The Political Economy of Urban Governance in Asian Cities: Delivering Water, Sanitation and Solid Waste Management Services

Cities across Asia are emerging as increasingly productive spaces driving economic growth and enabling social transformation. As their sizes and numbers grow, urban local governments’ ability to consistently deliver widely accessible and efficiently functioning public services is key to sustaining this momentum of positive change. Better understanding the institutional constraints facing cities in doing so is therefore critical. We design and apply an assessment framework to 18 cities across 6 countries in South and Southeast Asia to better understand the functional, administrative, and political dimensions determining the quality and coverage of water, sanitation, and solid waste management services. We find that urban local governments across Asia are constrained in their authority and discretion to deliver basic public services. Reforming intergovernmental institutional structures to better match responsibilities is essential for realizing cities’ full economic potential and meet targets set in the SDGs and the New Urban Agenda.