2ISA BAUD
In research on poverty, this is reflected in the new conceptualisation of poverty based
on the asset-vulnerability approach that highlights the importance of institutions in
mediating access (Moser, 1998; de Haan, 2000). In political and social sciences, ideas
on the role of the state have also shifted to seeing the state as ‘enabler’, a co-ordinating
agency working with a variety of other organisations in different forms of partnerships
aimed at urban and regional development. The importance of what came to be called
civil society organisations and how they could work together with local and national
governments as well as private sector organisations became a central topic in the
1990s (Arossi et al., 1994; Mitlin, 2001; Rakodi, 1999; Hardoy, Mitlin, and Satter-
thwaite, 1992). New interest has emerged as well in the political processes involved
in partnership arrangements and how these influence the effectiveness of local and
regional governance (Stoker, 2000; Putnam, 1993; Orstrom, 1996; Baud, 2000;
Helmsing, 2000).
Each of these debates has as its central concern the changes in the relation between
either the state and the market, or the state and civil society, and how their re-align-
ment affects future paths of development. In this book, our central objective is to look
at such processes and patterns of fundamental re-aligning between state, civil society
and the market in an integrated manner as it concerns the provision of basic services
in urban areas. Urban basic services, such as water, sanitation and solid waste manage-
ment in the past have been considered by the state to be the responsibility of local or
national governments. In the last twenty years, the debate raged to what extent they
also should become part of the re-alignment between state, private sector, and commu-
nity organisations. Rhetoric and practice have differed widely, with expectations
running far ahead of changes in practice (Bartone et al., 1991; Batley et al., 1996; Dill-
inger, 1994).
This has led to discussions on new forms of urban governance, in which the use of
partnerships or alliances between different stakeholders is mooted in order to lead to
greater effectiveness and sustainable development in urban solid waste management.
Partnerships, or alliances, as instruments for more effective forms of local governance
are being promoted in a wide range of concerns, but in developing countries have
emerged notably in local environmental management^2. In this book, a basic premise
is that the perspectives of local communities, the organisations that deal with them,
and support of collective initiatives and small-scale economic actors are equally
- Such institutions include organisations of entrepreneurs at the local and regional level, and supporting
legal and training institutions by government or the private sector (Helmsing, 2001). This is reflected
in work done by scholars from an institutional economics perspective, such as Storper (1997), Krug-
man (1997), Hunter and Lewis (1997), and others (cf. Baud et al., 2002). - This is in contrast with the situation in developed countries, where public-private partnerships are
associated more with large-scale infrastructure and construction projects.