Water on Tap Rights and Regulation in the Transnational Governance of Urban Water Services

Author: Bronwen Morgan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9781107411838
Published In: December 2012
Format: Paperback , 244 pages
Jurisdiction: International ? Disclaimer:
Countri(es) stated herein are used as reference only

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In the 1990s and mid-2000s, turbulent political and social protests surrounded the issue of private sector involvement in providing urban water services in both the developed and developing world. Water on Tap, published in 2011, explores examples of such conflicts in six national settings (France, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, South Africa and New Zealand), focusing on a central question: how were rights and regulation mobilized to address the demands of redistribution and recognition? Two modes of governance emerged: managed liberalization and participatory democracy, often in hybrid forms that complicated simple oppositions between public and private, commodity and human right. The case studies examine the effects of transnational and domestic regulatory frameworks shaping the provision of urban water services, bilateral investment treaties and the contributions of non-state actors such as transnational corporations, civil society organisations and social movement activists. The conceptual framework developed can be applied to a wide range of transnational governance contexts.

• An extended socio-legal exploration of the issue of access to water from a cross-national perspective

• Looks at a conceptual framework that integrates consideration of grassroots social activism and technical regulatory issues

• Uses rights and regulation as the basis of an approach to transnational governance that challenges notions of hierarchically nested levels of governance

List of figures	x
List of tables	xi
Acknowledgements	xii
Introduction: The field of global water policy: struggles over redistribution and recognition	1
0.1 The global water policy field	4
0.1.1 Transnational institutions	5
0.1.2 Private sector participation: the wax and wane of multinational corporations	7
0.1.3 International financial institutions and regulatory frameworks	9
0.1.4 Transnational advocacy networks and the trajectory of the human right to water	10
0.2 Research questions, approach and context	12
0.3 Summary of chapters	17
1 Rights, regulation and disputing: a conflict-centred approach to transnational governance	22
1.1 Introduction	22
1.2 Rights and regulation	24
1.2.1 Shifting politics of rights and regulation	24
1.2.2 Decentred transnational legality	27
1.2.3 Combining two triads	28
1.3 Competition for the rules	31
1.3.1 Managed liberalisation	33
1.3.2 Public participatory governance	39
1.3.3 Moving away from nested governance: feedback loops and hybridity	44
2 Managed liberalisation and the dual face of French water services provision	49
2.1 Introduction	49
2.2 The story of water in Grenoble	52
2.3 Regulation	54
2.3.1 Regulation: the internal face of the French model	54
2.3.2 Regulation: the external face of the French model	63
2.4 Rights	72
2.4.1 Rights: the internal face of the French model	72
2.4.2 Rights: the external face of the French model	78
2.5 Conclusion	81
3 ‘Another world is possible’: Bolivia and the emergence of a participatory public provision model for access to urban water services	85
3.1 Introduction	85
3.2 The Cochabamba dispute	88
3.3 A clash of models	89
3.3.1 The public participatory model	89
3.3.2 Managed liberalisation in Bolivia	93
3.4 Micro-level outcomes of the public participatory model	98
3.4.1 Social control of SEMAPA: the Achilles heel of the public participatory model?	99
3.4.2 Legislative drafting and the transformation of Law 2029 by Laws 2066/2084	102
3.4.3 The managed liberalisation model persists: regulatory gaps, international arbitration and the ‘GTZ model’	105
3.5 Macro-level outcomes	111
3.5.1 Human right to water	112
3.5.2 Bolivarian Alternative for the Peoples of Latin America (ALBA)	114
4 Regulatory arbitrage and popcorn politics: contrasting disputing pathways in Argentina and Chile	118
4.1 Introduction	118
4.2 Regulatory agencies in comparative contrast: Chile and Argentina	120
4.2.1 Structure and genesis	120
4.2.2 Consumers, rights and activists compared	125
4.3 Two disputing pathways	126
4.3.1 Argentina: background	126
4.3.2 Chile: background	128
4.3.3 Regulatory arbitrage in Chile	130
4.3.4 Popcorn politics in Argentina	133
4.4 Transnational dimensions	138
4.4.1 Argentina	138
4.4.2 Chile	139
4.5 Conclusion	140
4.5.1 Chile	140
4.5.2 Argentina	141
5 Moonlight plumbers in comparative perspective: electoral v. constitutional politics of access to water in South Africa and New Zealand	146
5.1 Introduction	146
5.2 Two stories	148
5.3 Regulation in South Africa and New Zealand	151
5.3.1 Autonomous localism in New Zealand	151
5.3.2 Tensions in South Africa	152
5.4 Rights in South Africa and New Zealand	155
5.4.1 Direct action	155
5.4.2 Socio-economic rights	159
5.4.3 Civil and political rights	163
5.5 Rendering justiciability operable	165
5.5.1 Electoral politics	167
5.5.2 Constitutional politics	168
5.6 Conclusion	170
6 Law’s work: legality and identity in transnational spaces	172
6.1 Introduction	172
6.2 Supporting and securing market relations	174
6.2.1 International investor arbitration	175
6.2.2 Transnational identities	181
6.3 Keeping political space open	183
6.3.1 Uncivil disobedience	184
6.3.2 Patchwork legality	187
6.3.3 Rendering justiciability	188
6.3.4 Transnational identities	192
6.4 Law as (ambiguously) constitutive of partnership	194
6.4.1 Community-based approaches	195
6.4.2 Social enterprise approaches	196
6.4.3 Law, community and partnership	197
Epilogue	201
References	204
Index	215