Renou, Yvan <br/><br/>
Testing Dialectical Rationality on Water Governance: Lessons and Illustrations 

 -  2012.<br/>							 
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<br/><br/> After deconstructing the rationale underpinning the social engineering models for water management, and demonstrating their limitations, we propose an analysis based on the idea of “dialectical rationality.” Our aim is to develop a strategic toolkit for a necessary shift in the focus of concepts that has become increasingly problematic and, more precisely, to gain a new grasp of the complexity, diversity and politics at stake in water governance, while all these notions have been sidelined by the “economic dogma” of the World Bank. We demonstrate that this shift in conceptual focus opens the way for a reappraisal of the role of government, presenting it as the “initiator” of a partnership between the many stakeholders in water management at a territorial level.