Research, part of a special feature on The Next Wave in Water Governance

INTRODUCTION

Our aim is to document to what extent commons-oriented imaginaries for water governance in two cities (Terrassa in Spain, and Naples in Italy) offer pathways to further democratize the provision of public water. Under the current public paradigm of democratic regimes, residents of a territory are seen as recipients of top-down policies rather than active agents in the co-production of local politics; predominantly because they elect their councilors to represent them. In a world dominated by neoliberal market financialization, representative democracy has been critiqued as severely constrained (Dardot and Laval 2019), where governments intervene in an “aidez-faire” approach to capital shaping urban policy (Purcell 2008). Particularly in relation to water governance, city residents are seen as consumers and users rather than stewards, a logic that strips their agency in decision-making processes.

The implementation of austerity regimes post the 2008 financial crisis has enabled privatization tendencies under policies that cut public spending, raise taxes, and sell publicly owned assets (Purcell 2013, Bieler and Jordan 2018, Kaika et al. 2024). In response, the global outcry of social movements led to new “popular” municipalist governments turning to citizen participation in local politics and aligning with movement agendas under forms of “new municipalism” (Russell 2019, Thompson 2021). Such a trend triggered a wave of water remunicipalizations. Remunicipalization became synonymous with reclaiming water services from the private sphere and ensuring further accountability mechanisms under “public” democratic control to maintain it as transparent, socially just, and participatory (Lobina 2015, Kishimoto and Petitjean 2017, Clifton et al 2021, Lobina and Weghmann 2021). What remains open to debate, however, is to what extent these measures have been transformative in their processes and outcomes (Gasseau 2023), particularly under persisting neoliberal and elite forms of municipal governance (McDonald and Swyngedouw 2019, Cumbers and Paul 2022).

A water movement began to grow in Europe more visibly in response to the economic policies of the Eurozone crisis, in which austerity measures triggered more privatization of public services including water (Bieler 2021). These movements placed an emphasis on democratic forms of administration of local resources and services. Many of them contested representative democracy that maintains the role of the state as central, especially because the public was increasingly operating under market principles. Instead, they rallied for a type of radical democracy as defined by Purcell (2013), i.e., a continuing endeavor by a community to manage its affairs collectively. This approach advocates for more direct, participatory, and bottom-up forms of democratic governance that are not merely representative and that enable forms of commoning.

Two cities in Southern Europe distinguished themselves from their counterparts by pushing the frontier of remunicipalization toward a commons-oriented logic in their city’s water governance: Terrassa, Spain and Naples, Italy. A slogan circulated stating: “It is written water, it reads democracy.” This slogan, which traveled from Naples to Terrassa, visibly captured the imaginaries and discourses driving the movements in both cities. Water was emblematic of much more than a resource to be managed; it was reinstated in public discourse as a common good intertwined with the essence of democracy.

Much literature exists on the two cases, but this is the first time the two cities are brought into dialogue, through a relational comparative urban study analysis (Ward 2010, Robinson 2016). Terrassa’s water remunicipalization has been previously analyzed (Bagué 2017, 2019, 2020, Planas and Martínez 2020, Satorras et al. 2020, Geagea et al. 2023); and Naples’ water struggle and remunicipalization has similarly been extensively documented (D’Alisa 2010, Bailey and Mattei 2013, Lucarelli 2015, Marotta 2016, Landriani et al. 2019, Agovino et al. 2021, Bieler 2021, Bianchi 2022, Turri 2022, Muehleback 2023, Gasseau 2024, Geagea and De Tullio 2024).

Although the notion of the commons, which has its roots in Ostrom’s seminal work (e.g., 1990, 1999, 2003), describes the governance of a variety of common-pool resources under common-property regimes, we engage more closely with the critical scholarship that has evolved the concept into a verb, “commoning” (Linebaugh 2009). This perspective expands beyond the perdurability of the biophysical resource or its juridical form to emphasize the significance of the politics of commoning, i.e., practices that enable the processes of contesting neoliberal logics and reproducing the commons in more socially just forms, in common and for the common (Fournier 2013, Stavrides 2015). This definition of commoning aligns closely with the understanding of radical democracy as a way of living collectively whereby people manage their own affairs (Purcell 2013). We caution however that commoning ought not to be treated as a panacea, i.e., a policy remedy for all resource management ailments (Ostrom et al. 2007) and democracy failures, but rather as an experiment in forging an alternative to market-logics on most essential resources like water.

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN COMMONING AND DEMOCRACY

Discourses around the notion of commons and practices of commoning have been recently revived by anti-privatization movements in Europe to oppose further waves of private enclosures. Advancing on the long-standing idea of the commons as collective self-governance to ensure the sustainability of a biophysical resource (e.g., Ostrom 1990, van Laerhoven and Ostrom 2007, Dell’Angelo et al. 2016), the commons have since been re-understood as social systems (De Angelis and Harvie 2014) that both challenge and are challenged by politics, power dynamics, and inequities (see Clement 2013, Dell’Angelo et al. 2017, Velicu and García-López 2018, Nieto-Romero et al. 2019, Kashwan et al. 2021).

Some even refer to the common (singular) as a political concept through which to transform society to post-capitalism (Hardt and Negri 2009, Dardot and Laval 2019). As such, the idea of the commons has become synonymous with a counter-imaginary of transformative politics alternative to market and state (Caffentzis and Federici 2014, De Angelis and Harvie 2014). With the shortcomings of existing democratic regimes, which through public ownership of property have facilitated cases of private enclosures, struggles for “real democracy” become experiments in generating alternative forms of governance that reconstruct and maintain the common/s (Bailey and Mattei 2013, Dardot and Laval 2019). This explains the development of a political wave of commoning practices to contest and mobilize the municipal scale to challenge and radically democratize existing state instruments, giving more power to the people, especially on essential resources like water.

For Bagué (2020), remunicipalization has been used as a tool, accompanied by the concept of the common, for reforming the idea of democracy in the collective imaginary. However, both the “commons” and “democracy” are “rubber words,” which could mean anything if co-opted (Auguste Blanqui, cited in Dardot and Laval 2019, also see Federici 2019). We use Purcell’s (2013:314) definition of democracy: a process of becoming (Deleuze and Guattari 1987) more democratic by struggling to “manage our affairs ourselves as much as we can.” This radical understanding of democracy requires people to become engaged agents, not passive receivers.

Therefore, it is important to construct and maintain versions of water remunicipalization that are closely aligned with radical democratic visions that enable ongoing bottom-up civic participation in decision making around resources, through forms of commoning. Federici (2019) frames commoning as the practices of how people participate in forms of social reproduction, including where they gather to exchange, share, and make decisions; and Fournier (2013) emphasizes commoning is the reproduction of the commons, in common and for the common. These are processes of becoming more democratic. Commoning in this sense, can be both a tool for democratically rethinking forms of self-governance of urban resources through and with the local state (Bianchi 2022), and the practices of reproducing commons outside of the state or market.

In urban contexts, however, in which water is a predominantly political struggle that is negotiated and contested (Swyngedouw 2018), in which water is domesticated, produced, commodified, and distributed in a complex infrastructure (Kaika 2004), imagining forms of direct self-governance is subversive. Therefore, the notion of recommoning water under remunicipalization, as the process of reclaiming everyday practices of social organization and reproduction around water politics and governance in the city, emphasizes the need to include the state as facilitator and enabler in crossing this threshold (Geagea et al. 2023). Municipal governance becomes an arena for negotiating social transformation, accompanied with the conviction that there needs to be more approaches to democratize and collectivize decision making around water to protect it from the grip of enclosures.

