Understanding privatised public infrastructure services through network analysis

Privatisation was one of the market-oriented policy reform strategies developed and implemented in the Western world in the late 1970s to increase productivity and reduce costs of production at the enterprise level. By the late 1980s, privatisation of public services, particularly water and sanitation utilities, reached the developing world with high expectations riding on its coattails, i.e., to stimulate economic growth, alleviate poverty, and ease the macroeconomic burden brought about by inefficient public enterprises. After the initial exuberance, a number of high-profile cancellations and renegotiations hounded water privatisation. Water management problems are complex because they arise when natural, societal and political processes and variables interact that cross multiple boundaries and scales, with numerous stakeholders competing for a limited and common resource (Islam & Susskind, 2013). Privatisation has created a network of public, private and non-government actors who work together to deliver public infrastructure services. Similar complexities abound in the wastewater services sector but there is a dearth of research on how a complex structure impacts on outcomes in privatised water and wastewater services in developing countries. This paper critically reviews the role of network collaboration on service delivery outcomes in privatised sewerage services in Metro Manila by using a multi-causal and multi-level approach in assessing outcomes. By mapping out the network of actors involved in the sewerage sector, analysing the process structures that govern the sector and the dynamics of inter-organisational relationships, this paper aims to provide a holistic and detailed analysis of privatisation outcomes and develop a framework to analyse networked sectors to aid practitioners in dealing with the complexity of networked services.