The “Commons” Versus the “Commodity”: Alter‐globalization,Anti‐privatization and the Human Right to Water in the Global South

Abstract: In response to the growth of private sector involvement in water supply management globally, anti‐privatization campaigns for a human right to water have emerged in recent years. Simultaneously, alter‐globalization activists have promoted alternative water governance models through North‐South red‐green alliances between organized labour, environmental groups, women's groups, and indigenous groups. In this paper, I explore these distinct (albeit overlapping) responses to water privatization. I first present a generic conceptual model of market environmentalist reforms, and explore the contribution of this framework to debates over ‘neoliberalizing nature’. This conceptual framework is applied to the case of anti‐privatization activism to elucidate the limitations of the human right to water as a conceptual counterpoint to privatization, and as an activist strategy. In contrast, I argue that alter‐globalization strategies—centred on concepts of the commons—are more conceptually coherent, and also more successful as activist strategies. The paper concludes with a reiteration of the need for greater conceptual precision in our analyses of neoliberalization, for both academics and activists.     

Cultural Heritage and Ecosystem Services: A Literature Review

During the last decade, we have witnessed an increased interest in Ecosystem Services (ES), including the so-called ‘cultural ecosystem services’ and its subcategory of ‘cultural heritage’. In this article, a review of academic literature of ES and cultural heritage is carried out. ES has primarily been developed by scholars from the ecological and economic disciplines, and in this article, we discuss how this impacts the way in which cultural heritage is used and conceptualised in ES literature. Based on the conceptual review, we initiate a discussion of what the implications for cultural heritage management could be if the heritage sector adopts the rationales in the ES framework.     

Voluntary Environmental Programs in the Public Sector: Evaluating an Urban Water Conservation Program in California

Solving conflictual environmental policy problems is increasingly falling under the purview of local governments and public agencies. Nonregulatory approaches, such as the development of voluntary environmental programs (VEPs), could offer a useful policy alternative as they often have greater political traction and flexibility. However, there has been little work examining the use of VEPs in the public sector. This article uses a new dataset from California to examine how political institutions affect decisions by local governments and public agencies to participate in a voluntary urban water conservation program and whether this program has improved the water conservation performance of its members. The results show that special district governments, private utilities, and water suppliers dependent on purchased water are more likely to participate in the program and to join early. However, urban water agencies that have joined the program have not reduced their per capita water use more than those that have not. These results underscore the influence of political institutions in public‐sector decision making and demonstrate that, as in the private sector, commitment to a VEP by local government and public agencies does not guarantee implementation or environmental improvements. While voluntary programs offer political and administrative advantages, in order for VEPs in the public sector to be effective they must be accompanied and supported by credible enforcement mechanisms, performance standards, and rigorous monitoring programs.     

London: Structural Continuities and Institutional Change in Water Management

This article provides a synthetic account of the historical development of London's water supply system within its wider national context, and addresses the current organizational setting of the water sector. Particular attention is paid to the post-Second World War period, which marked a transition towards integrated water management in England and Wales, a trend that has been consolidated since the 1970s. The article emphasizes the continuities and contradictions arising from the different combinations of public and private management strategies characterizing the UK water sector, and their implications for the sustainable management of water resources. It argues that there exists an in-built contradiction in the current institutional framework between the profit-oriented rationale of the private operators and the goals of efficiency, equity, and environmental sustainability pursued by the water regulators. Within this framework, it highlights the key policy issues facing the metropolitan water systems, and suggests what their most likely trajectories might be in the foreseeable future.     

China’s services sector: the new engine of economic growth

This paper presents a review of services sector development in China. It is found that China’s services have recently emerged as the dominant contributor to economic growth and job creation. Trade in services has also increased dramatically, although China maintains a huge deficit. In comparison with economies at a similar stage of development, however, China’s services sector is lagging behind. Both GDP and employment shares of the services sector are relatively small. Services trade also accounts for a relatively small share of China’s total trade. In particular, China’s new services are underdeveloped. As per capita income rises and resultant urbanization accelerates, the country’s services sector is expected to expand further and hence play a key role in rebalancing China’s economy away from its over-reliance on manufacturing and exporting. To reach this goal, further reforms and prudent government policies are needed.     