METHODOLOGY

The case-study approach, when consciously involving theory building, can add value to comparative methodologies (Robinson 2011). Carefully conversing the experiences of different case-study cities within urban studies supports reflecting critically and posing questions about one city through related dynamics in another (Robinson 2011). The “deviant” case-study method particularly can have great theoretical value (Lijphart 1971). Deviant cases in Lijphart’s (1971) typology are known to deviate from established generalizations. They are studied to reveal why they are deviant and what variables contributed to this outcome.

The cases of Naples and Terrassa are both considered deviant examples of water remunicipalization. Although several cities in Spain (but not in Italy) have also successfully remunicipalized their water, both of these cases have experimented beyond any other city to reclaim water as a commons. They pushed the boundary of the public to a commons-oriented logic to further democratize water governance, ensure accountability, and include the visions and needs of the inhabitants in their city’s decisions making on water.

We employ Ward’s (2010) relational comparative urban studies approach and build on two existing sets of case study analyses, each concerning one of the cases (on Terrassa, Geagea et al. 2023, on Naples, Geagea and de Tullio 2024). This approach brings the two cities into a comparative dialogue in terms of the relations and imaginaries that both existed and emerged, impacting their water governance transformations.

Ward (2010) emphasized that this type of relational comparison requires challenging the traditional understanding of “cities” in comparative urban studies by breaking away from fixating on similarities and differences in two mutually exclusive contexts. Instead, comparing specific processes, circulations, and connections that reproduce cities, enables comparability among a much wider range of what constitutes the urban (Ward 2010, Robinson 2011). Thus, the method invites us to start by considering how the two cities are formed in relation to one another, where particularities of each emerge through tracing connections or interactions between certain elements (i.e., events, policies, politics, identities, crises). This presents an opportunity for the close examination of a specific part to help us better understand the interplay of the whole, by identifying how these interactions are created and altered in practice (Hart 2002, cited in Ward 2010).

We draw material from 49 in-depth interviews, 23 conducted in Terrassa and 26 in Naples, between 2021 and 2023, and a focus group organized in Terrassa in 2022 with a follow-up visit in 2023. Ongoing contact was maintained with actors in Naples. In applying the relational comparative approach through a water governance lens, three key connections were identified during the analysis of the interviews and were subsequently used to trace the processes and imaginaries that influenced the transformations in these distinct contexts. The first connection is the context of austerity frameworks present in both cases, which limited municipal public spending and incentivized decisions to privatize (or sell shares in) water utilities. Next is the conceptualization of the notion of commons, driving the imaginary of the water movement in each of the cases. For this purpose, we applied discourse analysis to the interviews to explore interpretations of commons and commoning among the activists within each case. In both sets of interviews, for the first relational category, the codes of “commons” and/or “re/commoning” were further sub-coded into conceptual articulations related to a list of categories including relations to public administration; structure; ownership; type of control; type of decision making, main actor(s); process; knowledge; power relations; economic model; desired institutions; and values and motivations (as listed in Table 1 below).

Lastly, the third connection is the operationalization of the concept of commons. For this aim, we revised local institutional frameworks through archival records (i.e., legal documents published on municipal or water utility websites, and material made available through the interviewed actors), as well as through the accounts of academics and actors who referred to or were involved in legal transformations. For the participatory outcomes of each case, a close analysis of each of the city’s participatory models was conducted, considering the bottom-up and top-down processes that shaped each. Ultimately, this approach aids in conversing the two distinct contexts on similar processes shaped by a resistance to the same type of injustices, and motivated by similar imaginaries, which however, resulted in different outcomes.

COUNTER-IMAGINARIES SHAPING WATER GOVERNANCE IN TERRASSA AND NAPLES

Despite their differences, Terrassa and Naples are both embedded in a Southern European shared identity, among other cities on the receiving end of EU austerity mandates that targeted periphery states, limiting public spending, and incentivizing a market logic to their social services (Kaika 2017, Bieler and Jordan 2018). These austerity policies are present in both cases and mark the first phase of what an interviewee labeled as an “austericide” on water services (Interviewee 10). We see a similar series of dissent actions in both cities. Our results point to this counter conduct being shaped by an imaginary of recommoning water, which leads to the next phase of creating these two deviant cases of water remunicipalization.

Resisting austericide

Terrassa

Terrassa is a mid-sized city with a population of 225,274 and is the third-largest city in Catalonia (IDESCAT 2023). Marked by a heavy industrialization process in the 19th century, the city grew its water infrastructure to meet growing production. Its main water supply today comes from the Llobregat River. Mina Publica d’Aigües de Terrassa S. A. (Mina), the former private water company managed the city’s service for over seven decades, ending with remunicipalization in 2016.

Terrassa, embedded in the Spanish context, faced a series of austerity policies that were implemented across Spain. The Montoro Law, which was passed in 2012, limited public administrative entities from carrying a deficit. Municipalities, under pressure to cut public spending, began opening bids for private concessions. By the year 2015, more than 50% of the Spanish population were served by private water operators (Babiano and Giménez 2015). In 2016, Terrassa became the third most indebted city in Catalonia at €180 million, according to data on outstanding debt released by the Ministry of Tax authorities, dated December 31, 2015 (Mangas 2016), after it had reached its peak debt in 2013 at €211 million (Gobierto 2013). In 2016, the government decided to sell the 4.8% stake held by the Terrassa City Council in Mina’s assets worth €1,400,000 (Taula de l’Aigua 2017).

In response to these trends, demands of the growing water remunicipalization movement and its widespread alliances influenced the formation of Taula de l’Aigua de Terrassa (Terrassa’s Water Roundtable) in 2014. It was formed by local activists who self-organized after the onset of the effects of the crisis of 2008 (Bagué 2019). The decision to remunicipalize water in Terrassa in 2015 was influenced by this group who mobilized mass protests and built local and regional alliances (Bagué 2017, 2019, 2020). They succeeded so that by 2018, the service shifted to full municipal and non-profit management, under the newly named utility, Taigua (Satorras et al. 2020), and in the first year of operation generated a surplus of one million euros that were reinvested in updating outdated infrastructure (Cardosa 2020). Meanwhile, the water movement in Terrassa set itself apart by advocating, as soon as remunicipalization was approved, for the Observatori de l’Aigua de Terrassa (Citizen Water Observatory), a citizen-run, “autonomous” entity that first operated in 2019. This observatory was informed by the formation of alternative civic-participation models from cities such as Paris, Olesa de Montserrat, Berlin, and most notably, the Neapolitan experience (Bagué 2019).

Naples

With a population of 1,004,500 inhabitants, Naples is the largest city in southern Italy and the third largest in the country (Comune di Napoli 2023a). The city sources its water from various source points, with the oldest aqueduct, del Serino, dating back to 1885 (ABC Napoli 2020).

