1st Edition
Compliance or Defiance? Assessing the Implementation of Policy Prescriptions for Commercialization by Water Operators
Whereas the global water community may have reached consensus on the need for water providers to operate on the basis of commercial principles, staff of water utilities are faced with the challenge of implementing these principles in their everyday work. In the everyday domain, these principles appear to directly conflict with the mandate of water operators to provide water services to all. Moreover, the socio-political, economic and bio-physical context in which these water operate may be ill-suited to implement commercialization. In pursuing commercialization these operators adapt, reinterpret, modify, deflect, alter or betray the original principles of commercialization during implementation. This research takes inspiration from the rich literature on policy implementation and policy translation, which argues that policy models need to be transformed and modified if they are to be successfully adopted or implemented. This research analyzes the alterations visible in the daily implementation of commercial models of water provisioning and, in doing so, present a better understanding of how water operators implement policy prescriptions of commercialization in practice. Based on the analysis of the adaptations and (re)interpretations of the implemented model of commercialization in the different cases, this thesis argues that a new way of speaking about commercialization should be developed.
Chapter 1: Introduction
1. Problem statement: Financial sustainability and universal services
2. Research justification
3. Research objective and research questions
Chapter 2: Commercialization in Water Services Policy Models
1. Water provision under direct government control and Modern Infrastructural Ideal
2. The Drinking Water Decade (1981-1990) and alternative technologies
3. Shifts in the role of governments
4. The Privatization Decade: 1993-2003
5. Promoting privatization
6. Critiquing privatization
7. The end of the promise of privatization
8. The principles of privatization remain: Commercialization
9. Three dominant models of service provisioning
10. Adjustments to the model as entry points
Chapter 3: Policy Models – Formulation, Implementation and Change
1. Policy development: a linear process
2. More actors and less linearity
3. Adjustments to policy during implementation
4. Policy learning
Chapter 4: Methodology and Research Design
1. Studying adjustments
2. Case study selection: The challenge of commercialization in small towns
3. Defining Small Towns
4. Selected Cases
5. Data collection
Chapter 5: Delegated Management Framework in Small Towns in Mozambique
1. Historical background and context of water services provision in Mozambique
2. The implementation of the DMF
3. Discussion
Chapter 6: Commercial Public Utility in Small Towns in Uganda
1. Historical background and context of water services in Uganda
4. Organizational structure and strategic directions of NWSC for small towns
5. Adjustments to the idea of commercialization
6. Discussion
Chapter 7: Community Based Organizations in Small Towns in Indonesia
1. Historical background and context of water services in Indonesia
2. The operationalization of the CBO model in Lamongan Regency
3. Discussion
Chapter 8: Talking and Practicing Commercialization
2. Practicing commercialization: deviations during implementation
3. Does commercialization improve water provisioning?
4. The persistence of the commercial ideal
5. Is the divergence of talk and action a problem?
6. Concluding remarks
Biography
Mireia Tutusaus Luque studied international business administration at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona (Spain) and holds a Master’s degree in Water Services Management from IHE Delft Institute for Water Education (formerly known as UNESCO-IHE) in the Netherlands. She has worked over six years in several organizations in the private sector before she joined IHE Delft in 2014 as lecturer. Mireia currently resides in Kigali, Rwanda, working as a resident expert for an assignment with VEI Dutch Water Operators (former Vitens-Evides International) with the national water company WASAC. Her main area of expertise and interest in the field of water services management has been the development and analysis of business and governance models of the provision of drinking water services in urban areas and small towns, with a specific interest on financial sustainability and financial implications of infrastructural development. She has studied different forms of water service provisioning in different countries such as Indonesia, Uganda, Kenya, Mozambique and Tanzania.
