalestinianeIsraeli water conflict, showing how different groups benefit from
their discourses of ‘water peace’ or ‘water wars’ (Trottier, 2003: 8), to attract donor funds or
domestic political support, respectively. Water practitioners set out to solve the kind of prob-
lems that easily get ‘securitised’ as survival issues e food and energy self-sufficiency and water
804 J.F. Warner, M. Zeitoun / Political Geography 27 (2008) 802e810

development, bestowing a considerable power position on managers and policy advisers. The
discourse of water science-for-policy is seldom a critical one e those in power usually do not
like discussing power, as it would force them to justify their position (Guzzini, 2005) while
those working in consultancy rarely bite the hand that feeds.
A key difference between those versed in the disciplines of International Relations on one
hand and Political Ecology and Political Geography on the other is the former’s better access (if
not necessarily greater influence) on international decision-making familiarity of efforts to
influence decision-making. This had notably led leading American IR scholars to identify with
American political hegemonic interests (see the extensive 1980s literature on hegemonic
decline) without much scholarly distance.
The fact that exploitation of citizens as a consequence of state actions is not usually on
a regime analyst’s agenda, as Furlong observes, does not disqualify the worth of mainstream
regime theory as a framework for understanding interstate cooperation, whether over water or
other issues. The fact that regime theory does not answer critical questions would only be
problematic if there were no alternative framework for analysis. But IR has other approaches to
offer that can help better address this issue. Du Plessis’ engagement with Cox and others suggests
he is well aware of this, but Furlong’s rendering of Du Plessis’ argument does not. While Furlong
is not blind to critical work on hydropolitics she offers scant evidence to back up her claim that
critical work does not reach the mainstream. For her, the fact that two contemporary critics of
mainstream approaches in hydropolitics, Jon Barnett and Larry Swatuk, are not cited in one well-
established survey of African watercourses (Nakayama, 2003) seems sufficient proof that they do
not have an impact on the ‘water discourse’. In this context, it is notable that Furlong does not go
into Barnett and Swatuk’s theoretical starting points. The omission could reinforce the impression
that there is no established critical strand of IR, let alone one applied in the transboundary water
literature. The following sections address this charge, and seek to understand its origins.

Too narrow a reading of IR?

Is Furlong’s neglect of critical scholarship in IR due to a narrow definition of IR scholarship,

which excludes International Political Economy? This does not seem to be the case, as the
regime theory she labels as part of the mainstream IR shaping water discourse in fact belongs to
the discipline of IPE. But not all regime analysis has been mainstream e critical regime
scholarship like Keeley’s (1990) or Zaschke (1990) leads us to ask the kind of questions
Furlong finds missing in mainstream regime literature and opens up a IR perspective on the
dynamics of globalism in which control, exploitation and resistance take centre stage. While
Keeley takes a Foucauldian view of regimes, much critical water and IR work implicitly or
explicitly draw on the neo-Gramscian school of International Political Economy, spearheaded
by Cox (1981). Their transnationalist approach builds bridges between the domestic and the
international on the global scene, highlighting the exploitation of non-state actors that Furlong
is interested to expose. Trottier (1999), Selby (2003) and Zeitoun (2008), from very different
angles, each explicitly introduced an IR framework on waters transboundary to Palestine and
Israel, exposing both accommodating and exploitative relations. The Cochabamba ‘water riot’
of 2000 (Boesen & Ravnborg, 2003; Crespo & Spronk, 2007; Warner, 2004b) has attracted
critical IPE interest as an anti-globalist New Social Movement. Trottier (2003) contributed an
incisive analysis of the rise of ‘water wars’ as a hegemonic concept in the international water
community to UNESCO’s Potential ConflicteCooperation Potential (PC/CP) project, a main-
stream series of publications that ensures ideas on hegemony and discourse can find an
 J.F. Warner, M. Zeitoun / Political Geography 27 (2008) 802e810 805

audience beyond a radical fringe. This non-exhaustive review goes to show that there is more to
IR than the mainstream influencing water scholarship. Purging critical IR and IPE from our
bookshelves would be similar to denying Furlong the literature of political ecology and political
geography when making a review of geopolitics.

