How do institutional arrangements established by law become operational in practice? It takes work for them to develop problem-solving capabilities and win recognition from others-what the authors call "practical authority." Drawing from a decade-long, multi-site study of efforts to transform freshwater management in Brazil, the authors show how an assortment of protagonists-from state officials to university professors to activists-struggled to breathe life into new institutional designs. Their account weaves together three decades of national and state law-making with experimentation in establishing new kinds of participatory water management organizations. Exploring this process in sixteen river basins, the authors examine why some of those organizations adapted creatively to challenges while others never got off the ground. To approach this complex, volatile, and non-linear process of transformation, the book develops a framework for investigating the actions and practices of institution-building.

Rebecca Neaera Abers is Professor of Political Science at the University of Brasília. Margaret Keck is Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University.

Acknowledgements Abbreviations Prologue Chapter 1 -- Practical Authority, Institution-building, and Entanglement Chapter 2 -- Entangled Institutions and Layered Reform Narratives: Governing Water Resources in Historical Context Chapter 3 -- Institutional Design in Entangled Settings: How to Make an Unfinished Law Chapter 4 --Practicing Laws: Experiments with Institution Building Chapter 5 -- Becoming Committees: Diversity, Problems and Processes Chapter 6 -- Diversions of Authority: Power, Perseverance and Struggles over the Control of Water Resources Chapter 7 -- Building Practical Authority from Outside the State Conclusions Appendix 1: Methodological Narrative Appendix 2: List of interviews References