Public-public partnerships (PUPs) in water

Water operators need to be efficient, accountable, honest public institutions providing a universal service. Many water services however lack the institutional strength, the human resources, the technical expertise and equipment, or the financial or managerial capacity to provide these services. They need support to develop these capacities. The vast majority of water operators in the world are in the public sector – 90% of all major cities are served by such bodies. This means that the largest pool of experience and expertise, and the great majority of examples of good practice and sound institutions, are to be found in existing public sector water operators. Because they are public sector, however, they do not have any natural commercial incentive to provide international support. Their incentive stems from solidarity, not profit. Since 1990, however, the policies of donors and development banks have focussed on the private companies and their incentives. The vast resources of the public sector have been overlooked, even blocked by pro-private policies. Out of sight of these global policy-makers, however, a growing number of public sector water companies have been engaged, in a great variety of ways, in helping others develop the capacity to be effective and accountable public services. These supportive arrangements are now called 'public-public partnerships' (PUPs). A public-public partnership (PUP) is simply a collaboration between two or more public authorities or organisations, based on solidarity, to improve the capacity and effectiveness of one partner in providing public water or sanitation services. They have been described as: “a peer relationship forged around common values and objectives, which exclude profit-seeking”.1 Neither partner expects a commercial profit, directly or indirectly. This makes PUPs very different from the public–private partnerships (PPPs) which have been promoted by the international financial institutions (IFIs) like the World Bank. The problems of PPPs have been examined in a number of reports. A great advantage of PUPs is that they avoid the risks of such partnerships: transaction costs, contract failure, renegotiation, the complexities of regulation, commercial opportunism, monopoly pricing, commercial secrecy, currency risk, and lack of public legitimacy.2 PUPs are not merely an abstract concept. The list in the annexe to this paper includes over 130 PUPs in around 70 countries. This means that far more countries have hosted PUPs than host PPPs in water – according to a report from PPIAF in December 2008, there are only 44 countries with private participation in water. These PUPs cover a period of over 20 years, and been used in all regions of the world. The earliest date to the 1980s, when the Yokohama Waterworks Bureau first started partnerships to help train staff in other Asian countries. Many of the PUP projects have been initiated in the last few years, a result of the growing recognition of PUPs as a tool for achieving improvements in public water management. This paper attempts to provide an overview of the typical objectives of PUPs; the different forms of PUPs and partners involved; a series of case studies of actual PUPs; and an examination of the recent WOPs initiative. It then offers recommendations for future development of PUPs.

Developing “middle leaders” in the public services? The realities of management and leadership development for public managers

Purpose – This paper aims to assess the actual contribution to organisational change of management and leadership development (MLD) activity for middle managers (MMs) in public service organisations (PSOs). Design/methodology/approach – Using the case study approach, the paper compares the content and outcomes of management and leadership training interventions for MMs in two large PSOs. The organisations, a fire brigade and a train operating company, are leaders in their sectors with respect to management development and “modernisation” of their services. Findings – The paper demonstrates how, in one case, MM development was largely an exercise in regulatory compliance, with little effect on individual MMs' performance or organisational outcomes. The second case demonstrates how MMs were effectively trained to enforce specific human resource policies which contributed to the successful implementation of top-down strategy yet paid little attention to the potential leadership role of MMs. Research limitations/implications – The paper highlights the need for further contextualised research at organisational level into the outcomes of MLD, especially in terms of different public service contexts. Practical implications – The paper demonstrates the dangers of designing and implementing development programmes without sufficient regard to professional practice and the realities of managerial discretion in PSOs. Originality/value – The paper provides an in-depth and contextualised insight into the conditions for success and failure in management development interventions in PSOs.

Public religions and civil society: the case of London Methodism

Amendments to secularization theory have brought the issue of public religions to the fore in recent years. In particular, the work of Casanova and Beyer has maintained the importance of functional differentiation whilst pointing to the flow of religious discourses across social boundaries. These issues, however, have received little ethnographic attention, such that many of the problems associated with theories of differentiation and globalization have not been engaged in a sustained manner. Research within black majority London Methodist congregations is drawn upon to suggest ways in which these theories can be reconsidered. Three related issues are focused upon: the continued importance of the nation-state (including national stratifications); the importance of a practical approach to religion, such that discourses are understood as ‘practical discourses’; and the importance of not privileging religion by reifying it in functional terms. These considerations have ramifications not only for secularization theory, but the general field of the sociological study of religion.

