Human Organization, Vol. 76, No.

4, 2017
Copyright © 2017 by the Society for Applied Anthropology
0018-7259/17/040358-12$1.70/1

Performing Accountability: Unanticipated

Responses to Administrative Reform
Edwin Rap
At the heart of New Public Management (NPM) reforms lies a theory of accountability for results. In the past three decades,
this normative idea transferred from the “Anglo-American heartlands” of such reforms to many other parts of the world. By
means of an organizational ethnography of a Mexican water users’ association, the article shows that, in spite of reforms, such an
organization can operate as a body that is largely unresponsive and non-transparent to its users and the regulatory authority. The
management instead reverses accountability and shifts blame downwardly. Because culture shapes the reform from the inside,
reform does not necessarily change and depoliticize managerial practice as intended but does have concrete implications for
the practice and effects of accountability arrangements. The article argues that management performs accountability culturally,
and this works to morally legitimate managerial conduct that is unaccountable for results and produces a sub-optimal financial
and organizational performance. The case study contributes to an interpretive perspective that is applicable to a wide range
of administrative reforms that promote accountability in different cultural and political settings. This study leads to specific
recommendations to deal with the counterproductive results of NPM reforms in Mexican irrigation management.

Key words: administrative reform, NPM, accountability, accounting, cultural performance, ritual, ethnography

Introduction to new cultural and political settings in the South. This article
explores how such seemingly neutral and technical reforms

A
t the core of New Public Management (NPM) reforms
lies a universalist theory of accountability for results.
This article confronts the expected outcomes of NPM
reform with the actual results observed through ethnographic
methods. The reform under review is the transfer of pub-
licly managed irrigation schemes to water user associations
(WUAs) in Mexico.
NPM’s normative idea of accountability has become
part of the reform agenda of international financial and devel-
opment institutions, notably the World Bank and the OECD.
There is now more evaluation of these widely implemented
reforms than before (Pollitt 1995), but there is still a dearth
of ethnographic analysis of how everyday organizational
practice responds to reforms that are promoted in the name
of accountability. Such research is especially needed as the
normative idea of accountability is transplanted from the
“Anglo-American heartlands” of such reforms (Pollitt 2002)
Edwin Rap is a researcher at the IHE-Delft Institute for Water Education.
This article was a long time in the making and was often misunderstood.
I thank the three reviewers and the editor of this journal for their con-
structive comments illuminating the value of the argument. This article
crosses the borders of disciplines, and it was difficult to come to grips
with the theoretical language of public administration. Therefore, I
also thank Jan-Kees van Donge, Jens Andersson, Joost Beuving, and
Catherine O’Dea for sustained attention in developing the argument. The
research further owes a debt of gratitude to the ethnographic tradition
of Norman Long and the Manchester School in Anthropology.
are appropriated there and to what effect.
These administrative reforms enter “shared webs of
meaning” (Geertz 1973), which are created and transmitted in
a cultural setting through symbols, myths, rituals, and so forth.
The cultural environment is thus essential in this article, but
it is not seen as merely a contextual variable shaping reform
agendas and organizational performance (Hood 1998). This
insight results from the ethnographic research method, which
allows us to see how everyday organizing practices respond
and give meaning to reforms. The structure and patterns be-
hind these social practices are analyzed in an extended case
study (Van Velsen 1967). It is not claimed that its findings
are generalizable, and this article does not assert that the
results as reported here will unavoidably follow from these
reforms. Indeed, the main point made is that numerous differ-
ent outcomes are possible. However, an extended case study
contributes to an interpretive perspective that sensitizes the
researcher to similar patterns in other situations and asserts
the variety in social life.
Methodologically, the organizational ethnography present-
ed here is based on two years of intensive fieldwork between
1997 and 1999, during which participant observation of the
organizational activities in a WUA and a series of its assembly
meetings was the main research method. The researcher kept
detailed notes of what occurred in everyday organizational life,
and the extensive fieldwork contributed to developing an eye
for, and understanding of, organizational practices. However, in
a research setting of large power differences and drug-related

358 HUMAN ORGANIZATION

violence, formal interviews about controversial practices were
difficult, as this would endanger the informants’ safety and
the researcher’s presence and inside view of the organization.
Toward the end of this period, the WUA faced a financial
crisis, which provided an insightful moment to observe how
the management accounted for results. After the fieldwork,
the analysis focused specifically on two meetings in which
this crisis reached its peak. Victor Turner (1969) and others
have observed that a crisis in a collective provides a drama-
turgic opportunity to enact a particular understanding of the
situation before a public (Hajer and Uitermark 2008; ʼt Hart
1993; Hood 2007). Various follow-up visits to this WUA
and others in Western and Central Mexico, most recently in
2017, confirmed the continued relevance of the material and
its interpretation, given the reoccurrence of described patterns
during later events and in other areas.
The structure of the article is as follows. The next section
outlines the concepts used in this study to make sense of new
accountability arrangements and their effects in everyday
organizational life. The third section contextualizes the case,
explains how the normative NPM framework introduces
several accountability components, and summarizes the main
effects on financial accountability. The fourth section presents
a regular assembly meeting of water user delegates (forum,
account holder) to verify whether the WUA management
(actor, accounting entity) is downwardly accountable. The
fifth section evaluates upward accountability through an ex-
traordinary assembly meeting with the regulatory authority.
An analysis identifies several unanticipated organizational
consequences and ritual aspects of reform. The conclusions
elaborate on the major findings and discuss their wider rel-
evance and application.
I argue in this article that the WUA’s management per-
forms accountability culturally, and this works to morally
legitimate managerial conduct that is unaccountable for re-
sults and produces a sub-optimal financial and organizational
performance. The case study presented here contributes to
an interpretive perspective that is applicable to a wide range
of administrative reforms by analyzing how culture shapes
reform from the inside while observing the concrete meanings
and consequences that this has for organizations.
