Most Brazilian state governments have instituted water resources policies that create river basin committees, but the power of these committees is weakened by the lack of institutionalization of the management tools they are supposed to define. Even so, almost 100 committees have been created at the state level. Based on the literature on political decentralization and the analysis of empirical data about committees, this article raises some hypotheses to explain why so many committees have been created.
decentralization; river basin management; river basin committees
