1 See also the comparative table in Box 6.23.
2 Elections also play an important and valuable accountability function, and their role must be categorically factored into a partnership, because they have significant and potentially harmful effects. See the discussion on political will and change in Chapter 10.
3 Political turnover can also be the very reason why partnerships are established. However, in these situations, when decision-making is taken out of a council's hands, the council may well lose interest in the partnership and pursue functions over which it has more influence.
4 These cases also expose the dangers of unregulated partnerships.
5 Mission statements are generally made available on operator websites.
6 Bartone, 1999, p10.
7 Unpublished GHK International research from India.
8 The participation of national businesses may be seen as a temporary convenience for the international company, enabling it to ensure that a bid complies with the regulations, or making it seem that a consortium has local knowledge.
9 Extensive work has been undertaken on the existing pattern of informal service provision and the potential roles of these providers in the delivery of services to poor communities. Of particular interest is the work carried out by the Water and Sanitation Program in East Africa, which has provided greater understanding of the types of service providers and their scale of operations, the benefits for poor users, the effects of institutional and legal contexts, and the development constraints and opportunities for these activities. This section draws heavily on this work. It is an extremely useful and highly recommended source for municipalities all over the world, not only to improve understanding of the benefits of informal service provision, but also to understand how formal PSP affects such providers (see Collignon and Vézina, 2000). In the solid waste sector, useful studies have been undertaken by WEDC (see Ali and Cotton, 2001).
10 Collignon and Vézina, 2000, p2.
11 Ibid.
12 It would not be correct to say that the primary interest of all NGOs is social, as it varies according to their mandate - they may be environmental, legal and so on.
13 Very often, international NGOs have national and regional offices, and have partnership relationships with other levels of local NGOs. National NGOs are sometimes federations of local NGOs, or they may have branches in local communities. Like other sectors, there are tensions between these levels in terms of resource allocation and roles. However, the parties are often quite independent, so a key challenge for them is to learn how to work together and develop trusting relationships. Over the past few years, with the increasing capacity of local and national NGOs, international NGOs' roles are being redefined.
14 Plummer, 2000, pp74ff.
15 The concept of 'interface' is discussed in detail in Plummer, 2000, pp61ff.
16 It is important to understand that community-based organisations (CBOs) are different from NGOs. The latter's membership is usually open to anyone interested in the purposes of the organisation. They are, therefore, accountable to their memberships who are not just people receiving services (residents), but are people who are committed to taking an active role in their development. A CBO might have quite a general purpose to raise the quality of life of its membership community. Or, it might have a quite specific purpose to address a specific issue such as water services (this might also be a focus of a general-purpose CBO committee). CBOs are discussed as consumer organisations.
17 The development of effective community organisations is also addressed in the first book in this series (Plummer, 2000). This section also addresses the sustainability problems associated with newly formed project-oriented CBOs.
18 World Bank, 1997; Cointreau-Levine, 2000.
19 See for instance the papers from the Private Infrastructure Solutions and the Poor Conference. PPIAF, 2000.
20 With the exception of the important matter of social issues, this information is compiled using the water and sanitation toolkits produced by the World Bank. See World Bank, 1997, p13.
21 Some municipalities have pointed out that the lack of country experience is also a major problem. However, in those municipalities that are paving the way in their national context, it may not be possible to combine PPP expertise with country expertise. In such cases, municipalities should look at the overall team, and ensure that local knowledge is represented as well.
22 World Bank, 1997.
23 The state (government), the market (business) and civil society (civil society organisations including consumers, NGOs, unions).
24 This discussion focuses upon comparative competencies between the three organisational types. Of course, some businesses are better at producing profits than others - but in general, the organisations in the private sector are far better at profit-making than those in any other sector. The same goes for government's rule-making competency and civil society's competency in addressing equity and justice.
25 The corporatisation process is, of course, a possible option. A small number of utilities (e.g., those in Chile, Botswana and Durban, South Africa) have proved that the public sector can, through a process of corporatisation, achieve economic objectives.