La incidencia de los valores culturales en el voluntariado: el caso de Europa

La realidad del voluntariado es sumamente compleja hasta el punto de que resulta complicado definir y caracterizar el trabajo voluntario, dada la gran variedad de interpretaciones, motivaciones, variables sociodemográficas y aspectos culturales que configuran el perfil de los voluntarios. El objetivo de este trabajo es analizar la influencia conjunta de algunas variables sociodemográficas, así como de los valores culturales de índole secular o tradicional, sobre el perfil de los voluntarios en Europa. Además, se investiga qué variables orientan a los voluntarios hacia un determinado tipo de voluntariado u otro. Para ello se ha aplicado principalmente una metodología de regresión logística a partir de la información disponible en la European Value Study. Los resultados obtenidos ayudan a establecer una caracterización del voluntariado en Europa, y confirman la influencia de los valores culturales, en primer lugar, en la realización o no de trabajos de voluntariado, y en segundo lugar, en la elección que hacen estas personas del tipo de actividad con la que están comprometidos. Al analizar dos tipos de voluntariado de motivación supuestamente muy diferente, se concluye que existe un grupo de valores que influyen en ambos, aunque el sentido y la intensidad en la que lo hacen sea diferente; por otra parte, algunos valores tienen influencia o no en la realización de trabajos de voluntariado, dependiendo del tipo específico al que nos refiramos.

Perceived and reported access to the general practitioner: an international comparison of universal access and mixed private/public systems.

Timely and convenient access to primary healthcare is essential for the health of the population as delays can incur additional health and financial costs. Access to health care is under increasing scrutiny as part of the drive to contain escalating costs, while attempting to maintain equity in service provision. The objective was to compare primary care services in Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, and to report on perceived and reported access to GP services in universal access and mixed private/public systems. A questionnaire study was performed in Northern Ireland (NI) and the Republic of Ireland (ROI). Patients of 20 practices in the ROI and NI were contacted (n = 22,796). Main outcome measures were overall satisfaction and the access to GP services. Individual responses and scale scores were derived using the General Practice Assessment Questionnaire (G-PAQ). The response rate was 52% (n = 11,870). Overall satisfaction with GP practices was higher in ROI than in NI (84.2% and 80.9% respectively). Access scores were higher in ROI than in NI (69.2% and 57.0% respectively) Less than 1 in 10 patients in ROI waited two or more working days to see a doctor of choice (8.1%) compared to almost half (45.0%) in NI. In NI overall satisfaction decreased as practice size increased; 82.8%, 80.4%, and 75.8%. In both systems, in large practices, accessibility is reduced when compared to smaller practices. The faster access to GP services in ROI may be due to the deterrent effect of the consultation charge freeing up services although, as it is the poorest and sickest who are deterred by the charge this improved accessibility may come at a significant cost in terms of equity. The underlying concern for policy makers centres around provision of equitable services.

Alien gosd in the new epics: Noah remythologised through the ancient astronaut hypothesis in Abel's Montagut's "La gesta d'Utnoa"

Modern scientific world-view has undermined traditional myths, the functional survival of which seems to depend today in the West on a positivist justification. This would place them in the field of real History, through their study and revitalization by pseudoscientific disciplines such as the Atlantis and the ancient astronaut hypotheses. These have inspired new epic poems in (regular) verse that combine classic and/or biblical myths with a (pseudo)scientific modern world-view. For example, the critical rewriting of Noah’s myth by using the ancient astronaut hypothesis as a fictional device to produce a contemporary kind of plausibility allowed Abel Montagut to renew epic poetry, updating it also by adopting science fiction chronotopes in order to structure his fictional construction and to generate a high ethical sense for our time. Thus, his Poemo de Utnoa (1993) / La gesta d’Utnoa (1996), which has become a major classic of the literature in Esperanto thanks to its original version in this language, is a landmark of both science fiction and neo-biblical epics. This poem is written from a secular and purely literary perspective.

Journal article: Children and Religion under Article 14 UNCRC: A Critical Analysis

This article examines the text of Article 14 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child 1989 and the work of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. It considers the text of the article and its travaux préparatoires; it then provides an analysis of the issues considered by the Committee: the concept of the evolving capacities of the child, freedom of religious choice, freedom of manifestation, and education. It also highlights the problems that have emerged in the Committee’s work, in the light of a theoretical framework of the right of the child to religious freedom in international law. It concludes that the Committee fails children in relation to their religion and suggests some positive steps to be taken by the Committee.

Cultured responses: the production of social capital in faith based organisations

The theoretical concept of ‘social capital’ has been increasingly invoked in connection to religion by academics, policy makers, charities and Faith Based Organisations (FBOs). Drawing on the popularisation of the term by Robert Putnam, many in these groups have hailed the religious as one of the most productive generators of social capital in today’s societies. In this article, we examine this claim through ethnographic material relating to Faithworks, a national ‘movement’ of Christians who provide welfare services within their communities. We claim that to apply the term ‘social capital’ in a meaningful sociological manner to FBOs requires a return to Pierre Bourdieu’s use of the term in order to refuse to extricate it from the practices in which it is enmeshed.