The Metropolitan Research Institute (MRI), supported by Open Society Institute (OSI) and Global Development Network (GDN) conducted a research on water sector management in three countries (Armenia, Hungary, Romania). On February 1, 2013 MRI, jointly with the Central European University – Centre for Policy Studies (CEU – CPS) organised a closing workshop summarizing the main findings of the project.
The research was focusing on the main governmental and institutional factors influencing the performance of the water sector, highlighting the casual relations between these factors and the service outcomes in four different governance models. One of the key statements of the development literature is that decentralization and privatization lead to a better performance of the public services. Our research on water sector management, supported by OSI and GDN, questions this hypothesis, and draws attention to governance factors that play a crucial role in the performance of a public sector, and are independent from the level of decentralization and privatization. Case studies undertaken in three countries – Armenia, Hungary and Romania – prove that perverse incentives, unbalanced accountabilities, and lack of the rule of law increase the transaction cost of water sector, regardless of the state of privatization or decentralization. Moreover, our research also asserts that problems of the governance structure are often the consequence of an unbalanced growth path, when countries are expected to adopt a service quality standard which is unaffordable to the economy.
The countries analyzed in the research have on more common characteristic, they are all transition countries where the process of reorganizing responsibilities among the different levels of government in the water sector started from an extremely centralized system built in the centrally planned economy. The decentralization and marketization process was influenced by different interest groups (line ministries, municipal governments, water service companies and different professional associations, etc.) and thus it was a conflicting process, which led to new water sectors full of compromises.
You can download the full research paper here….
On Fevruary 1, 2013 MRI, jointly with the Central European University – Centre for Policy Studies (CEU – CPS) organised a closing workshop summarizing the main findings of the project.
You can download the final program and the list of participants here
The program started with a brief project summary, presenting the conceptual framework of the research, which was followed by summarizing the findings of the research in all four analyzed government models, presented by the team members. Each presentation was followed by a Q&A discussion. Among the invited discussants there were experts on decentralization and the water sector (Dr. József Sivák, Gábor Balás, Judit Rákosi, Gábor Ungvári, Izabella Barati-Stec).
The presentations, in Power Point or, can be accessed on the following links:
Hegedüs József: Project Summary: the model tested
Andrea Tönkő: Regional state-owned companies in a decentralized context
Afrodita Popa: Regional approaching a decentralized context and impact on service outcomes
Lilit Melykian: PSP models — the role of the government