Professor Alison Post’s research delves into the ambiguous outcomes of two 1990s-era reforms in the provision of water and sanitation services: decentralization and institutional insulation from politics
The “Water War” that broke out in Cochabamba, Bolivia, after the privatization of water services is probably the best-known controversy surrounding water service contracts, but it is certainly not the only one. That conflict was an outgrowth of two strands of reform that gained currency across the developing world during the 1990s: decentralization and institutional insulation from politics. Alison Post, an assistant professor of Political Science at UC Berkeley presented the findings of a study on the rationale behind these reforms and their outcomes that she conducted with Veronica Herrera, an assistant professor at the University of Connecticut.
