Thomas Bolognesi

Grenoble École de Management | GEM · Department of People, Organization and Society

Policy preferences are a key element in understanding the policy process. In this article, we conceptualise policy preferences as latent constructs, which can be identified in an inductive way, based on actors’ choice of policy instruments and organisational structures. To inductively identify policy preferences, we take an approach based on princi...

Environmental transitions face the challenge of incentivizing change and governing complexity. Changing perceptions is critical to address these challenges. Perceptions shape policy and directly determine the potential and pathway of environmental transitions. While often addressing risk perception, economists rarely study perceptions in regard of...

This handbook provides a comprehensive, state-of-the-art overview of urban water governance. Of the many growing challenges presented by rapid urbanization, water governance is a critical one and while urban water governance is now regarded as a critical field of research, the literature is fragmented. For the first time, this handbook brings toge...

Le présent article part du constat de la persistance des problèmes environnementaux et de changements globaux transformant et mettant sous contraintes les interdépendances socio-écologiques. En parallèle, un paradoxe est souligné : alors que la gouvernance de l’eau gagne en spécialisation et expertise, les règles individuellement « bien » formulées...

Ce rapport traite de l’organisation de la politique de l’eau dans le Canton afin de mettre en relief sa cohérence et ses limites. Il présente l’objectif, les méthodes développées et les résultats du projet Économie Politique de l’Eau dans le Canton de Genève mené sous mandat de l’Office cantonal de l’eau en 2020 et 2021. Le projet fait écho aux rec...

The existing urban water cycles and services are crafted by the co-evolution over time and space of natural and anthropogenic systems. Those water-human systems interactions (e.g., water uses and related services) frame the different characteristics of supply and demand across the world. As a result of the preceding point, it is important to unders...

Most of the world's population lives in urban areas, and the population concentration in urban centres significantly affects water flows and ecological functions. We consider urban water as a smaller water cycle within the global water cycle. It thus has ecological and social characteristics. As we face the so-called water crisis, comprehending urb...

Complexity is inherent to the policy processes and to more and more domains such as environment or social policy. Complexity produces unexpected and counterintuitive effects, in particular, the phenomenon of policy regimes falling short of expectations while made by refined policies. This paper addresses this phenomenon by investigating the process...

Coordinating and integrating different policies and public sector organizations is a major challenge for practitioners and a continuing topic of interest for researchers. We argue that existing research on this topic needs reorientation to provide better insights for practice and theory of policymaking as well as policy implementation. We offer fou...

This article puts forward the notion of socio-technical resistance with an application to the regulation through performance indicators in the water sector. Governance failures are mainly explained by concentrating on governance design, considering regulation as a set of control mechanisms. We propose an alternative perspective by putting the empha...

Performance reporting in sunshine regulation is subject to disclosure biases, because agents may game the regulation or encounter difficulties in complying. These biases limit the appraisal of the impact of sunshine regulation on performance. We investigate the behavioral causes of such disclosure biases by focusing on transaction costs economizing...

Why do water governance failures persist in the long run? In this article, I summarize research that puts forward ‘transversal transaction costs’ (TTCs) and the ‘institutional complexity trap’(ICT) in the dynamics of polycentric govenance systems.

The Institutional Collective Action (ICA) framework has contributed to understanding collective action problems in fragmented governance and identified mechanisms for overcoming them. Participation in collaboration is risky––even if it has the potential to make all parties better off. This framework has uniquely shown how collaboration risk and oth...

Cities face the risk of water deficits. This risk involves substantial costs and damages that impair water access, biodiversity, public health, education and business. Consequently, comparative research is growing to understand urban water deficit risks and to derive policy lessons that can limit the vulnerability of large population centres. So fa...

Commentaire de l'ouvrage: Sylvain Barone, Rémi Barbier, François Destandau, Patrice Garin (eds.), 2018, Gouvernance de l’eau : un mouvement de réforme perpétuelle ? Paris, L’Harmattan, 260 pages.

Understanding the diversity of urban water regimes in Europe require dealing with governance instruments, actors strategies and institutional environment. To embrace it, we propose a typology of synchronous urban water regimes delineating four ideal forms. We highlight how actors strategies are embedded in institutional regimes and how sustainabili...