Theory on Accountability and Performance
Observed behavior rather than expected behavior is
central in the following. I look at several instances of water
sector reforms as cultural performances that do not reflect the
expected action. I follow therein Erving Goffman (1959:242),
who explains performance in the following manner: “[W]hen an
individual appears before others, he knowingly and unwittingly
projects a definition of the situation…,” with the understanding
that such behavior serves to influence other participants. For
Goffman, performance gives meaning to the organizing process
and is therefore not just an organizational output, as in NPM.
The etymological roots of the word accountability lie
in two meanings of the historical practice of accounting:
VOL. 76, NO. 4, WINTER 2017
“rendering a count” and “providing an account” in the sense
of telling or performing a story about this count (Bovens,
Goodin, and Schillemans 2014). From a related perspective,
Garfinkel (1967) studied how people in everyday life render
their actions and interactions accountable, or reciprocally
recognizable, to one another (Neyland and Woolgar 2002).
By “account-able,” he means “observable-and-reportable, i.e.
available to members as situated practices of looking-and-
telling” (Garfinkel 1967:1).
Munro (1996) builds on these insights by focusing on
the performative nature of account-giving (see also Dub-
nick 2005). Managers render themselves “visible” (and
accountable) to colleagues, seniors, or clients in different
ways by connecting themselves with output charts or quality
management tools (Munro 1999). Both numerical and nar-
rative accounts play a role in this by representing possible
causal relations between organizational members’ activities,
intermediaries, and outputs (Munro 2001). In this light, the
NPM’s emphasis on accountability for results acquires a
“performed-for-an-audience” aspect (Turner 1987). “Cul-
tural” performance refers to the use of “webs of meaning.” As
a form of ritual, cultural performance has a distinct legitimat-
ing character. When the performative use of reform- and/or
accounting devices is staged and becomes repetitive, it can
work as a ritual that contributes to moral accountability. Such
organizational behavior is intensely coupled with operational
activities.
In this understanding, cultural performance does not
stand apart from organizational performance. McKenzie
(2001) distinguishes multiple performative fields and the dif-
ferent values that are at stake. Cultural performance revolves
around social efficacy, whereas organizational performance
usually concerns efficiency. The author investigates how
these different fields increasingly overlap and feed back into
one another but not how they empirically interfere with each
other, either positively or negatively. The latter is necessary
to evaluate the multiple practices and performances that ad-
ministrative reform introduces into everyday organizational
life in the name of accountability.
The aim of NPM reforms that promote accountability is
to make public organizations responsible for results to their
clients and regulatory authorities. Inspired by private busi-
ness practices, NPM shifts the focus for accountability from
inputs and processes toward outputs and outcomes. By leaving
public managers free to manage, but measuring and reward-
ing their performance, NPM promises to make public service
providers directly accountable. The underlying assumption
is that increased accountability will improve their efficiency
and organizational performance (Merrey 1996; Aucoin and
Heintzman 2000; Dubnick 2005).
In public administration, accountability is generally un-
derstood as “the relationship between an actor and a forum,
in which the actor has an obligation to explain and justify
his or her conduct, the forum can pose questions and pass
judgment, and the actor may face consequences” (Bovens,
Schillemans, and ‘t Hart 2008:225). This definition provides
359
initial answers to the organizing questions of accountability
in “modern democracies”: who, to whom, for what, how,
and how effective? (Mulgan 2003). But a basic question
remains of whether such accountability arrangements work
as intended in different cultural, political, and economic
settings. To answer this, this study views accountability as
a social “mechanism” or an institutional relation to analyze
how accountability arrangements actually work in different
settings, rather than as a virtue or a normative set of standards
that informs the behavior of public actors and sets expecta-
tions about their proper and legitimate behavior (Bovens,
Schillemans, and ‘t Hart 2008).
Organizational theory identifies a contrary direction in
which organizations respond to external trends in formal
management. Meyer and Rowan (1977) suggest that formal-
ized structures function as powerful myths that organiza-
tions adopt ceremonially. Their dissemination occurs under
the influence of a policy or institutional environment that
considers these building blocks to be rational and necessary.
According to the principle of institutional isomorphism, the
incorporation of formal control structures and modern tech-
nologies provides external legitimacy rather than improving
operational performance (Di Maggio and Powell 1983). As
a result, organizations become loosely coupled, building
gaps between their formal structures and actual operational
activities (Weick 1976). Along this line, Power (1997) shows
the possibility of analyzing audit and financial accounting as
“rituals of inspection,” concerned with auditable form as an
end in itself rather than with substance. “…[T]he audit process
becomes a world to itself, self-referentially creating audit-
able images of performance. The audit process is decoupled
or compartmentalized in such a way that it is remote from
the very organizational processes which give it its point”
(Power 1997:95).
Similarly, an interesting current in public administration
allows for a critical perspective on the convergence of inter-
nationally promoted NPM reforms. Convergence approaches
assume that such reforms lead to more similar structures,
processes, and performances, but this tends to underestimate
the role of agency and politics in policy adoption. However,
Goldfinch (2006) demonstrates through a case of NPM-
inspired agentification in Japan how institutions can engage
in a “ritual of reform,” which means adopting the superficial
structures and legitimating rhetoric of internationally promot-
ed agency models to respond to reform pressures but actually
maintaining power and control by adapting and undermining
the reform model. Repeating the reform slogans, however,
does not affect the actual substance of reform and facilitates a
divorce between rhetoric and actuality. Like-minded authors
demonstrate that public management reforms exhibiting
convergence myths provide “unifying symbols” that harness
energy toward reform ends and “useful myths” that reproduce
a persistent gap between the rhetoric and reality of reform
(Goldfinch and Wallis 2010; Wallis and McLoughlin 2010).
The perspective set out above aims to study the cultural
and performative aspects of account-giving in response to
360
administrative reforms that introduce accountability in ev-
eryday organizational life. It further proposes to investigate
how these accounting practices are coupled with or decoupled
from operational activities and what effects this has on finan-
cial and organizational performance. From this perspective,
I will evaluate NPM’s promise of accountability in the case
of a Mexican WUA.
