2H Where Is the National Interest in Water and Wastewater Infrastructure?

Purpose and Background

This project conducts a comparative historical study of state involvement in different types of infrastructure—how has the concept of national interest been formulated? To what extent has the state acted as a system builder, and how has that role been justified? How can lessons from other infrastructure systems inspire a clearer state system-building role within the water and wastewater (WSS) sector?

The topic is highly relevant, as is the ongoing discussion about the role of the state in the WSS sector. However, the debate lacks a comparative historical perspective.

At the same time, the WSS system is unique from a historical perspective, as it is the only type of infrastructure where the state has not assumed the system-building role that has been prominent in other infrastructure sectors such as railways, hydropower, electricity, and telecommunications.

Project manager Pär Blomkvist has previously conducted a historical study of municipal infrastructure in the project Historic study of regimes and dominating models for building and management of municipal WS and streets, which resulted in the book Articulating Publicness in Infrastructure. The project demonstrated how different state involvement has been in the road/street sector compared to water and wastewater. In the road sector, the state early on assumed a system-building role that ultimately led to the nationalization of public roads, and how the Swedish Road Administration (now the Swedish Transport Administration) has also had significant influence over both municipal streets and private road management. No equivalent state system-building role has existed, and still does not exist, within water and wastewater, which remains largely a municipal responsibility.

As a result, the national interest is weaker in the WSS sector, which, for example, means that innovations within the system are mainly locally anchored.

The project is based on the insight that innovations for sustainable development are hindered by the complex nature of the WSS sector, with many stakeholders at different levels of society. In addition, responsibility for WSS is placed at the local level, where especially smaller municipalities often lack the capacity to deliver.

The project argues that the national interest and state involvement need to be strengthened, not least because the sector faces dual pressures for change caused by both a massive maintenance backlog and future climate challenges.

Implementation

The project will carry out a broad literature review of previous research on Swedish infrastructure development, as well as analyze primary sources (such as parliamentary debates).