| Resumo: | This paper exemplifies the application of institutional analysis to the policy of decentralizing urban services. The example taken is water management in Mexico; empirical evidence of three types of institutionalism is examined: rational choice, organizational and historical. Taking up the model of institutional change proposed by Campbell and Pedersen, exponents of second-generation institutionalism, the decentralization of water management is analyzed on the basis of the problem that causes the change, the underlying conditions and the mechanisms it adopts. Finally, a model of analysis of institutional change is proposed for water management together with a series of reflections on how institutional paradigms may be combined in the study of specific cases.
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