NPM Reform and Accountability within a
Mexican WUA
After World War II, international development banks
and national governments invested heavily in developing
large irrigation projects and in hydraulic bureaucracies con-
structing and managing such infrastructure projects. During
the 1980s, this state-controlled irrigation sector’s “failure to
perform” was increasingly questioned in line with the neo-
liberal doctrine of rolling back the state. Toward the end of
the decade, a new policy of Irrigation Management Transfer
(IMT) was developed in Mexico to transfer the operation,
maintenance, and administration of these publicly managed
irrigation districts to locally organized WUAs and govern
water users “at a distance” (Rap and Wester 2013, 2017).
This policy merged the interests of the World Bank, senior
segments of the hydraulic bureaucracy, and the Mexican
presidency (Rap, Wester, and Prado 2004). Mexico was the
first country to start IMT on a large scale and to transfer
the majority of large irrigation districts within one six-year
presidential period. The Mexican IMT policy became widely
propagated as a success and a model for other countries seek-
ing to improve the performance of their irrigation systems,
cut public expenditures, and rapidly transfer their irrigation
systems (Rap 2006).
Three components in the NPM reforms of Mexican
irrigation schemes anticipate the enhancement of account-
ability. First, local cost recovery is expected to increase
the financial accountability of irrigation management. The
Mexican IMT policy aims to create financially self-sufficient
WUAs that will take over the management, and recover
the full operating costs, of irrigation systems. A user fee
system introduced quasi market incentives to recover costs
to enable the scheme to become financially autonomous
from the government. However, it lacks competition, the
essential ingredient of markets. Nevertheless, WUAs should
become financially accountable to the water users because
they depend on the users’ willingness to pay irrigation ser-
vice fees at market rates for water and other services. The
introduction of performance-related pay for management
should further incentivize organizational performance,
which depends upon cost recovery.
Second, reforms decentralize management responsibility
to WUAs, which are intended as semi-autonomous service
provision enterprises that are downwardly accountable,
“rather than upwards through a hierarchy which is both
bureaucratically and politically driven” (Minogue 1998:30).
Decentralization allows managers to make decisions on
HUMAN ORGANIZATION
resource allocation closer to the point of delivery, thereby
providing scope for feedback from clients and other interest
groups (Hope 2002). With NPM’s customer focus in service
provision, proximity to the users improves the managerial
accountability of an organization. The WUAs’ decentralized
structure ensures both responsiveness to users and managerial
discretion. An underlying claim is that it is indispensable to
leave managers “free to manage” (Hood 1991) so that they
can adapt their service to local demands and reach their
performance targets. Downward accountability is further
enhanced through elections (electoral accountability) by
letting service users periodically elect representatives to
manage these entities and make these managers responsive
to democratic assemblies.
Third, state institutions disengage from direct service
provision and concentrate on regulatory functions. The Mexi-
can hydraulic bureaucracy restyled itself into a single-purpose
autonomous agency, the Comisión Nacional del Agua (CNA:
National Water Commission), which acquired a regulatory
role. The CNA depended for its oversight on the introduction
of accounting techniques and performance measurement in
the new WUAs, with the expectation that they would also
become upwardly accountable.
The case study presented below evaluates especially
these latter two reform components of downward (mana-
gerial and electoral) and upward accountability, but first
the article presents contextual information on the financial
accountability of the specific organization in question. The
WUA on which I focus here is located on the Left Bank of
the River Santiago, before it flows into the Pacific Ocean
in Nayarit, Western Mexico. This module diverted water
from the abundant river, and therefore, water was never that
scarce or expensive. A prerequisite for the transfer policy
was a significant increase in irrigation fees in order to make
the WUA financially autonomous. As a result, the WUA’s
self-sufficiency—actual fee collection over actual expen-
diture—improved significantly and exceeded 100 percent
in its first full productive year, 1993-1994. However, after
this initial fee increase, the fees and fee collection did not
increase in proportion to inflation and the WUA’s expen-
diture. As a result, its self-sufficiency decreased, leading
to negative annual balances in 1996-1997 and 1997-1998;
although, in the latter period, fee levels were slightly el-
evated, and self-sufficiency recovered somewhat from this
negative trend. Nevertheless, the moderate fee collection
resulted in a financial crisis because of increased political
expenditures, as will become clear below.
Although financial performance improved, financial ac-
countability did not function according to the NPM theory for
two related reasons. To begin with, the management organized
its largest revenues by making financial deals with a range
of subsidy providers, agro-industrial companies, service us-
ers, agricultural producers, and a bank. These income flows
circumvented the (un)willingness of individual users to
pay their fees and made individual user satisfaction largely
inconsequential. Hence, it escaped the assumed incentive
VOL. 76, NO. 4, WINTER 2017
structure that would make it financially accountable to a
larger base of individual water users (peasants and private
farmers). Unsurprisingly, the management became relatively
more responsive to these financially powerful public and pri-
vate agencies and privileged user groups than to downward
accountability. Further, the WUA’s financial situation was
not transparent to user delegates and the CNA because its
revenue sources and expenses were not accurately reported in
the annual financial reports. The reported financial data were
therefore not facts but rather part of managerial accounts that
selectively visualized certain aspects of financial management
while rendering others invisible.
Downward Accountability in Practice
Nevertheless, electoral and managerial accountability
may correct the lack of financial accountability and make the
management downwardly accountable. The formal organi-
zational structure of the WUA assigns the general assembly
of delegates as its highest organ, which is elected by user
constituencies from twenty-four ejidos (land reform commu-
nities) and one private producers’ association. The assembly
then elects a board of directors for a period of three years and
controls it through regular assembly meetings.
However, elections are open to fraud. At a confidential
breakfast meeting in 1996, the first WUA president, Pérez,
a large private landholder, bought several WUA delegates’
votes so that his protégé Nuñez, a local peasant leader, would
succeed him as president. After his election for a three-year
period, Nuñez presided over the board of directors and was
able to employ Pérez’s confidant, Gutierrez, as manager
and place various trusted aids as WUA staff. Henceforward,
the directive group, referred to as “the management” in this
article, effectively maintained control over the WUA and its
assembly until the next elections in 1999.
