Deliberative Democracy and Water Management in New Zealand: a Critical Approach to Collaborative Governance and Co-Management Initiatives

This article offers a critical analysis of collaborative water governance initiatives in New Zealand that is embedded in deliberative democratic theory. The article begins with a review of the scientific and political dimensions of the country’s water quality issues. The authors then discuss collaborative governance initiatives in the Canterbury region and freshwater co-management initiatives between the Crown and Maori, the indigenous people of New Zealand. The article relates these two sets of collaborative practices linked to water policies to deliberative democracy and shows how a systemic approach to deliberation and the implementation of mini-publics could mitigate some shortcomings of collaborative water governance initiatives in New Zealand, both the problems of “wallpaper” democracy, in which the public’s engagement is relegated to superficial decisions, and the power imbalance between elites and the general public in collaborative decision-making processes. The model may also apply to other water governance efforts.