The Social-Ecological Systems framework serves as a valuable framework to explore and understand social and ecological interactions, and pathways in water governance. However, it lacks a robust understanding of change. We argue an analytical and methodological approach to engaging global changes in SES is critical to strengthening the scope and rel...

The Social-Ecological Systems (SES) framework serves as a valuable framework to explore and understand social and ecological interactions, and pathways in water governance. Yet, it lacks a robust understanding of change. We argue an analytical and methodological approach to engaging global changes in SES is critical to strengthening the scope and r...

This chapter explores why the modernization of urban water systems in Europe (UWSEs) brings about the process of their depoliticization. Furthermore, it investigates why modernization implementation goes with a resilient dynamic of water systems. It appears that modernization renders the structure of property rights within the UWSEs more complex, e...

This chapter highlights the impact of modernization on the sustainability of urban water systems in Europe and what the remaining challenges are, comparing the cases of Germany, France and England. It shows how economic and environmental aspects of sustainability fall short of expectations while social dimensions have a better outcome. Then the cha...

This chapter explores how the institutional dynamic of modernization limits the potential for the sustainability of urban water systems in Europe (UWSEs), revealing a paradox. Modernization brings with it an increased number of rules intended to regulate UWSEs in a harmonious and sustainable way. However, it appears inherently unable to bring about...

This chapter highlights how modernization has had an impact on the structure of urban water systems in Europe (UWSE) by depicting a European model and comparing its German, French and English variations. It provides empirical clues which indicate that the ongoing regulatory changes are contributing to reducing the role of the state in the governanc...

This chapter explores the reasons why modernization of urban water systems in Europe (UWSE) brings about the process of their depoliticization and shows how modernization implementation goes with a resilient dynamic of water systems. We use transaction cost economics to argue that the modernization process hybridizes governance structures, favourin...

This chapter puts together the main conclusions of the book and discusses its contribution to the literature. On the empirical side, the urban water system framework could be usefully reused and adapted to other utilities to enable simultaneous analysis of their institutional, economic and technological aspects. On the theoretical side, the book pr...

This chapter presents the approach adopted in the book and its contribution to the field. It defines notions of urban water services in Europe and modernization. To place our contribution within the research areas of the regulation of utilities and water (sustainable) governance, we review challenges that water services face nowadays, especially in...

With the growing number of uses (ecosystems, irrigation, fishing, navigation, domestic uses, hydropower and/or cooling of nuclear power plants) and the reinforcement of environmental concerns, many treaties have been adopted to protect the environment in general and water in particular (Caponera & Nanni 1992). In this context, upstream-downstream c...

This book describes the impact of modernization on the organization and sustainability of Urban Water Systems in Europe (UWSEs). Bolognesi explains that the modernization of UWSEs was a regulatory shock that began in the 1990s and was put into action with the EU Water Framework Directive in the year 2000. This process sought to reorganize water gov...

The paper is now published as: Bolognesi, Thomas, and Stéphane Nahrath. 2020. “Environmental Governance Dynamics: Some Micro Foundations of Macro Failures.” Ecological Economics 170. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2019.106555 .

International organizations and their partners often consider water security as a core notion of water governance strategies. Water security is, therefore, mostly addressed as a goal to be achieved. As the definition of a water-secure situation is still under consideration, and considering the lack of distance on the causal relationship between wat...

Disclosure biases come up in sunshine regulation of public utilities. These biases limit the appraisal of the impact of sunshine regulation on performance. We investigate the behavioral causes of such disclosure biases by focusing on transaction costs economizing and opportunism. We provide an original methodology to take into account information a...

The Institutional Resource Regime framework is a realistic approach of the socio-ecological sys- tems governance and sustainability, which is based on the combination of public policies analysis and institutional economics. If the effects identified by the framework have been confirmed, there is no clear understanding of the institutional mechanism...

Cet article montre que la dynamique transformatrice dont sont a priori porteurs les indicateurs de performance des services d’eau en France est entravée, dans sa quête d’efficacité accrue, par une multitude de « résistances ». Afin d’appréhender leur diversité, nous introduisons dans un premier temps une typologie originale, que nous confrontons pa...

Now published as: Bolognesi, Thomas, Antoine Brochet, and Yvan Renou. 2021. “Assessing Socio-Technical Resistances to Public Policy Instruments: Insights from Water Performance Indicators in the Grenoble Area (France).” Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space. https://doi.org/10.1177/2399654420986561. /////////////// This article examines...

