From public service access to service quality: The distributive politics of piped water in Bangalore

Kumar, Tanu; Post, Alison E.; Ray, Isha; Otsuka, Megan; Pardo-Bosch, Francesc

doi:10.1016/j.worlddev.2021.105736

Cited by 12 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 49 publications

(48 reference statements)

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“…This suggests that politics driving variation in service quality may look distinct from the politics of extending service access, and that scale economies may affect service quality. It also reinforces the importance of obtaining new types of data that can speak more directly to service quality in future scholarship on local public goods provision (see Kumar et al 2022).…”

Section: Figurementioning

confidence: 60%

City Size and Public Service Access: Evidence from Brazil and Indonesia

Post¹,

Kuipers²

2022

Perspect. polit.

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Most global population growth over the next two decades is projected to occur in small- and medium-sized cities in low- and middle-income countries. Expectations derived from the literature on fiscal federalism suggest that this is a cause for concern, as larger cities are thought to deliver public goods more effectively than smaller ones owing to economics of scale. Drawing on detailed cross-sectional data from Brazil and Indonesia, we show that smaller municipalities tend to possess more basic public health clinics and schools per capita, scattered throughout their territory, than larger cities. We theorize that the greater prevalence of such facilities in small cities reflects a relative lack of non-state alternatives, fewer concerns regarding “urban” problems faced in larger cities, and politicians’ greater ability to secure and claim credit for such facilities. We illustrate the logic of this argument in case studies of otherwise-similar cities of different sizes in Brazil, and with shadow cases from Indonesia. Our analysis underscores how jurisdiction size and non-state service provision can affect government services.

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Section: Figurementioning

confidence: 60%

City Size and Public Service Access: Evidence from Brazil and Indonesia

Post¹,

Kuipers²

2022

Perspect. polit.

Self Cite

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“…I examine the robustness of these results by running models with each type of complaint and question separately. It is possible that different types of complaints are more appropriately resolved using different mechanisms (Kramon & Posner, 2013;Kumar, et al, 2022), and testing each type of complaint separately can help to determine if this is indeed the case. These results (shown in Supplementary Information SI.5) largely confirm the non-statistically significant findings displayed here.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Politicians' complaint response: E‐governance and personal relationships

O’Brochta

2022

Governance

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When do politicians respond to individuals' public service complaints? Technological solutions—termed e‐governance—have been shown to help increase responsiveness in some developing nations where they serve to connect individuals, politicians, and bureaucrats for the first time. I argue that in country‐contexts like India, where personal connections to bureaucrats and politicians are common, politicians are less responsive to complaints registered with e‐governance systems than to complaints delivered via personal connections. Using data from public complaints, complaint responses, and field interviews in Delhi, I show that politicians are not responsive when complaints submitted to e‐governance systems increase, but that they are responsive to complaints submitted to them through personal connections. This result suggests that the introduction of an e‐governance system does not necessarily increase government performance. Politicians are incentivized to be more responsive to complaints registered directly with them because those complaints are more likely to generate electoral benefits.

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“…Thus, each method was also tested on each network under reductions of source pressure by 25, 50 and 75%, where source pressure was defined as the head differential between the highest reservoir and the highest demand node's elevation. Similarly, supply duration is expected to be a "non-design" condition of interest since variations in supply durations are common in IWS [38]. Here, while reference networks are configured assuming a supply duration of 12 hours, methods were tested under unexpectedly shortened supply (10 hours) and lengthened supply (14 hours) durations.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modelling consumers in intermittent water supplies: a comparative review of EPANET - based methods

Abdelazeem,

Meyer

2022

Proceedings - 2nd International Join Conference on Water Distribution System Analysis (WDSA)& Computing and Control in the

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Intermittent Water Supply (IWS) networks, which pressurize for less than 24 hours/day, affect 1 billion people worldwide and are associated with increased water contamination and inequitable distribution. Due to these downsides, various methods to model consumers and understand their behaviour were proposed. We found more than 8 different methods of modelling IWS consumers, but we know of no comparative analyses of these methods nor their efficacy. This study comparatively reviews methods of modelling IWS consumers implemented in EPANET, due to their prevalence, reproducibility, and accessibility. Methods of modelling IWS consumers were found to fall into three groups based on their assumed consumer withdrawal behaviour: unrestricted, flow-restricted, and volume-restricted methods. We applied each method to three reference networks and compared the methods’ performance after subjecting each reference network to common IWS improvement strategies, including changing the supply duration and/or source pressure. Flow-restricted methods assume consumers withdraw their demands at a constant rate, leading to unrealistic predictions when subjected to unexpected changes in supply conditions. Volume-restricted methods assume consumers withdraw at the highest, hydraulically feasible rate until their storage tanks fill. This assumption highlights pronounced inequality between consumers, as consumers advantaged by source proximity and/or elevation receive their demands faster and earlier. Our results demonstrate that the simulated behaviour of IWS depends substantially on the type of consumer model employed. Presented examples demonstrate that consumer model selection can change the simulation-predicted optimal strategies for coping with and improving IWS. IWS modelling methods should reflect the consumer behaviour in the modelled network and the model’s intended use.

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From public service access to service quality: The distributive politics of piped water in Bangalore

Cited by 12 publications

References 49 publications

City Size and Public Service Access: Evidence from Brazil and Indonesia

City Size and Public Service Access: Evidence from Brazil and Indonesia

Politicians' complaint response: E‐governance and personal relationships

Modelling consumers in intermittent water supplies: a comparative review of EPANET - based methods

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