Caught in a territorial trap?

Apart from critical IR, there is no mention in Furlong’s article of International Security
Studies. A Welsh (Booth, Wyn Jones) and French (Bigo, Huysmans) school are actively
engaged in debate with Copenhagen (Waever, Buzan) on who or what should be the referent of
security e the state, mankind, or ultimately the individual? (see also Megoran’s earlier piece in
Political Geography: Megoran, 2004).
For a great many water practitioners, the river basin rather than state or region is a natural
focus for hydropolitical analysis, and likewise has been the starting point in defining regional
hydrosecurity complexes (Lindholm, 1995; Phillips, Daoudy, Öjendal, Turton, & McCaffrey,
2006; Turton, 2001). Furlong’s criticism of hydro-IR of being stuck in a ‘territoriality trap’ has
justification when applied to the analysis of such complexes, which reify hydropolitical analysis
so far has tended to focus on states, sovereignty as complete control of a state over territory. But
the criticism overlooks the vigour of the ‘virtual water’ debate in international water policy
circles. Allan’s extensive work on the trade in the virtual water embedded in international food
trade (e.g. Allan, 2001) steps beyond ‘real water’ accounts, linking global and national political
economies as an alternative to looking at physical flows only. While Kumar and Singh (2005),
Merrett (2003), Warner and Johnson (2007) and others have taken this body of analysis to task
for (among other aspects) its state focus and backgrounding global power asymmetries, which
compromises its utility as a prescriptive ‘solution’. They appreciate Allan’s insight that the
challenges and solutions of transboundary water interaction lie in the ‘problemshed’ (and not
just the watershed) thus partly sidestepping ‘territorial traps’.

Hegemony

It is Furlong’s concern with power relationships that is of most interest to the paper at hand.
Interaction over water issues set within a context of structural power asymmetry is qualifiably and
substantially different than when the playing field is more level. Furlong may thus be applauded
for suggesting that the body of IR and water literature tends to suffer from a ‘‘mis-theorisation of
hegemonic structures’’ (Furlong, 2006: 1). Unfortunately, she does not explicitly lay out herself
what her understanding of ‘hegemony’ is. Admittedly a frequently misused and abused term,
‘hegemony’ here is understood to apply here to situations where the more powerful competitor of
formally equal parties maintains its control through a mix of coercion (‘hard’ power) and consent
(‘soft’ power). A hegemon is thus the ‘first amongst equals’, and is distinct from an empire which
sets up a system whereby other nations are subordinate to it. Hegemony also differs from domi-
nation for the consent given to the arrangement by the non-hegemons. When the non-hegemon
concedes to its inferior position, the hegemon has available to it the various forms of ‘soft’ power
as well as the less efficient forms of hard power. The hegemon may use its superior position in
either a guiding or dominating manner. It may be this omission which permits the doubt
surrounding the application of the label of ‘hegemon’ to South Africa in the transboundary water
sector in southern Africa, see the prominence given to Odén (2001 in Furlong, 2006: 12). Like
806 J.F. Warner, M. Zeitoun / Political Geography 27 (2008) 802e810