This course of action reinforced a group of delegates
who supported the management and marginalized a smaller
group in the assembly who disagreed with the process. The
management rewarded the former group for their support
through special favors and small privileges. A certain group
solidarity and complicity was further sustained between the
management and these delegates around assembly meetings,
lively meals, and occasional celebrations. However, toward
1998, meetings were organized on an increasingly irregular
basis, and the monthly schedule was never met. In the pre-
ceding year, political expenditure and the construction of
a new office kept the management occupied and depleted
the WUA’s resources. The board organized assemblies only
when very urgent matters arose. A financial crisis in the WUA
presented such an occasion. The WUA could no longer pay
staff salaries and its debt to CNA. Being in control of the
headworks, water price setting, and wholesaling, as well as
in its role of a regulatory agency, CNA now exerted pressure
on the WUA to fulfil its financial obligations. In the meeting
presented below, the management accounts for the way in
which it resolved the crisis.
361
 In April 1998, the board convened the first assembly
meeting in more than six months. The setting was the
courtyard of the recently finished office building, between
freshly painted walls. The spatial setup for the assembly
visually displayed decision making power in the WUA.
The management seated itself behind an elongated wooden
counter in front, facing rows of chairs for the delegates.
Against the back wall stood the canaleros, the lower-level
staff who distribute water in the field. President Nuñez
opened the meeting and observed that a long time had
passed since the last assembly. He was aware that the
delegates had problems in their ejidos and promised that
their wishes would be met.
The management first inaugurated the new office build-
ing and emphasized it as a collective achievement. Nuñez’s
subordinate, Gutierrez, welcomed the delegates to the WUA’s
new office and reminded them that this would be the first as-
sembly here. He was pleased that finally they had their own
building and no longer had to pay rent. Nuñez addressed the
delegates: “The whole construction cost a lot of money, but
I think that you agree with the fact that we now have our
own place.”
From this major expenditure, the management proceeded
to the financial situation of the WUA. The financial accounts
brought some transparency, it seemed, but needed to be read
carefully. Gutierrez distributed an overview of the irrigation
year 1997-1998 with the WUA’s expenses and a monthly
irrigation progress report up to and including the previous
month. Subsequently, he commented that the programmed ir-
rigated areas were much higher than the actual irrigated areas.
Gutierrez reminded the delegates that they programmed many
more hectares (around 19,000 hectares) than usually irrigated
(about 10,500 hectares). This was to pay the same [low] water
price to the CNA as the previous year ($1.17 MXN [$0.06]
per m3 of delivered water). The water price for the WUA was
calculated as a function of the programmed surface. (Using
the actual irrigated surface would imply a higher price of
$2.12 MXN [$0.12] per m3: $1.17 [$0.06] x 19,000/10,500
hectares and larger payments to the CNA). Gutierrez further
explained that fee collection lagged behind because unusual
rains in December and January resulted in less water demand.
Bean irrigation, in particular, was therefore much less than
other years. Furthermore, the irrigated area under rice was
decreasing every year because of problems with weeds and
low prices.
The treasurer was called upon to report on the financial
situation. Slowly and somewhat mechanically, he enumer-
ated all the individual items and stated the totals from a
sheet with monthly financial data. He emphasized that to
date only $1,400,000 MXN ($76,900) of the programmed
$2,700,000 MXN ($148,300) for the 1997-1998 cycle
had been collected. The president then clarified who was
responsible for the disappointing fee collection. Nuñez
concluded that he was concerned that the WUA was behind
with its payments to the CNA. He called on the delegates
to help improve fee collection because he thought that fee
362
default was also their responsibility. Lists of fee default-
ers in their ejido were circulated to help them with this. A
delegate agreed, but then opined that the canaleros should
be more vigilant in ensuring that water users pay their
fees. Despite the canaleros’ presence, Nuñez supported
this attack on them and publicly addressed Gutierrez about
this. The secretary of the board of directors stood up and
expressed the view that those canaleros who did not do
their job should be fired. As if expecting these charges,
just before the assembly meeting, Gutierrez increased the
pressure on the canaleros to improve fee collection and
distributed updated lists of fee defaulters in their sections
of the irrigation district to enable this.
Nuñez emphasized that the management had taken ad-
ministrative measures to curtail expenditure. For example,
they now charged ejidos for machines borrowed to carry
out public works; and the size of the WUA staff had been
reduced. In reaction, a delegate congratulated the board on the
measures taken to reduce personnel and expenditure. Nuñez
went on to explain that there were a number of unforeseen
outlays that were not incorporated in the original budget and
for which they did not ask permission from the majority of
delegates. He mentioned the newly constructed building and
the $250,000 MXN ($13,700) pesos bank loan to purchase
the site.
The president’s account identified the causes of the crisis
and how he wished to resolve it. He presented a financial
report that illustrated a disappointing fee collection among
the water users. As a result, he had to request a loan from the
local bank to resolve the association’s current cash shortage.
The president argued that it was important for the assembly
to approve this loan. “The word is yours,” he said; yet, he
continued to explain that it was likely that the WUA’s rev-
enues would further decrease with the low agricultural prices.
He concluded by observing: “I believe you agree with this
loan,” which was not challenged; only one delegate warned
the board about the risk of the WUA’s current financial per-
formance. He remained a sole voice, as his concern was not
taken up by others.
When the meeting was over, Nuñez waited a little while
until the somewhat critical delegates had left and then invited
the remaining delegates and the board members to a copi-
ous lunch in a nearby restaurant. Nuñez used this pleasant
occasion to reconfirm his relations with the better-disposed
delegates. A spirited conversation ensued that left managerial
issues to one side.
Upward Accountability toward the Regulatory
Authority?
If downward accountability can be reversed, upward
accountability could possibly correct this. The following
episode of this financial drama recounts an extraordinary
assembly initiated by the CNA, in which this regulatory au-
thority exerted pressure on the WUA management to become
financially accountable.