The Strategic Significance of Workforce Diversity in Museums

This paper considers increasing international interest, both academic and professional, in the implications and strategic significance of workforce diversity. Drawing on research that has been undertaken principally within the field of human resource management, as well as the experiences of museum sectors internationally, the paper explores the rationale behind, and potential efficacy of, recent initiatives to enhance cultural diversity within the UK museum sector through an approach characterised by the use of positive or affirmative action. It is argued that workforce diversity will become increasingly important to the sector as, in response to changing socio-political agendas, museums are required to assume new roles as agents of social inclusion. The paper concludes by broadening the concept of ?diversity management' (which has emerged from the field of human resource management) to take account of the museum's unique goals and functions and presents a conceptual framework within which the dynamic interrelationships between diversity within a museum's workforce, audiences and programmes can be considered.     

Conceptualising European Privatisation Processes After the Great Recession

A wave of privatisation is unfolding in Europe in the wake of the financial crisis, but it has yet to receive serious scholarly attention. This paper examines the case of Ireland, where an austerity strategy and European Union International Monetary Fund bailout conditionality have given impetus to the transfer of public assets to the private sector. Theoretically, the paper explains the roots of the phenomenon with reference to a reformulated concept of “accumulation by dispossession” whose usefulness lies in emphasising the politico‐economic drivers of privatisation, which have been neglected in the mainstream literature. A typology is presented that argues that accumulation by dispossession manifests itself, in practice, through four main processes: (1) private repossession of assets nationalised during the financial crisis; (2) restructuring of state‐owned enterprises; (3) commodification of assets and services hitherto located outside the market; and (4) privatised stimulus through public–private partnerships. The paper's framework should be useful to conceptualise ongoing privatisation processes in other European countries.     

GENERAL EQUILIBRIUM OF A REGIONAL ECONOMY WITH A FINANCIAL SECTOR–PART II: A SIMPLE BEHAVIORAL MODEL

ABSTRACT. Simple behavioral assumptions are incorporated into an accounting framework that provides linked budget and balance sheets for sectors of a regional economy. A short-run Keynesian-type model is developed where quantities rather than prices adjust, and where regional prices and interest rates are equal to national levels. The analysis highlights the importance of the financial services sector as an active factor in regional growth. Consumer deposit and debt preferences, and limitations imposed on credit extension by the financial services sector can have important effects on the regional economy as evidenced by changes in the export multiplier.     

Services sector in India: trends,issues, and the way forward

This paper provides an overview of the Indian services sector. It shows that services is the fastest growing sector in India, contributing significantly to gross domestic product (GDP), GDP growth, employment, trade, and investment. India is a major proponent of liberalizing services both in the World Trade Organization and in its bilateral trade agreements. However, there are some concerns. In the recent past, economic growth and growth of the services sector has slowed down. Growth in employment in services has not been commensurate with the share of the sector in GDP. Although India is a major exporter of services, its export competitiveness concentrates in few sectors and a few markets. The paper identifies a number of barriers faced by the services sectors and suggests policy measures which, if implemented, will lead to inclusive growth, increased productivity, generate quality employment, increase trade and investment, and enhance India’s global competitiveness in services.     

Globalization,State Restructuring and Innovation in European Water Management Systems: Reflections from England and Wales

Since the mid-1990s the notion of 'hollowing out' has been increasingly used within debates about the changing role of the nation-state in the management and regulation of public services. This paper is concerned with the impact of the various processes of hollowing out on innovation actions in the privatized water sector, particularly in terms of the changing drivers for innovation and the reconfiguration of public and private sector roles across Europe. In order to develop a more detailed case study of English water management, we draw on the Innovation Systems literature, regulation theory and globalization debates to locate a shift from a hierarchical and insular national system in England pre-privatization to a more complex and diffuse system after 1989. In common with some of the more sophisticated accounts of hollowing out we demonstrate that the role of the nation-state in shaping innovation decisions has not necessarily diminished, rather it has been reconfigured in response to various social, economic and environmental factors.     

Social Service Delivery and the Voluntary Sector in Contemporary Australia

Continuing poverty, deprivation and unemployment in rich English-speaking countries have led governments to reconsider existing methods of delivering social services. In Australia, the Minister for Employment Services, Tony Abbott, has developed a doctrine of 'constructive compassion' to justify human service delivery through private firms and voluntary organisations. The McClure Report has also argued for 'social partnerships' involving governments, the business community and the voluntary sector. The limited purpose of this research note is to evaluate these arguments using the conceptual tools of market failure, government failure and voluntary failure and drawing on some of the theoretical literature on the voluntary sector, especially Billis and Glennerster (1998). We contend that considerable scope does indeed exist for social service delivery by voluntary organisations, subject to at least one important caveat.     

