The commercialisation of development funding and changing nature of basic services provision

商业融资承诺能够实现联合国的可持续发展目标。最近，“传统”捐赠者在水和卫生设施等领域推广了这一方法。援助旨在通过降低投资风险和创建中介机构来动员私人资源，将投资者和水公用事业联系在一起。我的博士研究着眼于肯尼亚的这些趋势，调查了一系列捐赠者的倡议，这些倡议逐渐设想、试验和推广了为该国水务部门融资的商业方法。我将这种正在进行的发展资金商业化和相关行业转型的理论视为一个有争议的、不完整和不稳定的过程，在这个过程中，以前公司化但仍为公有的公用事业公司已开始“发债”。这建立在社会定位理论(Lawson 2019,2021)的基础上，该理论是剑桥社会本体论小组开发的对社会现实结构(S)的本体论阐述，以调查商业融资的基本服务提供的变化性质。这项密集的案例研究对水务部门商业化融资的历史发展进行了丰富的实证研究，使人们能够对新兴的商业融资水务行业进行结构和因果分析，包括其改善但更不均衡的服务提供的新趋势。我计划发表期刊文章，a)详细阐述我的博士研究对社会定位理论的关键理论贡献之一，以及b)利用它将金融化的性质理论化为一个关联的定位过程，以帮助更好地理解肯尼亚水务行业和其他领域的金融化。这项研究留下了两个悬而未决的问题：商业化融资方法是如何存活下来的，并可能从Covid-19中恢复过来。更多地强调基本服务的提供，同时大幅减少收款；为什么其他形式的商业化发展资金承诺更便宜的资金和更多的公共控制(最关键的是效仿荷兰“水银行”的“MajiBank”)仍然是不可能的。我计划通过进一步的(有限的)研究来解决这两个问题，这些研究更新了我在大流行后时期的博士研究，并更深入地研究了“MajiBank”在肯尼亚的历史(非)发展。这包括调查投资者(仅次于商业银行)对肯尼亚水务部门投资的兴趣和方法。连同我的博士研究，这将构成第三篇期刊文章的基础，这篇文章c)揭示了不同形式的金融化及其产生不同发展形式的趋势。重要的是，它将为一本书的提案和针对政策和实践者的著作的发展提供信息。我还计划为未来的研究制定一份提案。为了解释肯尼亚水务部门的变化，我的博士分析着眼于支持商业化融资形式的“规范界”(Elder-Vass 2010,2012)。我计划今后就这些准则和捐助者为形成这些准则所作的努力进行研究，并确定它们的组成、内部分工以及支持/执行某些发展及其供资准则的方向。这将有助于更好地了解这些圈子及其运作，以及发展金融化如何帮助捐助者在南南合作不断加强和新出现的多极化之后保持其不断下滑的权力，这种权力是什么样子，以及捐助者如何试图实现这一点。重要的是，我计划参与关于基本服务发展及其资金的政策辩论，并与相关组织(GIZ、KfW、世界银行、WFF、Aqua for All，...)进行联系。将我的研究成果传播到学术界以外。这包括写博客、参加世界水周和非正式知识交流。此外，我计划利用奖学金和相关的导师和培训来促进职业和个人发展

Commercial financing has promised to enable achieving the UN's Sustainable Development Goals. Lately, 'traditional' donors have promoted the approach for sectors such as water and sanitation. Aid has been oriented to mobilise private resources by de-risking investment and creating intermediaries to bring together investors and water utilities.My PhD research looked into these trends in Kenya, investigating the row of donor initiatives that gradually imagined, trialled, and promoted commercial approaches to financing the country's water sector. I theorised this ongoing commercialisation of development funding and associated transformation of the sector as a contested, incomplete, and unstable process where formerly corporatised yet still publicly owned utilities have begun to 'emit debt'. This builds on Social Positioning Theory (Lawson 2019, 2021), an ontological elaboration of the structure(s) of social reality developed by the Cambridge Social Ontology Group, to investigate the changing nature of commercially financed basic services provision. The intensive case study produced a rich empirical account of the historical development of commercialised water sector funding, enabling a structural and causal analysis of the nascent commercially financed water sector, including its emergent tendencies of improved yet more uneven services provision.I plan to publish journal articles that a) elaborate on 'linked positioning', one of my PhD research's key theoretical contributions to Social Positioning Theory, and b) use it to theorise the nature of financialisation as a linked positioning process to help understand it better in Kenya's water sector and beyond.The research left two questions open: how commercialised funding approaches have survived and possibly recovered from Covid-19, which put more stress on basic services provision while significantly reducing collections; and why other forms of commercialised development funding that have promised cheaper funding with more public control (most crucially a 'MajiBank' modelled after the Dutch 'Waterbank') have remained non-starters. I plan to address these two questions through further (limited) research that updates my PhD research for the post-pandemic period and looks more deeply at the historical (non-)development of a 'MajiBank' in Kenya. This includes investigating investors' (next to commercial banks') interest in, and approaches to, investing in Kenya's water sector. Together with my PhD research, this will form the basis of a third journal article that c) unpacks different forms of financialisation and their tendencies to produce different forms of development. Importantly, it will inform development of a book proposal and writings targeted at policy and practitioner circles.I also plan to develop a proposal for future research. To explain the changes in Kenya's water sector, my PhD analysis looked at the 'normative circles' (Elder-Vass 2010, 2012) that have endorsed commercialised forms of funding. I plan to prepare future research on these and donors' efforts to form them and shape their composition, internal division of labour, and orientation to endorse/enforce certain norms of development and its funding. This will help to better understand these circles and their operation, and how the financialisation of development may help donors to maintain some of their slipping power in the wake of growing South-South cooperation and emerging multipolarity, how such power looks like, and how donors have attempted to achieve this.Importantly, I plan to engage in policy debates on basic services development and its funding, and liaise with related organisations (GIZ, KfW, World Bank, WFF, Aqua for All, ...) to disseminate my research findings beyond academia. This includes writing blogs, participating in the World Water Week, and informal knowledge exchange. Furthermore, I plan to use the fellowship and associated mentorship & training for career and personal development