HUMAN ORGANIZATION
Preamble
Rumor had it that the state director of the CNA, Ochoa,
would attend and address the meeting, but nobody knew what
he wanted to discuss during this exceptional visit. The CNA
unit head, Blanco, whose job it was to supervise the WUA’s
activities for the CNA district, was extremely nervous about
his senior boss’s coming to his area. The WUA’s manager,
Gutierrez, was more relaxed. Blanco asked him why President
Nuñez had not arrived yet and why the delegates had not
been asked to arrive earlier so that they would be on time. He
mentioned that Ochoa was a very difficult person who would
want to start on arrival.
Although Ochoa had already held this position for six
years, until recently, he had never been closely concerned
with the WUAs. The fact that he was now attending a WUA
assembly for the very first time indicated the severity of the
financial crisis. The district head, Becerra, maintained cordial,
yet ambivalent, relations with the WUA. He received personal
gifts and benefits and was always well received with food and
drinks when he visited the WUA. When the WUA manage-
ment was criticized, he stated that he could not intervene, as
these were matters for the assembly, which had voted for this
board. However, the district head’s approach to the WUA had
recently changed, motivating him to request the extraordinary
assembly meeting. At an earlier meeting at a regional CNA
level, senior officials pointed out to him the poor financial
performance and agricultural productivity in the Nayarit mod-
ules. Since then, he had aimed to improve the reports on the
WUA’s self-sufficiency to the CNA headquarters in Mexico
City. In addition, the financial crisis concerned him because
he was financially dependent on the WUAs.
Nevertheless, the CNA officials had to operate carefully.
The WUA management held several political positions in
the municipal and state government and could exert political
pressure for the removal or transfer of state officials, through
the state governor and other powerful groups in the dominant
political party Partido Revolucionario Institucional (Institu-
tional Revolutionary Party or PRI) and the state bureaucracy.
The managerial group consisted of Pérez, the former WUA
president, regional deputy, board member, and patron to the
current president, Nuñez—recently also elected as municipal
peasant leader—and the manager, Gutierrez, several other
staff members, and supportive delegates. So there was a
risk of this financial crisis of the WUA becoming a political
conflict at state level.
In front of the WUA office, an impressive convoy of
government pick-ups came to a standstill. Ochoa and Becerra
arrived with an entourage of CNA officials. They entered the
office and vigorously started shaking hands with the manager,
the office staff, and the delegates. Nuñez phoned the office and
promised to be there in ten minutes. Gutierrez asked Ochoa
for permission to wait for him, but, as after fifteen minutes
Nuñez had not arrived, Gutierrez decided to start the meeting
without him. He gestured to the delegates to sit down and took
a seat in front of the audience at the left end of the counter. He
VOL. 76, NO. 4, WINTER 2017
welcomed Ochoa, who was seated in the center of the counter,
and called on him to speak. On either side of Ochoa sat the
secretary and the treasurer of the board of directors. District
Head Becerra sat quietly in the right corner. In contrast to
other occasions, he hardly intervened during the meeting.
Instead, he preferred to listen submissively to the words of
his superior, as if he had been severely reprimanded. Only
around eleven delegates out of a total of twenty-five were
present, and later two or three more arrived. The canaleros
stood at the back again and distributed soft drinks, without
interfering with the meeting.
The State Director of the CNA Speaks
Ochoa orated for almost half an hour with the powerful
voice and authority of a Mexican government official. The
one-sided flow of words was interrupted just once. He told
the delegates that he wanted to exchange thoughts with them
about the WUA’s administrative situation. District Head
Becerra had asked him to speak with the board about this.
His reaction was that he wanted to speak with everybody,
including the delegates. He was of the opinion that the
WUA was not just the board but also the delegates. This was
important to him, he emphasized. The delegates represented
the users from different ejidos, and in their name, they had
to take decisions and express their opinions about how the
WUA should function.
In Nayarit, there was only one irrigation district consist-
ing of four modules, Ochoa explained to the delegates. The
other three had water availability problems, but their WUAs
were performing well administratively. The Left Bank, by far
the largest module, had a water surplus and the lowest water
price, and yet “we are doing poorly.” The first point he wanted
to discuss was that the WUA was behind in its payment to
the CNA for the water used, in the amount of $60,000 MXN
($3,300). He gave an example of another module that always
paid its debts on time. Ochoa rhetorically asked how it was
possible that a module under these favorable conditions had
such a low fee collection rate, just 45 percent. Ochoa drew
a comparison with other Mexican states such as Sinaloa and
Sonora, where fee collections of around 95 percent were
achieved.
According to the law, it was compulsory for the water
user to pay his fees. If this did not happen, the CNA had the
power to cut off the water until the WUA paid. Ochoa argued
that fee collection was everybody’s responsibility: the board,
the manager…. Meaningfully, he stated that “friendship is
one thing, but commitments are another.” These should not
be confused. He went on to make it clear, however, that it was
also the delegates’ responsibility. They also had the right to
be involved in decision making. They had elected Nuñez as
president, but they could also correct him. If they thought that
the manager was not performing well, they had the capacity
to remove him; or, if they wanted the board to change certain
things in the administration, they could give voice to this. But
such rights, Ochoa declared, also entailed responsibilities. It
363
was the duty of a delegate to ensure that the users in his ejido
paid the fees. The responsibility should be very personal, as
if the delegate would otherwise have to pay himself.
The state director continued with a penetrating voice
and an expression of concern on his face to discuss another
point of attention: the use of the WUA’s maintenance ma-
chines. Their frequent and protracted disrepair and their use
by unskilled operators had produced a large backlog in the
annual maintenance program. Further, he mentioned that one
machine was presently working outside the module, although
the Left Bank program had not yet been finished. Then sud-
denly, WUA President Nuñez came bursting in. With his
theatrical entrance, he crudely interrupted Ochoa’s oration
and semi-politely called “Good afternoon” to the delegates.
While Nuñez passed through the rows of chairs, the other
board members changed seats so that he could sit next to
Ochoa at the center of the counter.
