Aligning agendas: practitioner practices to navigate situations of misaligned agendas in South Caucasus’ donor-funded water management projects

The agendas of primary project stakeholders in donor-funded water management projects are often misaligned. While the existence of divergent priorities is not an uncommon phenomenon in policy contexts, it is particularly prevalent in the South Caucasus, given vested donor interests, as well as inter- and intra-government tensions. On-the-ground practitioners act as bridges between the project’s contending parties, harmonizing misaligned agendas into viable project practices. Literature points to the practitioners’ central role in this harmonization dynamic but its underlying processes remain a black box. This study builds on practice theory to investigate (1) how practitioners exercise their agency to deal with situations of misaligned agendas, (2) what strategies and practices they employ, (3) what roles beyond formal responsibilities they assume, and (4) how their perceived positionality shapes their practices. Freeman et al.’s (2011) framework was expanded to analyze the practices of interviewed practitioners in Georgia and Armenia as “configurations of actions, norms, knowledge” and positionality. Findings reveal that practitioners are creative and powerful agents, assuming a variety of informal roles to employ practices of creative compliance, adaptive mediation and indirect coercion. The extent of their agency, however, is limited to the scope of harmonization by the donors’ inherent detachment from what is feasible, demanded or needed on the ground. Perceived positionality is also influential in determining the extent of their agency and the type of practice that emerges. Additionally, the analysis highlights underlying power relations in the region’s water management domain. It brings into the foreground the image of strong states, which despite their donor-dependence, hold significant power to shape project efforts.