Israel vis-à-vis Lebanon on the Jordan River,2 or Egypt in relation to Ethiopia on the Nile, we see
little room for debate about whether South Africa is hegemonic on the Orange-Senqu and in
SADC. The relevant uncertainty is in the form of hegemony the more powerful states maintain.
Macchiavelli (1513) advised the Prince of his age to rule like a centaur e with the strength
of a horse (hard power, force, coercion) and the mind of a human (power, persuasion, law).
While emperors make no bones about ruling for their own self-interest, hegemonic actors like
South Africa purport to represent the general interest. To remain in charge and maintain the
consent of their subjects, a hegemon must instill the belief in their population that their rule is
legitimate, and that their agenda promotes the general interest. For this they may have to
develop a political formula (a ‘comprehensive concept of control’, Overbeek, 2004) that co-
opts the agenda of the hegemonised without diluting too much of their own priorities. While the
hegemon and hegemonised are formally equal, and may use egalitarian discourse, the ‘shadow’
of hegemonic coercion ensures that the subaltern will not readily revolt. Furlong’s reference to
‘hegemonic ideas’ inevitably bring her back to the maligned neo-liberal ‘water discourse’,
without explaining how these ideas can become and continue to be hegemonic.3 Hydropolitical
analysts have employed the term ‘sanctioned discourse’ with some frequency to describe
hegemonic discourse, which essentially delegitimises other types of discourse (see e.g. Allan,
2001: 182). Feitelson defines sanctioned discourse as ‘a normative delimitation separating the
types of discourse perceived to be politically acceptable from those that are deemed politically
unacceptable at a specific point in time’ (Feitelson, 1999). Drawing on the cognitive strand in
regime theory (Haas, 1992 on epistemic communities stabilising the knowledge base for regime
formation), Jägerskog (2003) bravely initiates a theorisation of a very loosely used term and
applying it to the River Jordan conflict. Conca’s book on water governance notes that ‘‘one of
the biggest challenges facing regime builders is to create a foundation of officially sanctioned
knowledge’’ (Conca, 2006). Once these foundations are created and sanctioned, they become
difficult to challenge. It is therefore tempting to assume this ‘sanctioned (water) discourse’ is
static over time. Yet in a series of lively discussions organised by Bradford University, ‘Against
the Water Consensus’, Berkoff (2003) notes a ‘far from trivial’ shift in the ‘consensus’ between
the Second and Third World Water Fora, in which, he claims, the third was much more
environmentalist. ‘Given these varied and changing perspectives, it is debatable whether such
a thing as an international consensus exists’ (Berkoff, 2003).

Towards a framework of hydro-hegemony

A growing body of researchers have since 20044 been interacting with some intensity to
develop a ‘Framework of Hydro-Hegemony’ (Zeitoun & Warner, 2006), which specifically draws
on current strands in IR dealing with Machiavelli’s big questions. Machiavelli’s legacy of
hegemonic strategy draws attention to the strategic manipulation of ideas to stay in power (as
conservatives like Mosca theorised) or to fight it (as revolutionaries like Gramsci did) (Finoc-
chiaro, 1999), and both traditions have been translated onto the international plane. ‘hydro-

2
Strictly speaking, Israel’s position vis-à-vis the Palestinians is not that of a hegemon. Because the state of Israel and
the as yet unformed state of Palestine are not formal equals, the asymmetry in power might be more appropriately
conceived as ‘imperialism’.
3
Sanctioned or hegemonic discourse can establish a regime of truth, that dominates, covers up, and discredits what
Foucault terms ‘‘subjugated knowledges’’ (Gordon, 1980).
4
Particularly at King’s College London, the London School of Economics and Political Science and the School of
Oriental and African Studies.
 J.F. Warner, M. Zeitoun / Political Geography 27 (2008) 802e810 807