When the dust from this arrival had settled, Ochoa re-
gained the audience’s attention. He summarized for Nuñez
what he had been telling the delegates about his worries
regarding the administration of the WUA, the low fee col-
lection, and the diversion of the machinery. Another matter
was that the governor had indicated that he wanted to make
a tour of the four irrigation systems in Nayarit. It was not
his intention to speak to the delegates but rather to visit the
countryside. Ochoa recalled a recent embarrassing moment
when the governor on a tour through one of the modules
pointed out a badly maintained canal to him. He wanted to
prevent this from happening again.
To round off, Ochoa returned to his observations regard-
ing the responsibilities of the delegates. He stated that an as-
sembly should be organized every month so that the delegates
would be well informed to take decisions. His intention was
to visit these monthly meetings. At the end of his monologue,
he acknowledged that his observations had perhaps been hard
but that he wanted them to be clear. It was possible that he
was wrong and, if that was so, he should be told. Finally, he
invited the delegates to express their views.
The President’s and the Manager’s Response
Nuñez responded in a routine manner. He apologized
and provided an excuse for being late. His welcome to Ochoa
was courteous, indicating that the new office was now also
‘his house.’ Nuñez thanked him for his observations, which
he characterized as firm but useful. In his response, Nuñez
followed Ochoa’s points of critique that he had written on
a nameplate. In relation to fee collection, he acknowledged
that it had lagged behind. They had now reached the point
that five consecutive salary periods could not be paid. In his
defense, he indicated that external issues and the canaleros
were the causes of this.
Subsequently, Nuñez made a comment about the dif-
ficulty of getting spare parts for the machinery. About the
machine working outside the module, he told the delegates
that it had broken down some time previously, and there was
364
no money to repair it. The deal was that the WUA would lend
it out in exchange for its repair. Nuñez continued that given
the lack of repair funds, they requested a loan of $250,000
MXN ($13,700) from BANRURAL. This loan had been ap-
proved at the previous assembly meeting.
Immediately after Nuñez finished, manager Gutierrez
continued. He began with an extensive repetition of what his
superior had said. Then he added two new things. First, he
mentioned that the WUA had reached agreements with several
sorghum and rice producers who could not pay their fee right
now. Instead, they promised to pay their fees at harvest time.
Second, the assembly had been informed at its last meeting
about the fee collection lagging behind. Every delegate was
given a list of fee defaulters, but unfortunately, this had not yet
led to their payment. When Gutierrez finished, Ochoa again in-
vited the delegates to make comments, but Gutierrez resumed
and stated that it was good for delegates to make comments.
Nevertheless, he continued to talk for several minutes. Then
the treasurer invited the delegates to tell the meeting without
hesitation what people were saying in the streets.
The Delegates
In the front row, a user delegate had been asking for
permission to speak for some time. He grasped the first op-
portunity and asked why there was a machine working outside
the module. Nuñez repeated that the deal was in exchange for
its repair, an explanation that satisfied the delegate.
Another delegate expressed his opinion that for every
machine, there should be one skilled operator who knew how
to maintain it. He then confirmed Gutierrez’s assertion that
the delegates had been informed at the preceding assembly
about the fee collection problems and that they had received
a list of fee defaulters.
A third delegate remarked that the management should
not tolerate sorghum and rice producers not paying their
fees. He was critical of the fee-defaulting rice producers
who already paid a relatively low fee, considering the large
water quantities that they received. Gutierrez immediately
objected that the list of fee defaulters consisted of all kinds
of farmers, besides rice producers, also tobacco producers,
bean producers, and so forth.
The secretary of the board intervened and said that in
the previous year there was a lot of resistance to the fee in-
crease and that it was therefore a very difficult decision. His
words were confirmed by nods from delegates. At the time,
he had supported this decision, and now they could see how
necessary it was. In response, another delegate reminded the
meeting that during the fee negotiations, they were promised
that the fee increase would terminate the WUA’s financial
problems. But now it appeared that this was not the case.
After a while, Nuñez responded to this critique with an air
of contrition: “Indeed there have been decisions that we
should not have taken,” but then emphasized that they were
always made in the best interests of the WUA. In response,
two delegates made remarks about the building of the office.
HUMAN ORGANIZATION
Closure of the Meeting
Toward the end of the meeting, Ochoa indicated that
he wanted to make a few concluding observations. He re-
peated most of his earlier remarks. He stated that it was a
good thing that they had acquired a loan, but the question
was who was going to pay the interest? To conclude, Ochoa
asked whether there were any other observations, and this
engendered another series of remarks by Nuñez, Gutierrez,
and some delegates.
The secretary rose and stated that he was willing to or-
ganize a monthly assembly if that was what Ochoa wanted
and asked the delegates to invite their colleagues, as not all
the delegates participated in the WUA. Ochoa thanked the
delegates, stood up, and walked away from the long coun-
ter. Everybody then stood up. Ochoa started shaking hands.
Then he walked through the office and out to his pick-up.
Soon afterwards, the CNA convoy of cars left for the state
capital, Tepic.
Standing in a small group, a delegate smiled devilishly
at CNA Unit Head Blanco and asked how Ochoa could know
about the machines. Blanco avoided this insinuation and di-
verted attention by answering with a joke. I was standing to
one side with a canalero, who confided to me: “Do you see,
they are trying to blame us,” referring to the management,
but he shut up when another delegate joined us. The latter
concluded that it was a scolding and opined that they should
not have started with the new office.
CNA Unit Head Blanco departed after helping to put
away the chairs. In his pick-up, he relaxed and also concluded
that it was a scolding, for everybody. But it was good that
they were finally concentrating their attention on the poor
administration. Something had to change, he stated. Blanco
admitted that a fee collection rate of 45 percent was very low.
The problem was that they reached agreements with friends
and acquaintances. Blanco thought that the canaleros were
right when they said that it was not their fault. The only thing
that would really help was cutting the water supply from the
dam. “Let’s talk clearly, why beat about the bush?” Blanco
asked. “There is a lot of money here, but they use the WUA
for their positions. You will see that, when Pérez is on cam-
paign, they again will use the machinery politically. That is
the problem, everything is politics,” he opined. “What do you
think Nuñez’s campaign [for municipal peasant leader] cost?
