State-Society Synergy: Government and Social Capital in Development

The provision and production of many public goods and services involve the joint effort of government officials and citizen-users.This paper examines the successful experience of irrigation governance and management in Taiwan as a means of understanding how joint efforts can be established and sustained through institutional arrangements.Several principles for institutional design, including a careful definition of the scope of farmers' participation, complementarity of interests between individuals, reduction of asymmetries involved in the use of authority, and the existence of domains of autonomy are identified as instrumental to the success in Taiwan.