The Politics of Participatory Rollback in Urban Water Remunicipalization: Paris and Naples

Abstract

Urban water remunicipalization is often expected to restore public accountability through participatory governance. Yet participatory forums created during remunicipalization are frequently narrowed or dismantled once civic actors press into allocative decisions. This article develops a meso-level explanation of participatory rollback and traces two pathways in Paris and Naples. Drawing on twenty interviews, documents, audits, and explaining-outcome process tracing (2001–2020), it shows how civic professionalization and escalating contestation make participation consequential, and how municipal executives respond when claims target budgets, investment priorities, employment, or metropolitan coordination. In Paris, participation is preserved in form but curtailed through procedural containment, agenda control, and technocratic framing. In Naples, empowered civic governance collapses through executive rupture amid fiscal stress, infrastructure decay, and distributive pressures. Across both cases, public ownership persists while civic inclusion is re-scaled and redefined. The findings recast participation as a contingent instrument of executive control in the post-privatization city.