The Political Economy of Water Services in the EU. Governance, Marketisation and Contestation in Italy and France

In the last decades, water governance has become a contested field of policy-making, raising political and academic attention, and gaining even more relevance due to the current climate crisis. During the past thirty years, a global wave towards privatisation has impacted the provision of local public services, including water. This has triggered social movements’ reaction resisting to it and promoting re-municipalisation as a viable policy alternative.This thesis investigates the outcome of these processes, by researching the management and governance of water services over the past decades, in the cases of Italy and France, in the EU context. The thesis addresses governance in a twofold way: first, I investigate how policy outcomes have been affected by political projects, business strategies and social contestation; second, I address the multiple levels of decision-making – European, national and local.In order to do so, the thesis is interdisciplinary and dialogues with the fields of sociology, political science, and international political economy. More specifically, the theoretical framework is centred on critical political economy, informed by social reproduction theory and political ecology. The methodology is qualitative, with a core of semi-structured interviews, triangulated with document analysis and descriptive statistics. The comparison of the cases will be multi-level, empirically examining the municipal level (Naples and Paris), the national level (Italy and France) and the supranational (European Union).For each of the cases (Italy, France and the EU), there will be three axes of analysis. Firstly, a mapping of the current water services governance arrangements, in their institutional framework, business actors and regulation. Then, conceptualising governance not as thing, but as a social relation, I investigate how it came to be, and trace the historical process of water marketisation. Finally, I also assess how this process has been contested and what have been the outcomes of these social movements.The findings contribute to the specific literature on water services, particularly to the contemporary debates on the end of privatisation and on the potential of re-municipalisation. More generally, the thesis is positioned in the field of political economy, by analysing the relationship between state and market, and by adding to the discussion on possible alternatives to neoliberal policies.