ANALYSIS OF THE LEGAL FRAMEWORK OF THE REGULATION OF SANITATION SERVICES IN LATIN AMERICAN CASES

Abstract

Water and sanitation services are in the process of being developed in Latin America. The reforms initiated in the 1990’s are responsible for the current situation of the institutions that regulate water and sanitation services. This paper focuses on understand the profiles of regulation agencies in Brazil, Colombia, Panama, Paraguay and Uruguay, examples of institutions responsible for regulating water supply and sanitation services were evaluated in this study, of which four were federal institutions, five were state institutions and three were municipal institutions. The analyzed corpus, which comprised legal documentation of the regulation agencies, was hierarchically classified by means of content analysis. Case studies and empirical analyses suggest the agency’s rules are unlikely to public policy in environmental sanitation. The set of federal agencies, however, was shown to have a profile of tax regulation, determination of rules and forms of control, and another set whose characteristics are related to the quality of the services provided, the competencies of the regulation office and the organization of the institutions management system. On the other hand, the legislation comprised in the state and municipal agencies is characterized by technical regulation, determination of rules, definition of the institutions’ competencies, as well as the organization of their management system. The limits of public policies in regard to the principle of universalization and equity of water supply and sanitation services, for instance, were hardly expressed in the legislation texts, which shows the lack of explicit links between the legal framework and public management.

Key Words: regulation, water and sanitation, social control.