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Papers by Raul Pacheco-Vega

New Political Science, 2020

The Routledge Handbook of Waste Studies, 2021

La transformacion de las modalidades de interaccion entre actores no-estatales y gobiernos a nive... more La transformacion de las modalidades de interaccion entre actores no-estatales y gobiernos a nivel global han llevado a conceptuar una nueva clase de ciudadano: el ciudadano global. Existe evidencia empirica de que las ONG ambientalistas pueden influir sobre los gobiernos nacionales, llevando a algunos autores a definir una nueva categoria de accion colectiva: la ciudadania ambiental global. Permanecen dos preguntas clave: ?Existe la ciudadania global? ?Existe la ciudadania ambiental global? Este trabajo analiza la nocion de ciudadania ambiental global como recorte analitico para el estudio de la sociedad civil transnacional y su impacto en la politica ambiental domestica e internacional analizando el caso del proyecto “Ciudadania Ambiental Global” del Programa de las Naciones Unidas para el Medio Ambiente

Revista de Gestión Pública, 2020

La gestión del servicio público del agua es un proceso complejo que requiere de la implementación... more La gestión del servicio público del agua es un proceso complejo que requiere de la implementación de una serie de mecanismos de rendición de cuentas, coordinación y regulación para garantizar el suministro continuo del vital líquido al mayor número de personas, maximizando la cobertura tanto horaria como espacial. El artículo examina el caso de una urbe mexicana que se ha ido expandiendo hasta conformar una zona metropolitana, Aguascalientes, analizando de manera crítica el argumento que plantea que el manejo intermunicipal de servicios públicos emerge como una respuesta a las necesidades crecientemente complejas de las regiones metropolitanas de ofrecer un servicio de calidad a una población cada vez más exigente y creciente.

The influence of the work of Elinor Ostrom has been decisive. The author drew up a research agend... more The influence of the work of Elinor Ostrom has been decisive. The author drew up a research agenda on the government of the commons, which showed that the use of common access resources could be governed by building robust, equitable rules of access and distribution. This article details Ostrom’s contributions to the governance of water, describing how scholars in Mexico have taken up Ostrom’s work and applied it to their research. It also proposes some research paths that could be followed in this issue.

Espiral Estudios sobre Estado y Sociedad, 2021

Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning, 2020

ABSTRACT In 1998, Evert Vedung posited a typology of policy instruments making governing akin to ... more ABSTRACT In 1998, Evert Vedung posited a typology of policy instruments making governing akin to a conversation with a donkey: regulatory (sticks), economic (carrots) and information-based (sermons) instruments. Kathryn Harrison later applied this typology to pollution control in her popular ‘Talking with the Donkey’ piece. Though command-and-control instruments were central up until the late 1990s, growing global interest in ‘New Environmental Policy Instruments’ (NEPI) led to a disinterest in regulatory mechanisms and an increase in attention to information-based and economic instruments. Are governments using regulation as a policy instrument now more than before or are they choosing policy mixes? In this paper, I examine the state of the art regarding regulation as an environmental policy instrument by exploring whether the apparent shift to NEPI did reduce interest in environmental regulation as a policy instrument. I find that policy experiments with models of policy instruments led to increased interest in policy instrument mixes. Evidence from a systematic review of JEPP scholarship and a broader scholarly review of the literature on environmental policy instruments over the past 20 years focused on drinking water and solid waste governance suggest that policy mixes might work best when faced with conditions of uncertainty and governance complexity.

International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 2019

Water, 2020

Cities face substantial water governance challenges, even more so when their activities are water... more Cities face substantial water governance challenges, even more so when their activities are water-intensive, as global tourism is. As the lower-most level of government, municipalities face important challenges when dealing with water stress. Designing robust urban water policy thus may require us to challenge currently popular modes of governance by river basin councils, as predicated by the integrated water resources management (IWRM) paradigm. In this paper, I conduct a public policy analysis of a case study of intra-urban water conflict in the Mexican city of San Miguel de Allende (SMA), an extremely popular tourist destination with substantive water scarcity challenges. I draw insights from an application of the Institutional Grammar Tool, IGT (as proposed by Ostrom and Crawford) on a series of textual datasets derived from ethnographic, qualitative longitudinal field research, document analysis, and elite interviews with stakeholders to explain the reasons underlying community...

Environmental Politics, 2020

ABSTRACT Under what conditions does environmental non-governmental (NGO) advocacy affect environm... more ABSTRACT Under what conditions does environmental non-governmental (NGO) advocacy affect environmental outcomes? We build on earlier theoretical work and contend that the influence of environmental NGO advocacy is conditioned on (a) the ability of local citizens to participate in the advocacy and (b) the vulnerability of the state to external pressure. Without these conditions, environmental NGO advocacy alone will not improve environmental conditions. Using a global dataset of environmental NGO advocacy and focusing on reductions in CO2 emissions, we evaluate the implications of this argument in a global sample of countries from 1975–2010. We find much support for our argument among non-OECD countries.

