LIST OF PANELS

Water and sanitation services often fall under public scrutiny. Issues related to effectiveness, efficiency, fairness and affordability of water charges, environmental protection and preservation, quality of service delivery, and conflict over alternative uses of scarce water resources – especially in the context of rapid urbanization and increasing agricultural activity – call for a dedicated effort from the side of public policy-makers to devise and implement effective regulatory systems. Yet, while the need for regulation of the water sector is widely acknowledged, less consensus exists on how exactly water and sanitation services should be regulated. This panel builds on the belief that regulation of water and sanitation services could be improved if greater attention is placed to the relationships between designing water regulation, evaluating present regulatory systems, and drawing lessons from actual regulatory regimes and their performance under particular historical and institutional settings.   Accordingly, contributions to this panel are expected to investigate: 1) what are the principles that inform a successful and effective design of water regulation, how we can identify the actors and stakeholders relevant to the design, evaluate their information endowment, their incentives and the relationships between them 2) how features of the regulatory design help overcoming such issues as information asymmetries, regulatory capture, and under- or over-investment; 3) how we can assess the performance of installed regulatory regimes and what accounts for differential performance between alternative regulatory regimes; and 4) how policy-makers can learn from regulatory experiences and adjust the installed regulatory systems accordingly. If successful, the panel can result in original contributions to establish linkages between related parts of the regulatory policy cycle that are often subjected to specialised analytical attention only.

Water and sanitation services often fall under public scrutiny. Issues related to effectiveness, efficiency, fairness and affordability of water charges, environmental protection and preservation, quality of service delivery, and conflict over alternative uses of scarce water resources – especially in the context of rapid urbanization and increasing agricultural activity –call for a dedicated effort from the side of public policy-makers to devise and implement effective regulatory systems. Yet, while the need for regulation of the water sector is widely acknowledged, less consensus exists on how exactly water and sanitation services should be regulated (Ballance and Taylor, 2005). Various countries worldwide have pursued quite different approaches to water regulation. Several regulatory systems build on full public ownership and control of water firms, typically at the sub-national level. Following a wave of regulatory reforms carried out in the 1980’s-1990’s, however, many other regulatory systems centre on mechanisms of franchise allocation and discretionary regulation (Gómez Ibán?ez, 2003; Rivera, 1996; Shirley, 2002; Winpenny, 2003). Water regulatory reforms, however, generally fall short of fixing the performance gap of water and sanitation services (Rees et al., 2008).   This panel builds on the belief that regulation of water and sanitation services could be improved if greater attention is placed to the relationships between designing water regulation, evaluating present regulatory systems, and drawing lessons from actual regulatory regimes and their performance under particular historical and institutional settings. Design theory (Cross, 2008; Van Aken et al., 2007) suggests that solving problems builds on deep understanding of the policy problem itself and on the prompt adjustment of the solution design to indications that originate from the evidence arising from the implementation of the design solution. Accordingly, the design of water regulation should result from a clear articulation of why and how regulatory design features are expected to induce the desired effects, given the particular historical and institutional context. In addition, designing water regulation should be understood as a process where regulatory design features are open to adjustments depending on the review and evaluation – also in comparative perspective – of performance effects of the installed regulatory regime.   Accordingly, this panel calls for contributions in the areas of the design of water regulatory systems, the evaluation of water regulatory regimes, and of the policy learnings about ‘what works’ in water regulation (Jarvis et al., 2011). Contributions are expected to investigate 1) what are the principles that inform a successful and effective design of water regulation, how we can identify the actors and stakeholders relevant to the design, evaluate their information endowment, their incentives and the relationships between them;  2) how features of the regulatory design help overcoming such issues as information asymmetries, regulatory capture, and under- or over-investment;3) how we can assess the performance of installed regulatory regimes and what accounts for differential performance between alternative regulatory regimes; and 4) how policy-makers can learn from regulatory experiences and adjust the installed regulatory systems accordingly. If successful, the panel can result in original contributions to establish linkages between related parts of the regulatory policy cycle that are often subject to specialised analytical attention only.   References:   Ballance A. and A. Taylor (2005), Competition and Economic Regulation in Water: The Future of the European Water Industry. IWA Publishing. Cross, N. (2008), Engineering Design Methods, 4th ed., Chichester: Wiley. Gómez Ibá?ez J. A. (2003), Regulating Infrastructure: Monopoly, Contracts, and Discretion. Harvard University Press. Rees, J.A., Winpenny J., and Hall A. W. (2008), 'Water Financing and Governance', TEC Background Papers – Global Water Partnership, No. 12. Rivera D. (1996), Private sector participation in the water supply and wastewater sector: Lessons from six developing countries. Washington, DC: The World Bank. Shirley M. M. (2002) (ed.), Thirsting for Efficiency: The Economics and Politics of Urban Water System Reform. Oxford: Elsevier Science. Van Aken, Joan E., Hans Berends, and Hans van der Bij (2007), Problem Solving in Organizations: A Methodological Handbook for Business Students. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Winpenny J. (2003), “Financing water for all, Report of the World Panel on Financing Water Infrastructure” (Camdessus Commission), World Water Forum, Kyoto.