Gemma Gasseau

Gemma Gasseau, PhD candidate in Transnational Governance at Scuola Normale Superiore and Sant’Anna School for Advanced Studies in Florence, Italy, and member of the Blue Community Network, where she states:

«Water is essential for life. Therefore, initiatives upholding the right to water, like the Blue Communities, are important for advancing social and environmental justice.»

Gemma Gasseau recently published a Research Article on water politics;

Negotiating the public: re-municipalization, water politics and social reproduction

Here down the abstract of this article and a short review by Roland Brunner, Blue Community Zurich/Switzerland.

Negotiating the public: re-municipalization, water politics and social reproduction

ABSTRACT

In the context of the global wave of privatization of local public services, re-municipalization has emerged as a viable policy alternative, broadly understood as the return to public management. The paper examines its transformative potential by analysing what ‘public’ means in practice with a particular focus on governance and decision-making. To do so, the paper investigates the re-municipalization of urban water services in Naples (Italy) and Paris (France) by utilizing qualitative methods. Through a critical political economy approach, informed by social reproduction theory and political ecology, I argue that re-municipalization should be seen as a process that different social forces continuously try to shape. The findings not only contribute to the specific literature on water services, but also to that on re-municipalization, within the debate about public versus private provision. More broadly, the research enhances the understanding of water through the lenses of critical political economy.

 

REVIEW

By Roland Brunner, Blue Community Zurich

In her testimonial to the Blue Community network, Gemma Gasseau states: «Water is essential for life. Therefore, initiatives upholding the right to water, like the Blue Communities, are important for advancing social and environmental justice.» The commitment to and struggle for social and environmental justice are the energy striving Gasseau and her work. On the 16 pages of her Research Paper, based on 22 interviews (!) she did, Gasseau describes how re-municipalizations are done to «ensure that management and control of essential services are carried out in the public interest, rather than for private profit» and aims to «assess this transformative potential by focusing on decision-making, decomposed in governance of the water operator and democratic participation within its management» on the examples of the water services in Naples and Paris, ten years after their re-municipalization.

Methodologically, Gasseau applies critical political economy and follows therewith people like Andreas Bieler, Andrea Muehlebach or Madelaine Moore, all three also members of the Blue Community network. After outlining the re-municipalization debate, she analyses the two cases, Naples and Paris, to then compare them «to identify similarities and differences, and the reasons behind them». Focusing on the long-term dynamics, Gasseau considers re-municipalization «as an open-ended process, or (with Cumbers & Paul, 2022) a terrain of struggle». As Gasseau puts it: «Hence, to investigate to what extent re-municipalization has been transformative in the cases under scrutiny, I will evaluate the evolution of governance of the re-municipalized water operator, that is who takes decisions, and democratic participation within its management, to enquire what ‘public’ means in practice.»

The case of Naples (from Arin SpA to ABC Napoli) is presented in the context of a fragmented reform process, is based on a coalition between the water movement and the local government for water as a common good.

The case of Paris (from Suez and Veolia to Eau de Paris EdP) is introduced in the context of delegated management, and as a political project of the 2002 newly elected leftist and green government in Paris: «The decision to re-municipalize the water services in Paris was taken in the context of the declining legitimacy of private companies, the opening up of the political possibility of insourcing by Grenoble, the rise of a global water movement against water privatization and the leadership of the red–green coalition, with particular reference to the political work of Anne le Strat, deputy mayor of Paris and chairwoman of the EdP board. (…) At its outset, EdP featured a governing body in charge of taking decisions, and representing the different stakeholders, including the citizens, through a newly created ‘water observatory’.»

Gasseau describes similarities and differences in the economic and political context, including the obstacles of both cases, focusing on their democratic gap, i.e. the participation and decision-making power of citizens and society towards management and political institutions. And she describes, how the two cases deal with this gap. She states: «In both cases, re-municipalization did not mean the end of conflict; several obstacles emerged, which hold perhaps surprising similarities in such different contexts.» Focusing on the (problems with) democratic participation vs. expertise and management, Gasseau argues «that the re-municipalized water operators as we observe them today are the result of the interplay between the water movement, the local government, water company workers and national policy-makers».

In the last chapter, Gasseau presents three sets of conclusions. In short:

• First, public ownership is only the first step towards public control. (…)
• Second, internal expertise plays a key role in the definition of what ‘public’ means as negotiated by the actors. (…)
• Third, the major conflicts that emerged in the implementation phase resulted in the break up of alliances that made re-municipalization possible: namely, that of the city council and the water movement.

My conclusion after reading Gasseau’s research paper: re-municipalization and water politics are part of the never ending everyday social and political struggle. Who is taking the decisions with what economic, financial, political interests behind. Not astonishing, but good to read it so well documented and explained on two concrete examples from the world of water.

 

*Gemma Gasseau (08 Feb 2024): Negotiating the public: re-municipalization, water politics and social reproduction, Globalizations, DOI: 10.1080/14747731.2024.2313807

Gemma Gasseau is a PhD candidate in Transnational Governance at Scuola Normale Superiore and Sant’Anna School for Advanced Studies (Italy). Her research interests encompass political economy and political ecology.