But we are also guilty,” Blanco declared. The CNA allowed
the WUA to program far too many hectares in order to lower
the amount paid to the CNA.
About his CNA superiors, Blanco remarked that they
were around long enough to know what was happening.
“They know everything; they just cannot say a thing.”
Ochoa and Becerra did not really intervene because they did
not want problems with Deputy Pérez. That was why they
enlisted the help of the delegates, he explained: they wanted
them to exert more control over the board. The delegates
were not informed about everything; for example, the fact
that a machine was working outside the module was new
VOL. 76, NO. 4, WINTER 2017
to them. After the meeting, Ochoa told Blanco to be more
vigilant. This was easy for Ochoa to say, he declared. Ochoa
was in a position to say something like “remove that ma-
chinery from there.” “But if I say something like that, they
won’t let me in anymore.” Yet, he had high hopes that things
would change after this. At the next assembly, they would
want to project a different image in order to demonstrate
that the WUA was working.
Ordinary water users, such as Bernardo from the head
end ejido of La Presa, noted an improvement in maintenance
since the WUA received new maintenance machinery at the
time of the transfer. However, he also noticed that these
machines were often intensively used by its management
outside of its maintenance program. As a result, requests from
his ejido for assistance for public works were not addressed.
Other water users saw both positive (better maintenance) and
negative aspects (higher fees) of the management transfer but
observed no radical changes in the operation of the irrigation
system. Critical delegates from the tail-end of the irrigation
system boycotted the assembly meetings until new elections
were held in 1999.
Analysis
Through detailed observation of how organizational
practice responds to policy measures promoted in the name
of accountability, this ethnographic case study has identified
at least five unanticipated and contradictory organizational
responses to administrative reform that illustrate how a
cultural politics shapes NPM reforms from the inside. These
responses subverted the formal dual accountability toward
service users and the government regulator.
First, the managerial use of accountability arrangements
and accounting devices reversed accountability from the
management to personnel and water user delegates. Despite
the formal organizational structure of the WUA, the assembly
of delegates was unable to act as its highest decision making
body and make the management accountable to its users. As
a result, the management was not accountable for impor-
tant financial and operational decisions. What is more, the
management redistributed accountability and shifted blame
by framing financial accounts that made canaleros and user
delegates responsible for the disappointing fee collection. In
this manner, it disclaimed direct responsibility for the finan-
cial crisis. At times, the management did its best to manifest
the ideals of accountability and transparency to conceal their
actual lack in practice.
Second, the reforms assume a downward financial ac-
countability to fee-paying users, but the financial deals to
raise revenues implied multiple weaker accountabilities to
external revenue sources (Romzek 2000). These financial
agreements with different public and private agencies and
other politically influential and financially capable actors
meant that managerial decision making was only to a very
limited extent directly dependent on individual fee-paying
users and their satisfaction with the services delivered.
365
 As the theory predicts, there was a managerial effort to
decrease expenditure and increase revenue in order to achieve
financial autonomy. Nevertheless, cost-effective management
was very selective, as the management cut costs on personnel
but not on property and politics. The enormous investment
of time, staff, and money in Nuñez’s political campaign and
the informal agreements with favored clients increased costs
and lowered fee collection. Yet, the financial reports rendered
this invisible, and the assemblies did not address this. These
problems hampered the WUA’s ability to achieve (long-term)
financial self-sufficiency.
Third, the political use of organizational resources
favored a political group and its constituency and not the
water users as a whole. One can discern a managerial effort
to make service delivery more appropriate, but this effort
was biased. For example, the financial agreements with a
select group of larger producers allowed privileged access to
services and postponed fee payment in exchange for financial
and political support.
Rather than a uniform improvement in organizational
performance, a concentration of services occurred, targeted
at those who were either financially capable or politically
influential enough to support the political group in control
of the WUA. This excluded other user groups from service
provision. For example, maintenance machines were less
frequently employed in the San Blas area. This tail-end part
of the irrigation system lay in another municipality that was
not part of the electoral constituency of the group in control.
Fourth, the regulatory agency feared the WUA manage-
ment for political and financial reasons instead of the other
way around. On the basis of signals from the federal level
based on alarming performance data, the CNA state level
came into action when the CNA district’s revenue source was
under threat. However, this pressure did not directly address
the political root causes of the financial crisis. The financial
and institutional position of the CNA officials became too
dependent on the WUAs for these officials to effectively in-
tervene and challenge the financially affluent and politically
influential WUA managers. This contrasts with the image of
a neutral oversight authority, correcting a service provider
when it transgresses pre-determined rules.
Fifth, the management culturally performed accountabil-
ity, instead of becoming accountable to the assembly for the
negative financial results. Notably, they skillfully combined
financial and narrative accounts to present the management as
being accountable to the assembly delegates, who represent
larger water user constituencies. In practice however, by
means of this performance they imposed their own definition
of the situation and framed the financial crisis as a fee collec-
tion problem with exactly the opposite effect. By acting as
if the assembly was taking a decision to resolve the financial
crisis, the management shuffled off responsibility for the poor
financial performance and a posteriori legitimated a loan that
had already been contracted.
The managerial accounts framed the financial crisis mor-
ally, by publicly pointing out the culprits and scapegoating
366
the canaleros. The management also made the delegates
morally complicit by visualizing their role in the crisis; and
the delegates in majority participated in this performance
and affirmed its moral framing. “Performing accountability”
retrospectively legitimated managerial and financial decisions
that produced a sub-optimal organizational performance. The
management thereby positioned itself as morally accountable
for positive results and delegated responsibility for negative
results. In sum, accounting rituals in the assembly morally
legitimated managerial decisions and reinforced a feeling
of collective co-responsibility among a supportive group of
delegates.
Together, these five unintended organizational responses
to administrative reform show empirically why accountability
arrangements do not always work as intended (Bovens, Schil-
lemans, and ‘t Hart 2008). They reveal and accommodate a
cultural repertoire in public management that induces ac-
countabilities and values “results” differently than predicted
by the instrumental and rational choice models that underlie
NPM.
