Beyond the Strategic Retreat? Explaining Urban Water Privatization’s Shallow Expansion in Low- and Middle-income Countries

Abstract

This article explains changes in the literature on urban water privatization in low-and middle-income countries and demonstrates the need for a revised research agenda. Since the Great Recession, privatization practice has subtly evolved, but scholarship has been slow to follow. This period of shallow growth is characterized by phenomena that have gone largely understudied: direct negotiation between private firms and cities, the greater role of domestic firms, privatization by coproduction, and a new geography. This study proposes a typology for planners to assess whether and where different forms of privatization may enhance water service in this new era.

Community water system privatization and the water access crisis

“…Recent research by scholars of community water system management has begun to consider that, perhaps, privatization practices have shifted in such a way that the traditional terms of the debate are no longer able to readily capture the extent to which private ownership, governance, and management approaches are present and effective (Bakker, ; Bakker, Kooy, Shofiani, & Martijn, ; Bakker, ; Pierce, ; Greiner, ). Prior to the development of such understandings, it was common for studies to draw distinct lines that left many decision makers and activists either unabashedly supporting the broader complex of policies that are often identified as falling under the umbrella of market environmentalism (Bakker, ), or condemning what came to be known as the neoliberalization of nature (Castree, ; Kathleen, ) and/or accumulation by dispossession (Harvey, ).…”

“…If we take seriously the notions that places with higher numbers of minorities, and places with lower populations are more likely to experience privatization, while keeping in mind that these areas also tend to pay higher prices for their water system services, then a concerning possibility is that the experiences of Camden, NJ, and Cochabamba, Bolivia will become more common in the future. This is worthy of concern, as privatized water utilities tend to have a record of less adequate service, particularly in areas where customers are unable or unwilling to afford rate hikes and in areas with smaller populations (Pierce, ). For an example, we can return to the case of Camden.…”

“…Primary accumulation refers to political acts in the past that removed peasantry from means of subsistence (e.g., land, forests, and other natural resources) in order to concurrently generate a capitalist and a laboring class, thereby breathing life into the current economic system.3 It should be noted that, while about half of all U.S. water utility systems involve the private sector in their operations, such systems are patronized by a disproportionately small percentage of the total population served by water systems. Recent estimates suggest that roughly 86% of the U.S. population that relies on community water systems for water provision are served by publicly owned and managed systems(Food and Water Watch, 2016;Grant, 2015).4 Estimates suggest that, globally, somewhere between 10% and 15% of water utility systems rely on the private sector in some capacity or another(Murthy, 2013;Pierce 2015).…”

Intersectionality challenges for the co-production of urban services: notes for a theoretical and methodological agenda

“…(27) For instance, in the context of an increasing retreat of the state, co-production has been identified as a potential tool for the enclosure of public services for the benefit of middle-income people who can more easily capitalize on co-production processes. (28) While public administration studies have sought to investigate the incentives for citizens who participate in service co-production, in lower income countries the question is how structural factors may exclude specific groups from the co-production process and what burdens it adds to their already constrained lives. Which social groups will be able to take advantage of the new spaces of opportunity?…”

The Evolution of Private Provision in Urban Drinking Water: New Geographies, Institutional Ambiguity and the Need for Political Economy

“…There is now a debate in the literature over whether the first wave of privatisation was the high water mark, with inevitable if uneven retreat to public provision; or whether private providers have responded to the failures of the first wave, and have embarked upon a strategy of 'shallow expansion' (Pierce 2015). Research presented in this paper contributes to this debate in two ways.…”