Naples faced a series of national laws for restructuring the water sector in line with privatization starting in 1994 with the Galli Law. By 2009, the Ronchi Decree set a deadline for integrated water service operators to sell at least 40% of the shares owned by local authorities to private enterprises and was seen as a “seal-the-deal” on endorsing privatization (Fantini 2012). Resistance to the Ronchi Decree culminated with the successful 2011 national referendum organized by a coalition of movements under the Forum for Public Water, which declared a majority vote (over 95%) on water to remain a public good (Bailey and Mattei 2013).

Although Naples’ water movement resistance began in 2003–2004 and consisted of environmental associations (e.g., Legambiente), syndicates, missionary priests, and anti-globalizations groups (e.g., ATTAC), after the referendum results of 2011, it gained support from the rise of municipalist politics. The election of Luigi de Magistris, a leading national politician at the time who served as mayor for the next 10 years, has allegedly built new institutions for the development of a face-to-face democracy (Pinto et al. 2023). Although this perspective differs among activists in the water movement (Interviewee 48), de Magistris aligned his discourse with that of the water movement around a commons approach to water governance. This resulted in changing the legal set-up of the old water utility ARIN SpA to establish, in 2013, the new public utility Aqua Bene Comune Napoli (ABC), which is a fully public and non-profit utility designed with participatory governance mechanisms.

In 2014, the Municipality of Naples was affected by austerity measures that worsened its deficit, already at the time at €850 million and requiring repayment according to the 2013 rebalancing strategy (https://commonsnapoli.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/cassetta_debito.pdf). In addition, according to Turri (2022) operating profits decreased from €3,909,000 in 2010 (under joint-stock company) to €60,922 in 2018 (under public, non-profit special company). Notably, although the declared intention of remunicipalization was for more accountability and transparency, the budgets of public companies of the municipality are not separated and thus ABC’s budgets have been “discontinuous and opaque” (Turri 2022:1849).

Comparison

As observed in the two cities, austerity mandates, pushed from an EU level, impacted national and local austerity policies. While in Naples it was imposed through the Ronchi Decree in 2009, which despite being repealed, has since been replaced by other such attempts (more recently, through the Competition Law of 2022/Legge Concorrenza), in Terrassa this was done through the Montoro Law of 2012. Both cities were under fiscal constraints to cut public spending. Terrassa was pressured to renew its private concession, or otherwise open tenders for involving private actors in its water service. Naples was forced to restructure its water utility into a joint-stock company, permitting the selling of shares to private actors. In both cases, it became necessary to “prove the case” for placing water under full public management, while contrarily, under existing laws, no justification is required for a private concession or selling shares to private actors (Interviewee 20).

In both cases, local bottom-up dissent to these measures translated into pushing to de-privatize water services through cooperating with the municipality as the interlocutor that has the power to transition water utilities to full public management. Upon succeeding to remunicipalize their water service, a further push was to create a set-up to enable participatory mechanisms that involve water-movement actors in shaping their local water governance.

A clear distinction, however, is that in Terrassa, the water movement activists, united in vision under the Taula de l’Aigua, had succeeded in lobbying for an autonomous citizen water observatory around the same time that Taigua, the public water utility was established. However, in Naples, although the water movement activists had been strongly mobilizing to recognize water as a common good, the institutionalization process of the new public utility ABC and enshrining water as a common good in the city’s statutes were co-opted as a top-down administrative process. This distinction plays a critical role in the consequent results of the operationalization of a recommoning imaginary in the two cities.

Comparing imaginaries of recommoning water

The success of these two cases goes beyond a sheer desire to remunicipalize, i.e., to bring or to maintain water under a public regime. Interviews with water movement actors in both cases have revealed that a recommoning imaginary has been key to motivating them to push the boundaries of experimenting with alternative models of democratic public governance. Activists in both cases emphasized the importance of the public and on restoring democracy by using the slogan initially employed by Italy’s water movement “It is written water, it reads democracy.” A discourse analysis reveals that to capture the spirit of the commons, Naples’ actors employed the demands for participation and the enshrinement of water as a “bene comune,” while Terrassa employed the notion of co-production of water politics in the city.

Terrassa

The commons as a concept in Catalan translates as el comú. The use of this term by the activists in Terrassa was initially strategically avoided to circumvent any confusion when focusing on demands for remunicipalization (Interviewee 15). The activists speak more comfortably of co-production of a new water culture, which is transparent and collective, with structures of open and horizontal decision making (Interviewees 14, 15, 16, 21, 22). There is no doubt, however, a commoning imaginary shaped their design of the citizen water observatory (Focus Group, Terrassa 2022, Interviewees 4, 15 also see Bagué 2017, 2019, 2020). During a focus group, members of the observatory agreed that a paradigm of recommoning water captures well their vision of democratizing water governance (Focus Group, Terrassa 2022). They emphasized it is about (1) de-privatization to place water in a more democratic arena under public law and (2) the re-distribution of power on water decision making through co-production mechanisms with citizens (Geagea et. al 2023).

Naples

In Naples, the culmination of the 2011 referendum in Italy favoring the protection of public ownership of water led to debates linking water to democratic values and to notions of commons (Fantini 2012, Fattori 2013, Carrozza and Fantini 2016, Bieler 2021). The term bene comune was much more discursively used in the water movement and was directly linked to fundamental rights (Interviewees 29, 36). It created, at times, ideological confusion because some interpreted that a common good should be managed under public law, while others, who aligned with autonomous politics, preferred to push the boundaries of commons toward forms of civic and self-governance (Interviewee 29).

Some considered the commons as a new frontier for public administration, representing a shift from the public to the collective (Interviewee 23). The water movement focused on concepts like “participation” in protecting water as a common good, in such forms as “participatory budgeting,” and policy oversight. The previous water management model in Naples, although public, did not consider water as a common good and did not involve community members in decision making. Hence the desire was to democratize the new model by establishing water as a common good. Later, this commons discourse informed the strategies of the urban commons movement in Naples and shaped what Micciarelli (2022) distinguished as the difference between necessary commons (such as water, which falls better under participatory public management) and emergent commons (such as urban spaces that fall under direct self-management through principles of civic and collective use), both of which share fundamental rights to be protected under constitutional law.

Comparison

In summary, while considering some key distinctions outlined above, activists in both cities considered that water was a common good and a human right (protected under international laws) or a fundamental right (protected under constitutional law), therefore it should be protected from market interests and should belong to the community. As outlined in Table 1, their definitions of commons align quite closely. This interpretation notably includes: a new frontier of water management that radicalizes the public by shifting it to transparent and collective governance, and democratic participation/control through a shift involving re-situating residents at the center of power dynamics in water governance. Additionally, interviewees in both cities expressed concepts of experimentation with an alternative model of participation and inclusion of citizens, which should include an open and horizontal structure (inspired by movements’ open assemblies), knowledge diversity and accountability (balance of power), supported by the creation of new institutions that enable water and its governance to operate outside market logics.

Key distinctions are that in Naples, activists seem to have interpreted the notion of commons as a political and legal concept for democratizing an already public model of water services, whereas Terrassa focused on enabling practices of commoning (framed as co-production) while avoiding over-emphasizing the notion of commons to not distract from achieving remunicipalization (of a previously private water service). Terrassa’s vision focuses on future generations, a forward-looking sense of stewardship that needs to remain resilient. Thus, it is seen as not just a political process but a cultural one too, referring to building a new culture of water. In Naples, the focus turned to developing new institutions that could permit novel arrangements for civic participation in other types of commons governance, such as urban and cultural commons.

