In May 2000, E. coli originating from nearby agricultural lands contaminated the municipal water supply of Walkerton, Ontario. As a result, over two thousand people became seriously ill and seven people lost their lives. In response to this crisis, source water protection emerged as part of a multi-barrier approach for the provision of safe drinking water. Intervention at the source provides an early opportunity to contain a range of potential risks, many of them tied to land-use. However, source water protection involved a fundamental shift in Ontario’s policy approach to the provision of safe drinking water. In doing so, it mobilized powerful actors to defend their interests against this change. This study traces how the problem was defined in Ontario, and by whom, establishing a continuum of actor–institution interactions that spans the development and implementation stages of the Clean Water Act (2006), and shows how different preferences were carried forward through the devolution of decision making to the watershed level. By disaggregating the policy change into its constituent parts, and accounting for actor effects at the implementation stage, we observe that decentralization in the context of sustained political pressure led to an effective concentration of decision-making power, thereby actually eroding local control. Caution is thus warranted when considering the devolution of decision making to inclusive social processes, as this may link policy subsystems and thereby create the institutional channels through which special interests can dominate decision making.

中文翻译：

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范式政策变化或农村自治的意外从属：加拿大安大略省的水源保护案例

2000 年 5 月，来自附近农田的大肠杆菌污染了安大略省沃克顿的市政供水。结果，两千多人病重，七人丧生。为应对这场危机，源水保护作为提供安全饮用水的多重障碍方法的一部分出现。源头干预为遏制一系列潜在风险提供了早期机会，其中许多风险与土地使用有关。然而，源水保护涉及安大略省提供安全饮用水的政策方法的根本转变。在这样做的过程中，它动员了强大的参与者来捍卫他们的利益，以抵御这种变化。这项研究追溯了该问题在安大略省是如何定义的，以及由谁定义的 建立跨越《清洁水法》（2006 年）的制定和实施阶段的行动者-机构互动的连续统一体，并展示了如何通过将决策下放到流域层面来推进不同的偏好。通过将政策变化分解为其组成部分，并在实施阶段考虑参与者的影响，我们观察到，在持续政治压力的背景下，权力下放导致决策权的有效集中，从而实际上削弱了地方控制。因此，在考虑将决策权移交给包容性社会进程时需要谨慎，因为这可能会将政策子系统联系起来，从而创造特殊利益可以支配决策的制度渠道。