Dans cet article, on s’interroge sur la possibilité de proposer une approche renouvelée des régimes urbains. Pour ce faire, on choisit de mobiliser dans un premier temps la théorie des régimes institutionnels de ressources (Varone, Narath, Gerber ; 2007), cette dernière permettant selon nous de répondre à une partie des limites identifiées par D. L...

Urban areas are becoming increasingly subject to and vulnerable to water-related natural disasters. Urban areas are a kind of socio-ecological system wherein the human development dynamics co-evolve with the natural dynamics. Most of the literature is focused on the impact of natural disasters on human development; we evaluate the impacts of human...

Since the 1980s, the European Union favours regulatory reforms in network industries and the water sector appears to be the latest to be included in this. We deal with this issue while questioning the concept of “modernization of the Urban Water Systems in Europe” (UWSE). This process began in the second half of 1990 and the Water framework directi...

Cet article présente une analyse des déséquilibres à l’œuvre dans le secteur des eaux urbaines. Le processus de gouvernance influe significativement sur la dynamique du secteur, en particulier durant la phase de modernisation qu’il poursuit. Nous proposons alors une grille d’analyse rendant compte des interactions entre les composantes économique e...

This article assesses the sustainability potential of the urban water systems in Europe (UWSE) following their modernisation. A decade after implementation and close to the first deadlines, modernisation efforts seem to have not been (totally) successful. This article examines the ability of governance to achieve sustainability and poses the questi...

Cette thèse a pour objet la modernisation des Systèmes Hydriques Urbains de l’Europe des XV (SHUE). Débutant à la fin des années 1990, ce processus de rerégulation des SHUE opère une transformation du cadre réglementaire européen de la gestion de l’eau. Il vise une amélioration du fonctionnement de la gouvernance afin, notamment, d’imprimer une tra...

This PhD dissertation focuses on the modernization of the urban water systems in Europe (UWSE). Since the end of the 1990's, this reregulation of the UWSE has transformed the European regulatory framework of water management. It is driven by two mains objectives: improving of the governance process and implementing a sustainable path for the UWSE....

Cette thèse a pour objet la modernisation des Systèmes Hydriques Urbains de l’Europe des XV (SHUE). Débutant à la fin des années 1990, ce processus de rerégulation des SHUE opère une transformation du cadre réglementaire européen de la gestion de l’eau. Il vise une amélioration du fonctionnement de la gouvernance afin, notamment, d’imprimer une tra...

This paper discusses the architecture of a theoretical framework aiming at consolidating the concept of water security particularly thanks to the contribution of social ecological economics. This paper takes for granted that water security offers an innovative and relevant perspective to address the issue of the sustainability of the society/resour...

Les catastrophes hydriques naturelles touchant les territoires urbains se multiplient et la vulnérabilité des villes aux risques hydriques augmente. L’article propose une analyse de ce phénomène dans les mégapoles. La démarche est exploratoire et débute avec la construction d’une base de données renseignant les 595 mégapoles existantes dans le mond...

This article assesses the sustainability potential of the urban water sector in Europe following its modernisation. The analysis uses the theoretical framework of institutional resource regimes. This interpretative framework provides us with a typology of natural resource governance systems based on their coherence and their extent. Then, based on...

Cet article évalue le potentiel de soutenabilité du secteur de l'eau urbaine en Europe suite à sa modernisation. L'analyse procède en mobilisant le cadre théorique des régimes institutionnels de ressource et conclue que la modernisation offre un progrès nécessaire mais pas suffisant. Pour étayer ces résultats, nous procédons en trois temps : la pré...

Cet article propose une nouvelle grille d'analyse, bâtie autour de la notion de " système hydrique urbain " (SHU). Elle permet de caractériser l'état de la gouvernance de l'eau dans les villes. L'élaboration de la grille s'appuie sur le concept d'encastrement institutionnel et, plus largement, sur la théorie néoinstitutionnaliste. Le SHU articule u...

Cet article propose, au regard des douze années d'expérience de la Directive cadre européenne sur l'eau (DCE), d'éclaircir le processus de modernisation de la gestion de l'eau en Europe et d'en discuter la pertinence à l'aube des premières échéances de résultats (2015). En traitant ce thème, l'objectif est de situer les différents débats dans lesqu...