Operationalization of the notion of commons: legal hacking for democratizing participation

Social movements have, in the past, influenced not just politics but also legal systems, at times leading to significant changes in laws (Bailey and Mattei 2013). Micciarelli (2022) argued that a governance approach rooted in private law would foster a mindset of private ownership rather than dismantling it, posing a significant setback for commoning efforts. Thus, the notion of commons was operationalized in forms of “legal hacking,” a practice of co-designing institutions that enable participatory mechanisms within the context of institutionalizing the commons (Micciarelli 2022). This is important, considering representative democracy continues to uphold traditional understandings of participation as representation.

Terrassa

The municipality in Terrassa underwent a long and strenuous legal research process to provide the national government with a concrete proposal, articulating the economic benefits of transitioning from a private concession to full public management of water services (Interviewee 20). Water governance experts were hired to support the preparation of the reports that recommended the use of a public company legal model (Entidad Pública Empresarial Local, EPEL), which was adopted in Valladolid, another city that remunicipalized (Interviewee 20). The decision to remunicipalize was made in 2016, and the city transitioned to the public water utility, Taigua in 2018. However, as stated by interviewees (14, 15, 21, and 22) the activists in the Taula de l’Aigua understood that remunicipalization alone did not ensure a socially equitable water governance and they presented actionable proposals for how to set up participatory institutions (Geagea et al. 2023).

When Terrassa’s remunicipalization was successful, activists presented a list of instances from Spanish cities that directly administered their water service, as well as lessons from the success and failures of other cities that experimented with participatory civic models such as Paris, and importantly Naples (Taula de L’Aigua 2017). This presentation of precedents provided the foundation for discussions on the forms of direct civic involvement in the new water governance model, which culminated into the Citizen Water Observatory. According to a public official, the establishment of the observatory as autonomous required several modifications to the city’s public participation law (Law 7/1985 of Bases de Régimen Local; Interviewee 20). Its leadership is not appointed by the mayor but democratically elected by its members. Currently there are six working groups which are open to direct citizen participation (see figure in Geagea et al. 2023). Two observatory members sit on the board of the water utility. It runs on a volunteer basis, has a horizontal structure with currently 38 members representing civil society groups, workers’ unions, universities and educational institutions, and is predominantly led by women (60%). Feminist activists have played a significant role in the citizen’s observatory in Terrassa, especially by highlighting the connections between gender inequality and water access (Interviews 21, 22).

However, it is important to note that there are limits to the legal adjustments made for Terrassa’s observatory to exist. For instance, the decisions made by the observatory do not carry legal weight, except for the contributions of two of its members on the board of the utility (who nonetheless represent the perspective of the Citizen Water Observatory). The city council still has the final mandate over decisions on water in the city.

Naples

Similarly in the Naples’ case, which preceded Terrassa by a few years and offered a precedent, it was clear the public model alone was not sufficient to protect water from a staunch national pro-privatization agenda. Therefore, making amendments to the existing public company model (legally set up as a joint-stock company in which shares can be sold) through new institutions that could guarantee water as both a common good and a fundamental right became the main focus. The municipality of Naples followed up on the results of the 2011 referendum with declaring water a common good “of absolute public property,” enabling participatory public management of water and of other common goods (Council Resolution no. 740 of 06/16/2011, approved with city council resolution no. 20 of 7/15/11; Comune di Napoli 2023b).

A commons category was instituted, and with the aid of lawyers, the city adopted a law (Article 114 of the Legislative Decree no 267 of 18 August 2000 TUEL) that permitted changes to the utility’s legal model to a 100% publicly owned and non-profit entity. As a result of this transition, ABC, i.e., Acqua Bene Comune Napoli (water as a commons) was established in April 2013.

A scholar of law and commons, Ugo Mattei designed ABC’s statutes in 2012 to include a surveillance committee as the vehicle for the “participation of citizens in the governance of water as a common good” (ABC statutes preamble, n.d.). It was intended to enable a platform for participatory democracy by way of contributing to the management of the water operator (Gasseau 2024). The committee was criticized for not including local water activists, but rather registered organizations (Bianchi 2022). ABC’s appointed president between 2015 and 2016 “opened the doors of ABC to citizens so that by going inside and having their space, even participating in the boards and presenting their point of view, they could understand how the company works” (Interviewee 25). A few months later, the board of ABC resigned because they were opposed to this approach. The president of ABC was then appointed commissioner to govern the company and ratified a civic council to which movement representatives could be nominated to reinstate direct participation.

When the utility’s board was recreated, those nominated to the civic council were integrated into the board (Interviewee 25). This version of participation was criticized again by some activists who felt it was another form of timed intervention, not deliberation on decisions (Interviewee 31). As well, the representative approach was criticized for placing the burden of legal and managerial responsibilities, rather than the policy and control function, on movement representatives who became board members. It also created political tension and restraint in opposing the mayor, i.e., fears that the mayor had the power to remove activists who held board member roles if they contested his decisions (Interviewee 45).

Despite the disappointment of some activists on their exclusion, the participatory model of ABC does permit the Naples’ Public Water Committee, an activist-led group created to consolidate the movement in Naples, to directly engage with the utility’s president. There are also provisions for triggering abrogative referendums in the event of extraordinary measures, preventing ABC from taking unilateral actions without community consultation (Interviewee 23). The idea of having councils and repeal referendums in principle leads to a strengthening of democratic control. However, shortcomings of the administrative understanding of participation as representation and delegation, detracted from experiments toward commoning. This further leaves ABC at the risk of the reduction or elimination of civic participation and oversight, especially on budgetary matters.

Additionally, although the new institutions created by Naples supported dynamics of counter-power to resist the general politics and market-logic of the national government on matters of commons (Pinto et. al 2023), there were political repercussions. Because Naples hacked the legal model for setting up its utility as a non-profit, both the Neapolitan administration and ABC continue to be severely punished as a bureaucratic anomaly by being de-qualified from national/regional funding (Interviewee 23).

Comparison

Terrassa’s model employs an experiment in commoning through its Citizen Water Observatory, aligned with Purcell’s definition of democracy as the ongoing struggle to manage one’s own affairs (autonomously, but in this case, in collaboration with the municipality) and which informs, invigilates and, to the extent it can, is co-producing water politics in the city with the municipality and the water utility. Whereas in Naples, it is a commons-inspired legal framework with a top-down representative democracy model, in which the activists can still have a social control and consulting role but mostly from the outside. This outcome in Naples is linked to a technocratic turn that enclosed the discussions between public administration staff and legal experts without deeply integrating the vision of the activists (who held different ideas about inclusion/participation/commoning) into the resulting participatory model (Geagea and de Tullio 2024).

We can conclude that both cases operationalized the notion of commons with varying degrees of success, particularly through participatory forms of public management. Despite the successful accomplishments of each of the two cities in further democratizing their water governance, there remains tensions within each approach.

In both cases, the municipality continues to hold the ultimate power (as state actor). Thus, property of water as a common good has remained under a public property regime, meaning there has been only a limited adoption of the notion of commons (leaving it lacking forms of collective ownership and direct self-governance). This is contradictory to the notion of institutions of expanding commoning, which inherently is about dismantling the power of the state (or private actors) by enabling mechanisms of collective self-governance that prevent the accumulation of power (Stavrides 2015). However, the approach in both cases seems consistent with Micciarelli’s (2022) distinction of water as a necessary commons (as distinguished from an emergent commons), emphasizing that due to its essential (and complex) nature, particularly in urban contexts, is better managed as a common good under public management through participatory mechanisms (rather than direct self-management).