hegemony’ is our shorthand for hegemonic power active in water affairs that is exercised by
a variety of means, from material to normative. Researchers employing the Framework of Hydro-
Hegemony are unearthing several nuances of relations over water issues, particularly in inter-
national transboundary settings. The approach of the loosely constituted London Water Research
Group looks beyond the discourse of ‘co-operation’, to examine how basin riparians that are
formally equals are in fact caught up in control relations. The approach engages in particular with
the coexistence of structural conflict and cooperation. Many of its members are inspired by the
constructivist Copenhagen literature which has thrown forward new questions on the strategic
construction of security. ‘Securitisation’ makes us ask why some issues become non-negotiable
and legitimse the overturning of normal rights and rules of engagement, a trick mastered not only
by state elites, the original focus of the Copenhagen School, but also by subaltern actors (which
we’ll call ‘countersecuritisation’). The London group and others benefit from its opening-up of
conceptual space for showing how the deliberate construction of scarcity and its instrumentality
fosters resource conflict while the illusion of plenty depoliticizes structural and environmental
exploitation. Several among us find merit in the critical take in security studies (the Aberystwyth
school) to water issues. Critical Security Studies see security as more than survival: it is the
emancipation of subjected actors from oppression, set in a ‘global’ rather than an ‘international’
political arena (Booth, 2007). This engaged IR approach to security is one avenue that brings new
directions to researching the politics of ‘water security’.
For reasons of space, we will introduce this emerging approach in a few broad strokes. The
absence of war does not mean the absence of conflict or the presence of ‘peace’. Similarly, the
existence of a treaty or some form of cooperation over transboundary water does not mean the
absence of conflict. Cooperation, after all, is not always voluntary e a hegemon can make other
parties do what they would otherwise not do. Methods of assuring the compliance vary. The
exercise of hegemonic power runs from a direct threat at gun-point (hard power e the horse) to
a situation where power and sanctions are only implied (soft power e the man) e up to a point
where the desired behaviour is so internalised that there is no need for enforcement.5 Lukes
(2005 [1974]) reminds us that the ideational, non-coercive aspect of power is perhaps the most
effective in achieving the consent and compliance of hegemonised actors. A basin treaty or
contract based on an enticing vision can be an attractor creating a more coherent basin
community than a coercive strategy could, while institutionalising iniquities.
Ana Cascao (2008) notes, the effect that the Nile Basin Initiative has had on Egypt’s relations
with its nine co-riparians on the Nile river. The ‘shared vision’ of the Nile Basin states under the
NBI has managed to replace previously antagonistic relations between them, and Egypt no longer
must use threats to ensure compliance. The NBI’s approach of ‘shared visions’ and ‘winewin
scenarios’ has succeeded in ‘‘organising a Nile club of conviviality among ministers and engi-
neers’’ (Collins, 2002: 29). Still the 1959 treaty between Egypt and Sudan that allocates the entire
river’s flows to these two countries alone has thus far been deemed by the Egyptian side as non-
negotiable under the NBI. Such non-coercive methods of achieving consent are more effective and
efficient than a barrage of threats. This may be a case of Egypt eating its cake, and having it too.
At the same time, ideology alone cannot sustain control. Ideas must be undergirded by
material, ‘hard’ power. The exercise of different forms of power that helps hegemonic state
continue their primacy e in the water sector as elsewhere e is a judicious mix of coercion and
consent. On the Nile and elsewhere, donor agencies play a role in sanctioning the global water

5
This creation of self-imposed ‘common sense’ can be likened to Foucaldian ‘normalisation’; Foucault, 1979.
808 J.F. Warner, M. Zeitoun / Political Geography 27 (2008) 802e810

