IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehl/lserod/129626.html

Political (in)visibility and governance disconnects: dealing with waste in Addis Ababa and Faisalabad

Author

Listed:
  • da Cruz, Nuno F.
  • Ahmed, Saeed
  • Gebremariam, Eyob

Abstract

Like many large cities in the Global South, Addis Ababa and Faisalabad have struggled to improve their solid waste management (SWM) systems. The political economy of the sector, alongside local attitudes towards waste work, creates a complex governance environment in which solutions are far from obvious. This article traces social, political and institutional change in the SWM systems of the two cities through a comparative, interdisciplinary analysis anchored in three governance arenas: institutional and policy frameworks,the roles and agency of key actors, and everyday waste practices. Despite substantial institutional differences, we find that service levels and waste workers’ livelihoods are similar. While both cities have moved towards an integrated approach to SWM,imported principles and best practices have not been adequately contextualised. Addressing governance disconnects will depend less on technical fixes than on the public authorities’ ability to place-based, constructive interaction between ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ actors and practices.

Suggested Citation

  • da Cruz, Nuno F. & Ahmed, Saeed & Gebremariam, Eyob, 2026. "Political (in)visibility and governance disconnects: dealing with waste in Addis Ababa and Faisalabad," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 129626, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:129626
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://researchonline.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/129626/
    File Function: Open access version.
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • R14 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Land Use Patterns
    • J01 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - General - - - Labor Economics: General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:129626. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: LSERO Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lsepsuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.