Significantly, and perhaps most important to the two cases and Naples especially, is that the challenge both cities are left to face is a turn in the political tide that could compromise their efforts. In Terrassa, the commoning approach of the Citizen Water Observatory, accompanied with aims at co-producing with the municipality and utility, has proven its value and led to forming relationships of trust with some public staff and, to a lesser extent, with utility staff; this has afforded it greater acceptance and support. This support can be leveraged so long as the volunteers involved do not lose steam in carrying out the heavy work load they are carrying in the observatory, through which they are justifying their presence and purpose.

However, the lack of such a mechanism in Naples has left its efforts at greater risk, as is evident in a recent development with ABC. In June 2024, the current mayor of Naples proposed an alteration to the structure of its board of directors. He canceled the requirement of reserving two seats for civil society organizations that have so far been held by environmental organizations. He also made the role of board members paid when it was previously unpaid (La Repubblica 2024). The new statute was approved by the Manfredi council with resolution 226 of 2024 but has not yet entered into force because the approval of the city council will also be needed (Frattassi 2024). This was done without consultation, leading the president of ABC (appointed by the previous mayor) to resign, and the local water committee activists to protest. It also points to the imminent threat of reverting ABC back to a joint-stock company, although the mayor declined accusations on the intention to privatize it (Frattassi 2024). Such changes are considered “non-marginal” by some union representatives, and “intervene on some of the qualifying points of the Statute such as the participation of expressions of civil society by opening the path to a distortion of ABC and the methods of drafting the budget, which will no longer be participated in” (La Repubblica 2024).

DISCUSSION: RECOMMONING IMAGINARIES FOR DEEPENING DEMOCRACY IN WATER GOVERNANCE

The contemporary idea of democracy is a liberal one, in which decisions are made through rules and institutions and in which a few people represent the mass (Purcell 2013). However, the type of democratization that the concept of the commons has enabled, is in line with the one advocated by Purcell (2013) and aligned with Lefebvre (2009): it is about engaging in a “collective struggle to become democratic together” and to govern ourselves in autonomous ways in a community. As the results indicate, both Naples and Terrassa are aligned with an imaginary to further democratize their city’s water governance in line with this definition. However, how (and by whom) the concept of commons was operationalized in terms of democratic participation distinguishes the outcomes of the two cases.

Returning to the definition of democracy we use, it is important to consider what type of communities are desired and the political relations that will uphold these communities (Purcell 2013). This type of radical democracy is not immune to tensions because “these movements and their ideas, principles and practices are often sidelined from legal frameworks, governance debates, and policy innovation processes” (Boelens et al. 2022:3). Purcell (2006) himself warned against the “local trap,” indicating that the city cannot be automatically assumed to be more democratic because scale is socially constructed to achieve particular ends, which at times may be anti-democratic ends, depending on who is in power.

This concern is visible in the case of Naples, where the previous administration’s definition of a commons-oriented, more democratized water governance meant traditional representative democracy; and where the current administration is aligned with market-driven interests rallied at the national level. Although this governance model provides more channels for accountability and civic involvement than its predecessor, it still falls short in interpreting the commons as collective property rights, as “institutions and social relations that maintain the commonness” (Kashwan et al. 2021:2). This leaves it at risk of reversing the transformation achieved, through gradual mechanisms of reducing democratic participation as is witnessed in the proposal by the current mayor in Naples to remove the seats of civil society organizations from the board of the utility. It may eventually lead to returning to the (nationally promoted) model of a joint-stock company to facilitate the acceptance of Naples’ ABC at a regional and national level, from a bureaucratic, political, and strategic point of view, for accessing withheld funding.

Commoning, as in the case of Terrassa, proves to enable (and to root) a more systemic and sustainable transformation, even in the face of shifting political tides. However, we still caution that commoning ought not to be treated as a panacea for resource management ailments (Ostrom et al. 2007) and democracy failures, but rather as an experiment in forging an alternative path forward. Despite the risk of such ambition seeming idealistic, particularly to public administrators and water operators, Naples demonstrated the agency a city holds to protect water as a common good in its statutes. Terrassa similarly affords us the possibility to imagine what a deeply democratized model, aligned with activists’ vision could look like. It is the closest manifestation, in a mid-sized city, to employing a radical form of democracy in which an autonomous civic body meets in open assembly to co-produce water politics in the city alongside the utility and the municipality.

Activists in both cities pushed to change institutions in the governance model through a process of legal hacking, i.e., taking advantage of legal loopholes to shift water management from private consignments or shareholdings to new sets of institutions enabling participatory democracy. The result is a shift at a paradigmatic and praxis level from the bureaucratic state logic of resource allocation to processes that permit collective decision making by the water users (as custodians) themselves. These new types of institutional arrangements seem possible thanks to the commoning imaginaries that inspired the activists’ demands in both cities.

The two case studies further demonstrate that although scale needs to be interpreted with caution, the municipal scale, in its proximity of politics and residents, continues to be the most strategic entry point for broader transformative social change (Russell 2019). It enables assembling to express and collectively build strategies to influence politicians on matters of commons. This explains the resurgence of a new municipalist movement within which such recommoning experiments are incubating, resulting in a becoming common of the public (Russell 2019, Thompson 2021). Thus, the municipality becomes the most important arena in which water governance can be transformed. However, the authors do note that in contexts of state-led oppression, the possibility for the local to permit bottom-up resistance to imposed privatizations becomes narrow and at times dangerous. In these contexts, transnational alliances and international/external pressures have been more useful tactics, albeit at times requiring longer-term strategies.

Although radical democracy aspires to eventually eliminate the oligarchic role of the state (Lefebvre 2009, Purcell 2013), which aligns with definitions of commons established above; Bagué (2019) notes that these emerging approaches to water governance are based on a concept of the commons as a principle from which to first organize the social, political, and economic system through the state. The authors have previously argued that recommoning water in cities currently requires transcending the rights-based limits of property theory and focusing on the concept of access (Geagea et al. 2023, Ribot and Peluso 2003). It is in this threshold space that recommoning within the public sphere is taking place (through forms of co-production of policies and co-management of public services).

However, adopting the notion of the commons should not be reduced to only civic participation. The concept of the commons as a tool can offer impetus to accelerate inhabitants’ imagination toward re-thinking forms of collective and direct ownership of water services in their cities. An example of such attempts includes the municipality of Olesa de Montserrat in Catalonia, where an autonomous non-profit cooperative of consumers and users set-up by citizens since 1868 during times of drought, continues to provide water services to its residents (Comunitat Minera Olesana 2024). Similarly, the Thessaloniki proposal (though not adopted) considered direct ownership of citizens through buying shares of the utility, with the principle of self-management and one person, one vote (Steinfort 2014, cited in Bieler 2017). One caveat is that these examples would currently fall under private law (i.e., a cooperative or foundation).

To date, the commons-public debate remains a deliberation among scholars and activists as to whether and how forms of property rights can be shifted through commons-inspired models of governance. This is particularly under contention in contexts of water utilities supplying services to large populations across large technical infrastructures. Unless and until further legal hacking can permit new relations of common-property regimes to emerge, public-commons partnerships or commoning inside the public through participatory mechanisms remain to date the closest examples of water as commons in cities.