Five ritual aspects in the meetings contributed to the
moral framing of the financial crisis, although the events
were not necessarily repeated. First, the ritual setting reflected
the actual hierarchy between the management and the as-
sembly. Second, the inauguration of the new office building
was celebrated as a symbol of collective achievement and
aimed to offer a foundation myth for the WUA. Third, the
convivial meal, repeated after every assembly meeting, ritu-
ally emphasized the delegates’ moral complicity and group
solidarity with the management. Fourth, invoking a ritual
accounting cycle of gathering and presenting financial data
inspired trust and helped define the crisis. Fifth, the repeti-
tion of the managerial account of the crisis by the manager
reinforced its message. Hence, ritual contributed to enforcing
group solidarity, collective symbols, and feelings of morality
(Collins 2004). This effect “may only be momentary” (Moore
and Myerhoff 1977:9), but it was well-timed to account for
the financial crisis. I argue in the conclusion that these ritual
components are not empty of meaning and consequence.
The organizational episode presented here is part of
longer-term “ebbs and flows of leadership accountability”
(Fox 1992). The ethnographic focus of this article does not
allow for a longer-term analysis of these changing tides. The
intention is thus not to generalize the findings, as the analyzed
accountability patterns did not remain static after these events.
In fact, different moments of electoral accountability fol-
lowed one another between 1999 and 2017, associated with
the periodic elections in the WUA’s assembly. Nonetheless,
the political use of the WUA management and its resources
for campaigning and reaching political positions recurred,
without being prevented by the user assembly. Although
electoral accountability varied over time, the limited financial
accountability to water users continued. The point is therefore
that accountability mechanisms can be subverted financially
and electorally for extensive periods and that this is ritually
and politically legitimated.
HUMAN ORGANIZATION
 Conclusions
The major finding presented here is that NPM reforms
meant to make management accountable can in practice be
used to legitimate managerial conduct that is not account-
able for results at all. The managerial use of accountability
arrangements and accounting devices reversed accountability
and shifted blame to personnel and water user delegates (Hood
2002, 2007). Specifically, the article argues that manage-
ment’s cultural performance of accountability worked to
morally legitimate managerial conduct that was unaccount-
able for results and produced a sub-optimal financial and
organizational performance.
The main contribution of this case study to reform and
accountability studies is that it offers an interpretive per-
spective that analyzes how culture shapes reform from the
inside. This allows the cultural performance of a normative
ideal (i.e., accountability) to be studied while the concrete
meanings and consequences that this has for an organiza-
tion are being observed. This perspective advances critical
public administration and organizational studies showing that
using “rituals of reform and inspection,” “powerful myths,”
and “reform symbols” invokes a gap between “rhetoric and
reality” or “ritual and actuality” (Christensen and Lægreid
2003; Goldfinch 2006; Goldfinch and Wallis 2010; Meyer and
Rowan 1977; Power 1997; Wallis and McLoughlin 2010).
However, when absolutizing this gap, much research fails to
observe and analyze the social efficacy, material implications,
and contradictory meanings of these cultural and performative
acts in their actual context. In this case, we found that: first, the
cultural performance of accountability enabled the political
and material control over resources—affecting organizational
performance and service provision adversely—by depleting
financial resources and overusing maintenance machinery.
Second, the performance of accountability had concrete
cultural meaning for group formation and organizational
legitimation. Durkheim (2001) already observed that the
ritual celebration of collective symbols and joint informal
gatherings reinforces a moral base for group solidarity.
The interpretive perspective that emerges from this
ethnographic case study is applicable to a wide range of ad-
ministrative reforms that promote accountability in organiza-
tions, both inside and outside the heartlands of NPM reforms.
It facilitates the observation of organizational responses in
reform situations that are usually not observed and antici-
pated and sensitizes awareness of a diversity of outcomes of
managerial behavior.
The case further illustrates that NPM reforms in natural
resources management do not necessarily succeed in depo-
liticizing public management and separating politics from
administration (Gregory 2009; Pollitt and Bouckaert 2004)
when local politicians or regional strongmen enter the de-
centralized organizational spaces that such reform creates.
Without effective accountability arrangements, they are
enabled to direct resources to political campaigns, special
interests, personal enrichment, or corruption, and jump to
VOL. 76, NO. 4, WINTER 2017
higher political positions. The apolitical NPM model cannot
solve this problem because it obscures the inherently political
organization of clients (water users), public resources, and
accountability arrangements (Rap 2007).
Unfortunately, no magic bullet is available to prevent
the counterproductive responses to NPM reforms in public
management, but the start of counteracting them is an inter-
pretive perspective that makes them visible, analyzes their
implications, and builds on such research to derive recom-
mendations. Three specific recommendations to revise policy
and practice emanate from this case study and its analytical
framework: first, the introduction of open elections among all
water users for WUA board positions to improve downward
accountability and replace the delegate system that invites
political and financial manipulation; second, the design of
central accountability controls of a democratic political na-
ture, independent from local and regional political interests,
to improve upward accountability and complement financial
and technical accounting by the CNA; third, improved retro-
spective sanctioning based on ex-post reporting to strengthen
political and managerial accountability (Gregory 2009).
Administrative reforms around the world are culturally
performed and draw on ritual, symbol, myth, and magic
(Christensen and Lægreid 2003; Edelman 1964; Goldfinch
2006; de Neufville and Barton 1987; Pollitt and Hupe 2011;
Strathern 2000). This is not surprising, for two reasons. On
the one hand, the etymological origin of, “reform” (refor-
mare: betterment; Reformation) is historically connected
with religion and ritual. On the other hand, traditional public
administration has many attributes of secular ritual: repeti-
tion, role playing, staging, stylization, order, the creation of
meaning, and the collective dimension (Goodsell 1997;
Moore and Myerhoff 1977). Both sacred ritual and secular
ritual therefore have historically shaped public and political
life in many parts of the world (Beezley, Martin, and French
1994; Moore and Myerhoff 1977; Rap 2007). Surprisingly
often however, the cultural performance of administrative
reform and its concrete financial, material, and power effects
are rationalized or deleted from the public eye.
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