Gender and Household Economic Strategies in Rural Appalachia

In recent decades, many Appalachian households have experienced declining incomes due to the loss of traditional male jobs in the mining and manufacturing sectors. One response to this decline has been an increase in female employment in formal sector activities. Another response is homework, or the home-based production of goods and services for sale in the formal and informal sectors. In rural Appalachia, where formal jobs are often unavailable or inadequate to support a household, many women are engaging in homework as an economic strategy. Consequently, economic restructuring cannot be fully understood without analyzing household strategies and gender relations. This paper examines the intersection of gender, households, and economic restructuring as it relates to women's homework and employment shifts in rural Appalachia. Research for this paper entailed qualitative interviews with 50 West Virginia women who are engaged in the home-based production of goods and services. The study analyzes the variety of homework activities done by rural women, their contribution to household incomes, and the effect of these activities on gender relations and divisions of labor in the home. The research forwarded in this study advances a conceptual understanding of household economic strategies and has some practical applications for women and economic development in underdeveloped regions .     

Urbanizing rural waters: Rural-urban water transfers and the reconfiguration of hydrosocial territories in Lima

This article studies how urbanization processes and associated rural-urban water transfers in the Lima region (Peru) create water control hierarchies that align the municipal drinking water company, hydropower plants and rural communities on unequal positions. By scrutinizing the history of water transfers and hydropower development in the Lima region, the paper shows how imaginaries about the superiority of engineering, the need to generate electricity for national development, the backwardness of the ‘land of lagoons’ where water is diverted from, and about wished-for water abundance in Lima, all became manifested in hydraulic megaprojects. More than technical means to supply water to Lima City, these hydraulic grids, supported by legal, institutional and financial governance techniques; produce diverging material, social-symbolic and political effects for rural and urban water users. While the established system means water control and access for hydropower and drinking water companies, it implies dependence and/or exclusion from the benefits for rural communities. More specifically and beyond questions of outright water grabbing, perceived injustices involve the distribution of water-related benefits, loss of autonomy, and the socio-environmental impacts of territorial transformations.     

Common Counsel,Common Policy: Healthcare,Missions and the Rise of the ‘Voluntary Sector’ in Colonial Tanzania

Analysis of the voluntary sector in sub‐Saharan Africa has tended to focus on the role of the NGO, and the types of relationships this institution establishes and maintains with donors, national governments and the communities with which they work. The voluntary sector in Africa is therefore usually defined through, and often treated as synonymous with, the institution of the NGO. As a result, the boundaries of understandings of the ‘third sector’ space occupied by the vast number of NGOs — its origins, the nature of the relationship of voluntary sector actors to the state, the types of organizations that characterize the sector — have tended to reflect a narrow concern with the NGO type and its experiences. This article suggests that this view is too narrow in its gaze. The voluntary sector was not a creation of a post‐colonial (and especially post‐1970s) development crisis. It emerged from an evolving relationship between colonial‐era non‐state (voluntary) actors and governments determined to demonstrate that they were meeting their commitments to the welfare of Africans under their charge. Missions and mission welfare services, expanding across much of rural sub‐Saharan Africa by the beginnings of the twentieth century, and increasingly coordinated from the late 1920s and early 1930s, created the foundations for the emergence of sub‐Saharan Africa's formal voluntary sector as it exists today. This matters for more than just historical accuracy. To understand the constraints, challenges and opportunities faced by NGOs, we need to move beyond a narrow focus on the institution of the NGO itself, and look in addition to the environment in which it operates: its history, its evolution and the shifts that created those conditions.     

