Modernization and sustainability of urban water systems in Europe: a neoinstitutionalist approach to resource regimes.

Summary This thesis deals with the modernization of the Urban Water Systems of Europe XV (UWS). Beginning in the late 1990s, this process of re-regulation of EUHSs is transforming the European regulatory framework for water management. It aims to improve the functioning of governance in order, in particular, to set a sustainable course for the EUMS. However, the interim assessments are mixed and highlight the need for an analytical characterization and explanation of the modernization of EUWHs, in order to identify unanticipated effects. Therefore, the thesis addresses the effects of SHUE modernization in its organizational and sustainable dimensions. The objective of the thesis is to provide an interpretation of the impacts of modernization on the governance structure of SHUEs and its effectiveness from a sustainability perspective. Anchored in an institutional economics approach, the approach adopted compares the German, French and English models and is organized in two stages. The first stage is based on empirical observation. The phenomena characterizing modernization are identified and formulated in the form of stylized facts. The second part explains these phenomena theoretically. In view of the contributions and limitations of the various institutional approaches, it is decided to mobilize the neoinstitutionalist current to account for the organizational aspects and the Institutional Resource Regimes approach to deal with the sustainable dimension of the modernization of the SHUE. This thesis argues that modernization leads to a mutation of the coordination modalities of SHUEs, while intensifying and polarizing the sustainability problems around the economic pillar. At the organizational level, we show that, on the one hand, modernization tends to depoliticize SHUEs and that, on the other hand, the degree of integration of its principles in a SHUE is positively correlated to a resilient socio-institutional dynamic. These two phenomena are mainly the result of a hybridization of institutional arrangements towards the market pole. The change in contractual forms and the attenuation of property rights within SHUEs reduce the direct control of the state and increase the capacity of actors to adapt quickly. Regarding the potential for sustainability, a lack of coherence in the development of the re-regulation of SHUEs explains the relatively pessimistic outlook. We show that this paradox manifests an intrinsic inability of modernization to maximize the sustainability potential of SHUE. If the development of regulation is supposed to improve the quality of governance, in our case, it is accompanied by a mechanical increase in coordination costs that hinders the achievement of a sustainable trajectory.