Assessing Socio-Technical Resistances to Public Policy Instruments: Insights from Water Performance Indicators in the Grenoble Area (France)

This article examines the phenomenon of local socio-technical resistances to regulation through performance indicators in the water sector. Governance failures are mainly explained by concentrating on governance design, considering regulation as a set of control mechanisms. We propose an alternative perspective by putting the emphasis on socio-technical resistances within services. Socio-technical resistances take into account both human and non-human actors in the governance process. They are embedded into institutional environment. This focus is motivated by the observation of misuse of performance indicators by local actors in urban water systems in Europe. We assume that socio-technical resistances have a significant impact on regulation process and efficiency. Therefore, opening the black box of socio-technical resistances, we show that they are frequent, impactful and not only the consequence of opportunism. These results underline a crucial limitation of public policies and regulations that are based on New public management or classical economics of regulation.