Behind the Scenes of Water Governance: Unraveling the Roles and Tensions of Consultancy Firms in Policy Diffusion | “The Next Wave of Water Governance” Diffused Conference Thematic Seminars
"Behind the Scenes of Water Governance: Unraveling the Roles and Tensions of Consultancy Firms in Policy Diffusion" by Alejandra Burchard-Levine (ESR9)
This online seminar aims to address the limited scholarly attention given to the roles of private consultants in spreading sustainability ideas and paradigms worldwide. Despite their prominent involvement in policy processes, questions persist regarding how these firms drive sustainable transformations and the fairness of their practices. The increasing outsourcing of government work to these non-elected actors since the 1980s has sparked controversy and led to the term "consultocracy" to describe the shift from public to private policymaking, relying on for-profit and billable consultants.
Consultancy practices are well known in the development cooperation space. For instance, the Netherlands is a key country in spreading its water management expertise globally. However, criticisms have been raised regarding the lack of social inclusion and perpetuation of power imbalances in Global South contexts. Considering these critiques, our session aims to ask: How are private consultancy firms working behind the scenes of water governance? What are their roles and what tensions do they face in the diffusion of water governance policies?
To understand the roles and tensions of private consultancy firms in the diffusion of water governance policies, we drew on policy diffusion frameworks, namely classical diffusion, transfer/mobilities, circulation, and translation. Our study was based on three years of participatory observation, semi-structured interviews, group discussions and project document analysis. Our study focused on one prominent Dutch environmental consultancy firm, one of the top 10 global environmental firms, as well as through specific projects implemented in Colombia and Chile on behalf of the Dutch government. These projects addressed environmental challenges such as coastal protection, groundwater resource management, and mining and agriculture water security.
We observed how consultants are policy reactors hired by governments and dictated by terms of references. They are trusted facilitators with delegated work and their clients trusting in their expertise. In these two roles, they face tensions around biases where their practices lie on a spectrum of neutrality implementing what is expected of them. As well as facing discontinuity as a reflection of changes in government. They are shapers moving water practices and experiences around the world. As cross-boundary facilitators by moving policy ideas between different types of boundaries. They add value in bringing in up to date information and advanced solutions to knew contexts. Nevertheless, they may perpetuate decontextualized practices and face language barriers. We find a prestige, legitimacy and credibility connected to being a foreign consultant: They are more listened to. There are tensions in the short-term nature of consultancies versus needed depth to address wicked water problems. Ideas may leave with consultants and there is a frustration with “No more studies, please!”. They are treaders of complexity, well versed in navigating interest and managing participation. They design processes and manage who is in and who is out, bringing in tensions around manipulative practices. There is a fundamental role in local consultants who carry on the burden of the project beyond its ending. A prominent tension is the explicit depoliticizing strategies practices by consultants. Finally, they are market drivers promoting policy ideas and markets. There are tensions around market interest based on a business model of exchanging time, knowledge for money. Consultants deal with billability pressures, their hourly fee rates and administrative constraints. They struggle between quality versus budget in projects, where it has been noted that less attention or priority is given too participative and governance processes. Lastly, an ongoing tension is around the high international consultant fees versus lower fees of local consultants.
The session will prompt exploration of whether a future path exists toward achieving just transformations by reflecting on the types of (re)directions required for the future practices of private consultancies. We will build off of these insights and questions raised in a previous transdisciplinary dialogue, and attempt to reflect on a future research agenda and recommendations for practice on water governance consultancies: What is the north south divide anyways? How do we see continuity? Are we ready to take some responsibility for decisions that are taken for the unintended consequences? What about in cases of having to exit a country or a region? Where do human rights factor in? Can you play the role and step out? How can international collaboration become an enabling factor for community-based solutions? How do we deepen dual will accountability to our funders and to our collaborators and benefactors? How and who will change the structures of the systems that we use for these processes, while at the same time answering to urgent questions and demands? How do we act with humility? We don't have all the answers. How can we not only be market driven, but also knowledge and learning driven? How do we not become elements of neocolonial forces? Can practitioners not have an allergy to critical scholars? How do we allow ourselves to have more honest conversations across the different actors in these systems and processes?
Keywords: Consultants, governance paradigms, environment, policy diffusion, north-south collaborations
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About the speaker
Alejandra Burchard Levine is a policy and strategy consultant and water governance researcher at Arcadis in the Netherlands, currently completing her Ph.D. in Environmental Policy Analysis at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam under the Marie-Curie NEWAVE - Next Water Governance Training Network. Her research delves into the roles of private consultants on water governance paradigms, focusing on the involvement of non-state actors in diffusing water policies. With a background in Chemical Engineering and a Master's in Environmental Sciences and Engineering, Alejandra brings over 14 years of global project management experience in the water sector across Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Europe. She has worked closely with a diverse array of partners, including industry leaders, government bodies, NGOs, and renowned consulting firms, such as Veolia, Suez, GFA Consulting Group GmbH, UNICEF, UNESCO, KfW, GIZ, IADB, LuxDev, and Waterlution.
Discussants
Nicolas Jager is an assistant professor for the governance of sustainability transformations with the Public Administration and Policy group at Wageningen University. His expertise lies in the governance of sustainability transformations of interlinked institutional, infrastructural and environmental systems. Nicolas holds a doctoral degree in Political and Social Science from Leuphana University Lüneburg. As postdoctoral researcher at Leuphana University, Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg, and the University of Bremen, he collected ample experience in research and teaching in the fields of environmental governance and sustainability transformations. In 2021, he was awarded an Associate Junior Fellowship at the Hanse Wissenschaftskolleg - Institute for Advanced Study, Delmenhorst, Germany.
Osmany Porto de Oliveira is a tenured assistant professor in the Department of International Relations at the Federal University of São Paulo (Unifesp). He holds a PhD in Political Science from Université Sorbonne Nouvelle/IHEAL and the University of São Paulo. He has received different international awards, such as the Best Comparative Paper Award from the Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis (2024) and the Early Research Award from the International Public Policy Association (2019). His main research interests are policy transfer and development cooperation, areas in which he has conducted extensive fieldwork across various countries in the Americas, Europe, and Africa. He has different publications on these topics including the “Handbook of Policy Transfer, Diffusion and Circulation”. Additionally, he serves as an Associate Editor for the journal Policy Sciences. Throughout his career, he has been a visiting researcher at Hamad Bin Khalifa University (Qatar, 2023), Université Sorbonne Nouvelle (France, 2019), Institute of Development Studies (England, 2018), and Instituto de Estudios Peruanos (Lima, 2013).