International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 2018

The Canadian Geographer / Le Géographe canadien, 2019

Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 2018

Policy Studies Journal, 2019

Water, 2019

Water insecurity in developing country contexts has frequently led individuals and entire communi... more Water insecurity in developing country contexts has frequently led individuals and entire communities to shift their consumptive patterns towards bottled water. Bottled water is sometimes touted as a mechanism to enact the human right to water through distribution across drought-stricken or infrastructure-compromised communities. However, the global bottled water industry is a multi-billion dollar major business. How did we reach a point where the commodification of a human right became not only commonly accepted but even promoted? In this paper, I argue that a discussion of the politics of bottled water necessitates a re-theorization of what constitutes “the political” and how politics affects policy decisions regarding the governance of bottled water. In this article I examine bottled water as a political phenomenon that occurs not in a vacuum but in a poorly regulated context. I explore the role of weakened regulatory regimes and regulatory capture in the emergence, consolidation...

Espiral Estudios sobre Estado y sociedad, 2017

International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 2018

Understanding the unique challenges facing vulnerable communities necessitates a scholarly approa... more Understanding the unique challenges facing vulnerable communities necessitates a scholarly approach that is profoundly embedded in the ethnographic tradition. Undertaking ethnographies of communities and populations facing huge degrees of inequality and abject poverty asks of the researcher to be able to think hard about issues of positionality (what are our multiple subjectivities as insider/outsider, knowledge holder/learner, and so on when interacting with vulnerable subjects, and how does this influence the research?), issues of engagement versus exploitation (how can we meaningfully incentivize participation in our studies without being coercive/extractive, and can we expect vulnerable subjects to become deeply in research design/data collection, and so on when they are so overburdened already?), and representation (what are the ethics of representing violence, racism, and sexism as expressed by vulnerable respondents? What about the pictures we take and the stories we tell?). ...

Espiral estudios sobre Estado y sociedad, 2015

New Political Science, 2020

The Routledge Handbook of Waste Studies, 2021

Revista de Gestión Pública, 2020

Espiral Estudios sobre Estado y Sociedad, 2021

Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning, 2020

International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 2019

Water, 2020

Environmental Politics, 2020

International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 2018

The Canadian Geographer / Le Géographe canadien, 2019

Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 2018

Policy Studies Journal, 2019

Water, 2019

Espiral Estudios sobre Estado y sociedad, 2017

International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 2018

Espiral estudios sobre Estado y sociedad, 2015

Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and …, 2002

Doctors for Democracy is the sixth volume in the series Cambridge Stud-ies in Medical Anthropolog... more Doctors for Democracy is the sixth volume in the series Cambridge Stud-ies in Medical Anthropology. This volume examines the paradoxical connections between science and politics in the rhetoric and activities of medicine and devel-opment in Nepal. Anthropologist ...

Global Environmental Politics, 2007

Global Environmental Politics, 2006

The Journal of Japanese Studies, 2007

ABSTRACT Japan's rapid industrialization in the post-war period has brought with it a num... more ABSTRACT Japan's rapid industrialization in the post-war period has brought with it a number of positive developments. Though manufacturing activities are often accompanied by the generation of massive amounts of pollutants, Japan, Hidefumi Imura and Miranda Schreurs argue, has nevertheless succeeded in controlling industrial pollution while maintaining economic growth. A number of contributions by various authors seek to demonstrate and explain this relationship. This book is the result of four workshops that resulted in a cohesive and readable volume. The volume may have been better titled "Environmental Policy for Pollution Control in Japan." As the editors clearly state, the bulk of the book is devoted to tracing the development of environmental policy instruments aimed at reducing the substantial amount of pollution generated in post-Meiji Japan. This is not the book to go to for information on Japan's policies on issues such as wildlife, marine, fisheries and climate change policy, as might have been expected from the broader title. The volume is, however, a great source to explain what factors have made Japanese pollution control policy so successful. The book begins with detailed historical reviews of the development of Japanese pollution control policy. It then covers the economic effects of pollution control policy instruments, the politics of Japanese pollution control policy, international influences on domestic Japanese environmental politics, and issues of policy design and implementation. It also addresses environmental policy instruments, both traditional (regulatory) and non-orthodox (voluntary). There is a chapter on government-industry agreements, an analysis of financial instruments, and an analysis of environmental technologies and industries in Japan. In conjunction with earlier chapters on environmental management and the lessons that can be learned from Japan's pollution control strategy, the volume may even have analyzed pollution a bit too extensively. Discussions on the involvement of nongovernmental organizations are surprisingly quite thin, except for some coverage in Jeffrey Broadbent's chapter on Japanese environmental politics. This omission is a bit astonishing, since for anti-toxics environmental groups tend to be quite vocal and efficient at mobilizing. Given the focus of the book (and of Japanese environmental policy) on reductions of polluting emissions, one would expect nongovernmental organizations in Japan to tackle these issues quite powerfully. There is little in the book, however, on the role of Japanese environmental NGOs in pressuring government and industry to minimize pollution. Broadbent touches on the topic, and Schreurs goes a bit further in her chapter. The likely reason for the lack of attention to this issue, as Imura and Schreurs indicate, is that Japan has done little in the way of involving civil society in environmental decision-making. A notable chapter in the volume is Schreurs' comparison of environmental policy styles in Japan, the European Union and the United States. This chapter examines Japanese policy style from the institutional perspective, but also explains how anti-pollution and conservation movements arose. This chapter alone touches on issue areas (wildlife, protected areas, and climate change) beyond pollution, albeit somewhat briefly. Schreurs indicates that the Japanese environmental policy style has evolved towards a less-regulatory approach, a trend that has become prevalent worldwide. She finds that Japanese innovations have been in the areas of point-source pollution control, in air and water, as well as in developments in energy efficiency, and argues that this model can and will be exported to other Asian countries. Imura concurs in his conclusion to the volume, suggesting that Japanese pollution control policy can and should be used as a model for other industrialized and industrializing nations. The book draws two additional lessons: first, that pollution control problems require substantial investments in pollution minimization equipment, and second, that a good way to tackle a contaminant-related problem is to link it with the public health implications. Knowing that their activities generated itai (pain) might have had an impact in the way corporate managers dealt with issues of pollution generation. Overall, Imura and Schreurs have unveiled the intricacies of Japanese pollution control policy in this volume. The book can be used at the undergraduate and graduate level, particularly as a stepping stone in projects focused on minimization of contaminant emissions and on Japanese environmental policy and politics.

Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and …, Jan 1, 2003

Global Environmental Politics, Jan 1, 2006

Empirical studies of water management in Mexico have been primarily focused on analyzing case stu... more Empirical studies of water management in Mexico have been primarily focused on analyzing case studies where the premiere institutional arrangement for water governance remains, at its very core, the River Basin Council (Consejo de Cuenca) model. Despite changes to the National Water Law that created River Basin Organisms (Organismos de Cuenca), water management in Mexico still privileges river basin councils as the unit focus of analysis (and consequently, as the “right” model of water governance). My empirical research on water governance in Mexico has already demonstrated that river basin councils are ineffective in managing wastewater. This paper builds on my previous work, examines the cumulative literature on water governance in Mexico and uses a combined polycentric systems and neo-institutional analysis framework to explore whether there is empirical evidence to support a shift in Mexican water policy that can potentially lead to a change in water resources governing paradigms, thereby moving beyond the governing-by-river-basin-council model that is privileged in the integrated water resources management (IWRM) literature. I posit that we need a better understanding of what polycentricity means for water governance in Mexico, and this paper is a first step towards such understanding.

One of Elinor Ostrom’s biggest contributions to scholarly research was broadening our understandi... more One of Elinor Ostrom’s biggest contributions to scholarly research was broadening our understanding of water as a commons, and of the potential of self-organizing groups to create incentives for collective action that would yield sustainable water management. Firmly rooted in neoinstitutionalist theories, Ostrom and her group developed the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework , which has been applied in a wide variety of settings to assess . Vincent Ostrom built the foundational roots where polycentricity and polycentric governance are set. In this paper, I undertake a historical overview of the joint contributions of the Ostroms to commons governance in Mexico, narrowing my analysis to water. My aim with the paper is to trace the development of applications of neoinstitutional theory, IAD and polycentric governance to Mexican water policy in the past 30 years. In the paper, I discuss some of my own work applying these theoretical frameworks to analyzing the governance of wastewater in Mexico, and I propose a research agenda that both furthers the Ostroms’ legacy and extends our understanding of water governance in Mexico.

Waste pickers have generally been characterized in the literature as having gained increased poli... more Waste pickers have generally been characterized in the literature as having gained increased political power (thus able to ascertain a high level of agency), and or as almost always self-interested individuals whose only focus is individual survival through low-skill, high-environmental-risk, low payoff labor. Neither is entirely accurate nor is the literature conclusive, thus a more in-depth exploration is required. This paper contributes to an emerging body of literature on conflict and cooperation at the local scale and the politics of urban struggle. Analyzing interaction dynamics amongst waste management system agents, this project seeks to uncover the hidden and revealed social and political struggles of waste pickers and local governments. This paper takes two of the Mexican case studies, Leon (Guanajuato) and Aguascalientes (Aguascalientes) and explores the relational elements of government and recycler interaction (in both conflict and cooperation form) as well as the development of formal and informal rules within the two groups of agents during the period 2009-2012. The paper shows how the city of Leon took a confrontational (and thus disempowering) approach to managing its relationships with waste pickers. In contrast, the city of Aguascalientes decided to take an innovative, ground-breaking approach that saw waste pickers make money from their recycling activity (Bono Verde). In the paper I posit hypotheses on the stark contrast in how these cities’ municipal governments approached the same problem, given their similar position as generally-thought-of-as-innovative-cities and examine potential sources of variation across both municipalities. Factors that could have potentially influenced the outcome include differences in the mayor’s political affiliations, the history of relationships between marginalized groups and the state, and others

II Bienal Territorios en Movimiento, Nov 22, 2012

Water Politics. Governance, Rights and Justice, 2020

In book: Las dimensiones políticas de los recursos hídricos: miradas cruzadas en torno a aguas turbulentasPublisher: CIESAS, 2019