Recognizing that it is through commoning that resources become part of the commons, water managers, public administration staff, and especially residents who are not used to this type of radical democratic form of participation in their water services, will struggle to find alignment with such a political project. Inevitably, dangers, challenges, and shortcomings are faced in attempting to produce commons-based approaches to democratic public governance. These include the top-down co-optation of participatory mechanisms; replicating existing exclusionary practices; and technocratization of the struggle, to name a few (see Geagea et. al 2023, Geagea and de Tullio 2024, and see Kashwan et al. 2021 for other challenges).

A radical democracy does not guarantee that when people manage their own affairs, they will not recreate oppressive patterns (Purcell 2002). Bridging the gap and bringing the public administration closer to the people of a territory under a commons framework requires rethinking relations of access, property, and democracy. Challenging property rights means challenging the capitalist class relations that undergird it (Purcell 2002). However, it also means challenging social relations, beyond property and class, including the embodied knowledges, experiences, and practices of inhabitants in a city’s everyday decision making on water, paying attention to gender, race, and other intersectional dimensions, particularly of those who are often invisibilized or excluded (i.e., non-citizens). Other authors whose work advocates for radical reimaginings of democracy and/or commons with focus on social justice and equality include Young (1990), Mouffe (1992), Yuval-Davis (1999), Nightingale (2011), Elmhirst (2015), Kashwan et. al (2021), to name a few. Engagement with this body of work permits considering how to reproduce socially just commons in urban spaces; where the political identity of inhabitants is not reliant on citizenship (Purcell 2002), and furthermore is one that includes the “embodied practices, social relationships and ecological processes” in the daily struggle to secure “rights to access, use, and collectively control the commons and other natural resources” (Kashwan et al. 2021:7).

CONCLUSION

To achieve radical democracy we need radical imaginaries, counter-imaginaries to the status quo that restore inhabitants’ power and agency to disrupt and act in times of crisis. While liberal/representative democracy prevails, alternative ideas and practices of collective action and self-governance have emerged to push the boundaries of institutionalized forms of civic participation in public water governance. Many of these practices are more akin to practices of commoning. They are not just “fleeting and incipient”; they are “concrete practices undertaken by real inhabitants, practices of encounter, of appropriation, of spatial autogestion” that Purcell urges intellectuals, activists, and urban society to engage with (Purcell 2013:319).

We bring two such practices into comparative analysis. By delineating the respective trajectories of water struggles in Naples and Terrassa, we argue that the municipal scale is where a paradigm shift is taking place and where activists are pushing for and succeeding to varying degrees in democratizing their water governance. We see at play in the investigated cases a conflict between the privatization and austerity trends rampant in the water sector, in tension with a de-privatization imaginary, and furthermore, to an imaginary that dares to ask “what else?” Activists imagined alternative, locally situated, and collectively driven forms of governance that keep water under democratic control, and under mechanisms of accountability, transparency, and social justice.

Many citizen-led remunicipalization movements emphasize equity and democratic control but differ in their vision of water governance strategies and ideological foundations across cities (McDonald 2019). We pay close attention to the nuances of the values underlying the water movements in the two cases, which by employing a recommoning imaginary and at times commons discourse, were able to push the boundaries of democratization of the public more than other cities that have successfully remunicipalized. In both case studies, public administrators were either the facilitators or the interceptors of the extent to which these water recommoning experiments were transformative. Ultimately, there is no panacea for this complex challenge, but a commons logic in these cases has offered feasible alternative approaches. What remains to be seen is whether reaching this milestone will enshrine the necessity of the public as interlocutor for the commons, or rather, permit crossing toward full operationalization of water as commons through re-imagining property and social relations in just and equitable ways in these cities or future ones.

LITERATURE CITED

Acqua Bene Comune (ABC). n.d. Statuto di ABC - Acqua Bene Comune. Acqua Bene Comune, Napoli, Italy.

Acqua Bene Comune (ABC). 2020. Chi siamo: storia. Acqua Bene Comune, Naples, Italy.

Agovino, M., M. Cerciello, A. Garofalo, L. Landriani, and L. Lepore. 2021. Corporate governance and sustainability in water utilities. The effects of decorporatisation in the city of Naples, Italy. Business Strategy and the Environment 30(2):874–890. https://doi.org/10.1002/bse.2659

Babiano, L., and M. Giménez. 2015. Pacto social por el agua. El Ecologista 85. www.e- cologistasenaccion.org/30322/pacto-social-por -el-agua/

Bagué, E. 2017. La remunicipalizaciön del servicio de abastecimiento urbano de agua:  instituciones  y  común.  Revista de Antropología Social, Universidad Complutense de Madrid 26(2):427–448. https://doi.org/10.5209/RASO.57613

Bagué, E. 2019. La remunicipalización del agua en Terrassa (Catalunya): la lucha de la Taula de l’Aigua por un modelo entorno al común (2013–2019).

Bagué, E. 2020. La remunicipalización del agua en el marco de la re-definición de la democracia. El caso de Terrassa. Clivaje: Estudis y Testimonis del Conflicto y el Cambio Social 8:134–193. https://revistes.ub.edu/index.php/clivatge/article/download/CLIVATGE2020.8.4/31682/74841

Bailey, S., and U. Mattei. 2013. Social movements as constituent power: the Italian struggle for the commons. Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 20(2):965–1013. https://doi.org/10.2979/indjglolegstu.20.2.965

Bianchi, I. 2022. The commonification of the public under new municipalism: commons-state institutions in Naples and Barcelona. Urban Studies 60(11):2116–2132. https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980221101460

Bieler, A. 2017. Fighting for public water: the first successful European Citizens’ initiative, “water and sanitation are a human right.” Interface 1:300–326. https://www.interfacejournal.net/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Interface-9-1-Bieler.pdf

Bieler, A. 2021. Fighting for water: resisting privatization in Europe. Bloomsbury, London, UK. https://doi.org/10.5040/9780755640409

Bieler, A., and J. Jordan. 2018. Commodification and ‘the commons’: the politics of privatising public water in Greece and Portugal during the Eurozone crisis. European Journal of International Relations 24(4):934–957. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066117728383

Boelens, R., A. Escobar, K. Bakker, L. Hommes, E. Swyngedouw, B. Hogenboom, E. H. Huijbens, S. Jackson, J. Vos, L. M. Harris, K. J. Joy, F. de Castro, B. Duarte-Abadía, D. Tubino de Souza, H. Lotz-Sisitka, Nuria Hernández-Mora, J. Martínez-Alier, D. Roca-Servat, T. Perreault, C. Sanchis-Ibor, D. Suhardiman, A. Ulloa, A. Wals, J. Hoogesteger, J. P. Hidalgo-Bastidas, T. Roa-Avendaño, G. J. Veldwisch, P. Woodhouse, and K. M. Wantzen. 2023. Riverhood: political ecologies of socionature commoning and translocal struggles for water justice. Journal of Peasant Studies 50(3):1125–1156. https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2022.2120810

Caffentzis, G., and S. Federici. 2014. Commons against and beyond capitalism. Community Development Journal 49(Supplement 1) i92–i105. https://doi.org/10.1093/cdj/bsu006