discourse. Large global water conferences such as World Water Forum, World Water Congress
and the SIWI World Water Week become vehicles for delivery of that discourse. The Frame-
work of Hydro-Hegemony calls for investigation into the softer forms of power, the various
tactics and strategies that inform compliance-producing mechanisms (Lustick, 2002). Selby
(2003) has noted, for example, Israel’s illusion of the relinquishment of power to the Pales-
tinians, by changing (only) the letterhead on water quality data collection sheets.
The Framework of Hydro-Hegemony allows the analysis of preferred policy transmitted by
sticks (conditionality), but also by carrots (funds) at various scales of implementation. Integrated
Water Resources Management, for example, has become the management paradigm, even for
transboundary settings. The problems associated with this paradigm, though long acknowledged
by frustrated practitioners and (some) academics (e.g. Wester & Warner, 2002), are rarely seri-
ously questioned at the global water fora. Funds may be made available for developing countries
for IWRM projects, for example, even though these fail to differing degrees.
So far, much of the approach of hydro-hegemony has focused on the basin level, which is
a highly specific level of analysis unique to water politics. While it opens new avenues for
understanding international hydropolitics, the scale can also be limiting and in turn obscures
important dynamics occurring between non-state actors across international boundaries or actors
operating within a common subnational context. Warner, 2008 begins to address the limitation by
positing hegemonic struggles at multiple levels. In focusing on the interaction between those
levels, the so-called ‘layer cake’ approach to hydro-hegemony readily shows up cases in which co-
operative hegemonic relations at one level have unfortunate outcomes at another. The Nile Basin
Initiative, sweetened by donor money, is set to have adverse affects on the Dinka and Nuer peoples
in Southern Sudan (Boesen & Ravnborg, 2003). Co-operative hegemonic relationships at the basin
level do not clash with exploitative relations between basin states and specific social groups, or
between the basin actor and a global Great Power. Furlong’s analysis highlights that State actors
may collude with each other at the expense of subnational actors, calling attention to the locally
exploitative aspects of international water policies. Her point recalls the relevancy of the African
proverb that it doesn’t matter whether elephants fight or make love; in all cases, the grass beneath
them suffers. The introduction of a multi-layered approach to hydro-hegemonic analysis takes on
the challenge of understanding on hydraulic exploitation of individuals due to interstate collusion.

Conclusion

The present article has argued that the mixing of IR and water scholarship adds up to a rather
more potent brew than Kathryn Furlong’s (2006) article would have us believe. A focus on
mainstream (neo-Realist and neo-Liberal) literature in the water literature not only caricatures
IR, it also overlooks important critical scholarship on hydro-IR, not to mention soul-searching
discussions on imputed ‘water consensus’ among critical water academics. Admittedly, much
of this reflective scholarship tends to fall outside (English-language) mainstream water journals
such as Water International, Water Policy or the International Journal of Water Resource
Management, which may make it harder but not impossible for it to reach the water community.
However, this relative obscurity does not apply to widely available theory-informed literature
on Israel/Palestine. Furlong’s charge that IR theory is weak in addressing important issues of
power and hegemony may serve as a timely wake-up call to a sometimes self-absorbed IR
community. IR researchers analyzing resource politics can do better, and would do well to draw
more on literature from outside their own field, thereby learn much more about what political
ecology and political geography have to say about relations between powerful and powerless at
 J.F. Warner, M. Zeitoun / Political Geography 27 (2008) 802e810 809

the global and national level. Much work remains to be done, and may build on the framework
for the analysis of multi-level hydro-hegemony, which is now available in the water press
(Zeitoun & Warner, 2006), applying critical and Realist IR theory to hydropolitics in a way that
avoids ‘water wars’ or ‘water peace’ discourses and, by pointing at the layered nature of
hegemonic struggles, opens up the scope to consenting and non-consenting victims of water
deals between states. Given its nascent status, there is no telling if this approach will find
entryways into the mainstream discourse in due course.
The IR and water community have many helpful things to say to understand and engage with
water politics, but lamentably tend to be invisible and like the IR community, runs the risk of
being terminally divided. The London group’s framework reflects the diverse constituency of
hydro-hegemony authors, which involves researchers and practitioners from mainstream,
constructivist and critical traditions, can easily be faulted for eclecticism (Davidson-Harden,
Naidoo, & Harden, 2007). But it may serve as one example of the ongoing critical scholarship
on water that draws inspiration from the rich legacy of IR and IPE theory.

Acknowledgments

We thank Kathryn Furlong for her gamely, constructive comments on the first draft, and Naho
Mirumachi of King’s College London for her helpful additional feedback on the present article.

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