Constitutionalising the Right to Water in Kenya and Slovenia: Domestic Drivers, Opportunity Structures, and Transnational Norm Entrepreneurs
The CMI-UiB Centre on Law & Social Transformation, Department of Administration and Organization Theory, University of Bergen, 5007 Bergen, Norway
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Academic Editor: Thomas M. Missimer
Water 2021, 13(24), 3548; https://doi.org/10.3390/w13243548
Received: 18 October 2021
/
Revised: 6 December 2021
/
Accepted: 9 December 2021
/
Published: 11 December 2021
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Water and Sanitation as Human Rights: Have They Strengthened Marginalized Peoples’ Claim for Access?)
The international norm development that in 2010 culminated with the UN Resolution on the Human Right to Water and Sanitation changed international law. To what extent did this influence the parallel legal developments evident in many national constitutions across the globe? This article analyses the mobilisation for a constitutional right to water and sanitation in Kenya and Slovenia, identifying the main national and transnational actors involved and assessing their significance for the processes of constitutionalising the right. By analysing two very different cases, tracing their constitutionalisation processes through analysis of archival material, the article provides multifaceted insights into processes of norm diffusion from international norm entrepreneurs to the national level and the agency of domestic actors and their opportunity structures. We find that although the outcomes of the processes in Kenya and Slovenia are similar in that both constitutions contain articles securing the right to water, the framing of the right differs. Furthermore, we conclude that while there is involvement of international actors in both cases, domestic pro-water activists and their normative and political opportunity structures are more important for understanding the successful constitutionalisation of the right to water and differences in the framing of the right.
View Full-Text
Keywords:
human rights to water and sanitation; water access; constitutionalisation; norm diffusion; opportunity structures
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
MDPI and ACS Style
Loen, M.; Gloppen, S. Constitutionalising the Right to Water in Kenya and Slovenia: Domestic Drivers, Opportunity Structures, and Transnational Norm Entrepreneurs. Water 2021, 13, 3548. https://doi.org/10.3390/w13243548
AMA Style
Loen M, Gloppen S. Constitutionalising the Right to Water in Kenya and Slovenia: Domestic Drivers, Opportunity Structures, and Transnational Norm Entrepreneurs. Water. 2021; 13(24):3548. https://doi.org/10.3390/w13243548
Chicago/Turabian StyleLoen, Mathea, and Siri Gloppen. 2021. "Constitutionalising the Right to Water in Kenya and Slovenia: Domestic Drivers, Opportunity Structures, and Transnational Norm Entrepreneurs" Water 13, no. 24: 3548. https://doi.org/10.3390/w13243548
Find Other Styles
Note that from the first issue of 2016, MDPI journals use article numbers instead of page numbers. See further details here.