Cardosa, G. S. 2020. Luces y sombras de dos años de gestión pública del agua en Terrassa. 9 November, El Salto. https://www.elsaltodiario.com/agua/luces-sombras-dos-anos-gestion-publica-terrassa

Carrozza, C., and E. Fantini. 2016. The Italian water movement and the politics of the commons. Water Alternatives 9(1):99–119. https://www.water-alternatives.org/index.php/all-abs/306-a9-1-5/file

Clement, F. 2013. For critical social-ecological system studies: integrating power and discourses to move beyond the right institutional fit. Environmental Conservation 40(1):1–4. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0376892912000276

Clifton, J., M. E. Warner, R. Gradus, and G. Bel. 2021. Re-municipalization of public services: trend or hype? Journal of Economic Policy Reform 24(3):293–304. https://doi.org/10.1080/17487870.2019.1691344

Comune di Napoli. 2023a. Popolazione indicazioni generali. Comune di Napoli, Naples, Italy. https://www.comune.napoli.it/flex/cm/pages/ServeBLOB.php/L/IT/IDPagina/2842#:~:text=indicazioni%20generali,ammonta%20a%201.004.500%20unit%C3%A0

Comune di Napoli. 2023b. Beni Comuni. Comune di Napoli, Naples, Italy. https://www.comune.napoli.it/flex/cm/pages/ServeBLOB.php/L/IT/IDPagina/16783

Comunitat Minera Olesana. 2024. Companyia: presentació i benvinguda. Comunitat Minera Olesana, Barcelona, Spain. https://www.cmineraolesana.cat/presentacio-i-ben vinguda.html

Cumbers, A., and F. Paul. 2022. Remunicipalisation, mutating neoliberalism, and the conjuncture. Antipode 54:197–217. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12761

D’Alisa, G. 2010. Autobiografía de un conflicto ambiental. Working Papers on Environmental Sciences. Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals, Bellaterra, Spain. https://core.ac.uk/reader/13293260

Dardot, P., and C. Laval. 2019. Common: on revolution in the 21st century. Bloomsbury, London, UK.

De Angelis, M., and D. Harvie. 2014. The commons. Pages 280–294 in M. Parker, G. Cheney, V. Fournier, and C. Land, editors. The Routledge companion to alternative organization. Routledge, Oxfordshire, UK. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781529714371.n36

Deleuze, G., and F. Guattari. 1987. A thousand plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.

Dell’Angelo J., P. D’Odorico, M. C. Rulli, and P. Marchand. 2017. The tragedy of the grabbed commons: coercion and dispossession in the global land rush. World Development 92:1–12. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2016.11.005

Dell’Angelo, J., P. F. McCord, D. Gower, S. Carpenter, K. K. Caylor, and T. P. Evans. 2016. Community water governance on Mount Kenya: an assessment based on Ostrom’s design principles of natural resource management. Mountain Research and Development 36(1):102–115. https://doi.org/10.1659/MRD-JOURNAL-D-15-00040.1

Elmhirst, R. 2015. Feminist political ecology. Pages 519–530 in T. Perreault, G. Bridge, and J. McCarthy, editors. The Routledge handbook of political ecology. Routledge, London, UK.

Fantini, E. 2012. Water as human right and commons: themes and practices in the Italian water movement. Pace Diritti Umani/Peace Human Rights IX(2):15–40.

Fattori, T. 2013. From the water commons movement to the commonification of the public realm. South Atlantic Quarterly 112(2) 377–387. https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-2020253

Federici, S. 2019. Re-enchanting the world: feminism and the politics of the commons. PM Press, Oakland, California, USA.

Fournier, V. 2013. Commoning: on the social organisation of the commons. Management 4:433–453. https://doi.org/10.3917/mana.164.0433

Frattasi, P. 2024. L’acquedotto Abc Napoli cambia statuto e potrà essere Spa. Rivolta dei comitati, si dimette la presidente. 7 June, Fanpage.it. https://www.fanpage.it/napoli/acquedotto-abc-napoli-cambia-statuto-rivolta-comitati-dimissioni-sardu/

Gasseau, G. 2024. Negotiating the public: re-municipalization, water politics and social reproduction. Globalizations 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/14747731.2024.2313807

Geagea, D., M. Kaika, and J. Dell’Angelo. 2023. Recommoning water: crossing thresholds under citizen-driven remunicipalisation. Urban Studies 60(16):3294–3311. https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980231169612

Geagea, D., and M. F. De Tullio. 2024. Commons-oriented, but embodied enough? De-constructing knowledge, experiences, and institutions in Naples’ water commons project. International Journal of the Commons 18(1):188–202. https://doi.org/10.5334/ijc.1325

Gobierto. 2013. Presupuestos municipales: Terrassa, 2013. Gobierto, Madrid, Spain. https://presupuestos.gobierto.es/places/terrassa/2013

Hardt, M., and A. Negri. 2009. Commonwealth. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvjsf48h

Institut d'Estadítica de Catalunya (IDESCAT). 2023. The municipality in figures: Terrassa. IDESCAT, Barcelona, Spain. www.idescat.cat

Kaika, M. 2004. Interrogating the geographies of the familiar: domesticating nature and constructing the autonomy of the modern home. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 28:265–286. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0309-1317.2004.00519.x

Kaika, M. 2017. Between compassion and racism: how the biopolitics of neoliberal welfare turns citizens into affective ‘idiots.’ European Planning Studies 25(8):1275–1291. https://doi.org/10.1080/09654313.2017.1320521

Kaika, M., R. Calvário, and G. Velegrakis. 2024. Austerity: an environmentally dangerous idea. Journal of Political Ecology 31(1):67–81. https://doi.org/10.2458/jpe.5420

Kashwan, P., P. Mudaliar, S. R. Foster, and F. Clement. 2021. Reimagining and governing the commons in an unequal world: a critical engagement. Current Research in Environmental Sustainability 3:100102. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.crsust.2021.100102

Kishimoto, S., and O. Petitjean. 2017. Reclaiming public services: how cities and citizens are turning back privatisation. Transnational Institute, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. https://www.tni.org/files/publication-downloads/reclaiming_public_services.pdf

Landriani, L., L. Lepore, G. D’Amore, S. Pozzoli, and F. Alvino. 2019. Decorporatization of a municipal water utility: a case study from Italy. Utilities Policy 57:43–47. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jup.2019.01.005

La Repubblica. 2024. Abc, si dimette la presidente Sardu. E Zanotelli si incatena davanti al Comune contro le modifiche allo statuto dell’azienda idrica. https://www.msn.com/it-it/notizie/napoli/abc-si-dimette-la-presidente-sardu-e-zanotelli-si-incatena-davanti-al-comune-contro-le-modifiche-allo-statuto-dell-azienda-idrica/ar-BB1nO5LH

Lefebvre, H. 2009. State, space, world: selected essays. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.

Lijphart, A. 1971. Comparative politics and the comparative method. American Political Science Review 65(3):682–693. https://doi.org/10.2307/1955513

Linebaugh, P. 2009. The Magna Carta manifesto: liberties and commons for all. University of California Press, Berkeley, California, USA. https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520932708

Lobina, E. 2015. Introduction: calling for progressive water policies. Pages 6–17 in S. Kishimoto, E. Lobina, and O. Petitjean, editors. Our public water future: the global experience with remunicipalisation. Transnational Institute (TNI), Amsterdam, The Netherlands, Public Services International Research Unit (PSIRU), London, UK, Multinationals Observatory, Paris, France, Municipal Services Project (MSP), Cape Town, South Africa, European Federation of Public Service Unions (EPSU), Brussels, Belgium. https://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/13265/4/13265%20LOBINA%20Public_Water_Future_2015.pdf

Lobina, E., and V. Weghmann. 2021. Commentary: the perils and promise of inter-paradigmatic dialogues on remunicipalisation. Journal of Economic Policy Reform 24(3):398–404. https://doi.org/10.1080/17487870.2020.1810473

Lucarelli, A. 2015. Nuovi modelli di gestione dei servizi pubblici locali: studio sulla trasformazione della Società per azione in Azienda speciale. Analisi, criticità, proposte. Giappichelli Editore, Torino, Italy.

Mangas, L. 2016. Terressa, la ciudad más endeudada de Catalunya. 7 June, Diari de Terrassa. https://www.diarideterrassa.com/terrassa/2016/06/07/terrassa-la-tercera-ciudad-mas-endeudada-de-catalunya/

Marotta, S. 2016. Beni comuni. Cronistoria di un’esperienza napoletana: acqua Bene Comune. Pages 789–809 in L. Guilia, editor. La città come spazio politico. Tessuto urbano e corpo politico: crisi di una metafora. Editoriale Scientifica, Napoli, Italy.

McDonald, D. A. 2019. Finding common(s) ground in the fight for water remunicipalization. Community Development Journal 54(1):59–79. https://doi.org/10.1093/cdj/bsy054

McDonald, D. A., and E. Swyngedouw. 2019. The new water wars: struggles for remunicipalisation. Water Alternatives 12(2):322–333. https://www.water-alternatives.org/index.php/alldoc/articles/vol12/v12issue3/528-a12-2-11/file#:~:text=Our%20aim%20is%20to%20uncover,from%20these%20experiences%20before%20they>

Micciarelli, G. 2022. Hacking the legal: the commons between the governance paradigm and inspirations drawn from the “living history” of collective land use. Pages 112–125 in F. Savini, A. Ferreira, and K. von Schönfeld, editors. Post-growth planning. Routledge, London, UK. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003160984-12

Mouffe, C. 1992. Citizenship and political identity. October 61:28–32. https://doi.org/10.2307/778782

Muehlebach, A. 2023. A vital frontier: water insurgencies in Europe. Duke University Press, Durham, North Carolina, USA. https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478024408

Nieto-Romero, M., S. Valente, E. Figueiredo, and C. Parra. 2019. Historical commons as sites of transformation. A critical research agenda to study human and more-than-human communities. Geoforum 107:113–123. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2019.10.004

Nightingale, A. J. 2011. Bounding difference: intersectionality and the material production of gender, caste, class and environment in Nepal. Geoforum 42(2):153–162. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2010.03.004

Ostrom, E. 1990. Governing the commons: the evolution of institutions for collective action. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511807763

Ostrom, E. 1999. Coping with tragedies of the commons. Annual Review of Political Science 2(1):493–535.

Ostrom, E. 2003. How types of goods and property rights jointly affect collective action. Journal of Theoretical Politics 15(3):239–270.      https://doi.org/10.1177/0951692803015003002

Ostrom, E., M. A. Janssen, and J. M. Anderies. 2007. Going beyond panaceas. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104(39):15176–15178. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0701886104

Pinto, M., L. Recano, and U. Rossi. 2023. New institutions and the politics of the interstices. Experimenting with a face-to-face democracy in Naples. Urban Studies 60(11):2176–2194. https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980221091064

Planas, M., and J. Martínez. 2020. A new water culture: Catalonia’s public co-governance model in the making. Pages 153–164 in S. Kishimoto, L. Steinfort, and O. Petitjean, editors. The future is public: towards democratic ownership of public services. Transnational Institute, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. https://www.tni.org/files/futureispublic_chapter_10.pdf

Purcell, M. 2002. Excavating Lefebvre: the right to the city and its urban politics of the inhabitant. GeoJournal 58:99–108. https://doi.org/10.1023/B:GEJO.0000010829.62237.8f

Purcell, M. 2006. Urban democracy and the local trap. Urban Studies 43(11):1921–1941. https://doi.org/10.1080/00420980600897826

Purcell, M. 2008. Recapturing democracy: neoliberalization and the struggle for alternative urban futures. Routledge, London, UK. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203932940

Purcell, M. 2013. The right to the city: the struggle for democracy in the urban public realm. Policy and Politics 41(3):311–327. https://doi.org/10.1332/030557312X655639

Ribot, J. C., and N. L. Peluso. 2003. A theory of access. Rural Sociology 68(2):153–181. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1549-0831.2003.tb00133.x

Robinson, J. 2011. Cities in a world of cities: the comparative gesture. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 35(1):1–23. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2010.00982.x

Robinson, J. 2016. Thinking cities through elsewhere: comparative tactics for a more global urban studies. Progress in Human Geography 40(1):3–29. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132515598025

Russell, B. 2019. Beyond the local trap: new municipalism and the rise of the fearless cities. Antipode 51(3):989–1010. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12520

Satorras, M., D. Saurí, and H. March. 2020. Reinventing public water amid Covid-19 in Terrassa. Pages 61–84 in D. A. MacDonald, S. J. Spronk, and D. Chavez, editors. Public water and COVID-19: dark clouds and silver linings. Municipal Service Project Transnational Institute, and Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO), Kingston, Jamaica, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and Buenos Aires, Brazil. https://www.tni.org/files/public-water-covid-19_chapter_4.pdf

Stavrides, S. 2015. Common space as threshold space: urban commoning in struggles to re-appropriate public space. Footprint 16:9–20.

Swyngedouw, E. 2018. Promises of the political: insurgent cities in a post-political environment. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/10668.001.0001

Taula de l’Aigua de Terrassa. 2017. La remunicipalización del agua en Terrassa: propuestas para la reversión de los servicios y para una gestión directa, con participatión ciuddana y transparencia. Taula de l’Aigua de Terrassa, Terrassa, Spain. https://www.oat.cat/Oat/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/La-remunicipalizaci%C3%B3n-del-agua-en-Terrassa-Taula-del-Aigua-Maig2017-cas.pdf

Thompson, M. 2021. What’s so new about new municipalism? Progress in Human Geography 45(2):317–342. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132520909480

Turri, V. M. 2022. Remunicipalisation of water services in Europe. Comparative study of the Neapolitan and Parisian cases. Water Policy 24:1842–1858.. https://doi.org/10.2166/wp.2022.090

van Laerhoven, F., and E. Ostrom. 2007. Traditions and trends in the study of the commons. International Journal of the Commons 1(1):3–28. https://doi.org/10.18352/ijc.76

Velicu, I., and G. García-López. 2018. Thinking the commons through Ostrom and Butler: boundedness and vulnerability. Theory, Culture and Society 35(6):55–73. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276418757315

Ward, K. 2010. Towards a relational comparative approach to the study of cities. Progress in Human Geography 34(4):471–487. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132509350239

Young, I. M. 1990. Justice and the politics of difference. Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, USA.

Yuval-Davis, N. 1999. The ‘Multi-layered citizen.’ International Feminist Journal of Politics 1(1):119–136. https://doi.org/10.1080/146167499360068