Auditing culture

This article explores the effects of the spread of the principles and practices of the New Public Management (NPM) on the subsidised cultural sector and on cultural policy making in Britain. In particular, changes in the style of public administration that can be ascribed to the NPM will be shown to provide a useful framework to make sense of what has been felt as an “instrumental turn” in British policies for culture between the early 1980s and the present day. The current New Labour Government, as well as the arm's length bodies that distribute public funds for the cultural sector in Britain, are showing an increasing tendency to justify public spending on the arts on the basis of instrumental notions of the arts and culture. In the context of what have been defined as “instrumental cultural policies”, the arts are subsidised in so far as they represent a means to an end rather than an end in itself. In this perspective, the emphasis placed on the potential of the arts to help tackle social exclusion and the role of the cultural sector in place‐marketing and local economic development are typical examples of current trends in British cultural policy making. The central argument purported by this article is that this instrumental emphasis in British cultural policy is closely linked to the changes in the style of public administration that have given rise to the NPM. These new developments have indeed put the publicly funded cultural sector under increasing pressure. In particular, it will be shown how the new stress on the measurement of the arts' impacts in clear and quantifiable ways – which characterises today's “audit society” – has proved a tough challenge for the sector and one that has not been successfully met. The article will conclude by critically considering how the spread of the NPM has affected processes of policy making for the cultural sector, and the damaging effects that such developments may ultimately have on the arts themselves.     

‘Lived bodies’ and the neoliberal city – a case study of vulnerability in London

This article explores the ‘more-than-work’ aspects of the lives of vulnerable women who street-sex work. Particularly, we are interested in the differences between the women’s experiences, within the broader context of power structures as manifested in neoliberal cities. Few studies have explored this aspect of street-sex workers’ lives and theorisations of the co-creation of environments tend to elide the experiences of the most vulnerable people. Specifically, we explore the relationships that these women have with two environments: the quotidian (where they undertake routine everyday activities), and the gentrified (relating to changes in the spaces in which they live and work). We find that their experiences are extremely local, and heavily contingent on the services made available to them (or not) by the statutory and third sectors, and the emotional contacts they make, particularly in third sector support services. This challenges some of the literature which suggests a separation of ‘home’ and ‘work’, and which finds close associations between women who street-sex work. While places designed by the third sector are more responsive to these women, they are also more vulnerable to closure through lack of funding. This contributes to a significant degree of ontological non-linearity and ontological insecurity in these women’s lives.     

Neoliberalism and Suburban Employment: Western Sydney in the 1990s

During the past 15 years metropolitan planning strategies of the NSW state government have done little to address the spatial distribution of either employment or labour market equity within the metropolis. In the fast‐growing outer western suburbs, the government has focused on attracting business investment to increase the stock of local jobs and to improve employment ‘self‐sufficiency’— a dominantly neoliberal policy framework. This paper explores a widening gulf between the reality of outer urban change and this policy framework by considering changes in the location of jobs and in the employment experiences of residents in Greater Western Sydney (GWS). Evidence is drawn from census journey‐to‐work data (1991–2001). While holding a majority of manufacturing jobs in Sydney, GWS also experienced continued growth of jobs in service industries during the 1990s. Yet the relative importance of employment in the city's fast‐growth finance and business services sector still lags well behind that of inner and northern parts of the city. The focus on growing the regional stock of jobs has not addressed problems of labour market access faced by residents of particular localities and the goal of employment self‐sufficiency has not delivered greater equity to outer suburban labour markets. A focus on sufficiency of access to employment for residents of GWS draws attention not only to regional stocks of jobs but also to the provision of social infrastructure and state‐provided services to outer suburban populations as they continue to expand.     

Drivers and difficulties in the economic relationship between Australia and the European Union: from conflict to cooperation

ABSTRACT

Economic relations between Australia and the European Union (EU) have always been strong, but they have not always been easy. They have been difficult for Australia because it associated the EU with the loss of the UK preferential export market on its entry into the then European Economic Community. And because Australia associated the EU with the original Common Agricultural Policy, which combined subsidies for agricultural production and high agricultural tariffs to make Australian agricultural exports not competitive. They have been difficult for the EU also. Australia developed a biosecurity system to protect its agricultural sector: quarantine requirements and food safety standards made the importation of EU plant and animal products too costly. Yet Australia and the EU need each other. The EU, which is Australia’s largest services trade and investment partner, supplies the business services that drive a knowledge economy and provides the credit to finance economic development. Correspondingly, the EU needs Australia both as a commercial base in Asia and as a reliable energy supplier. This article analyses the drivers and difficulties in the economic relationship between Australia and the EU as they start negotiations for a free trade agreement.     

Political Decoupling: Private Implementation of Public Policy

Where policy goals can be achieved through regulation of private firms, private provision of public services allows governments to separate public policies from their political costs by shifting those costs to the private sector. Over the past three decades, financial decoupling has emerged as a regulatory strategy for promoting conservation, especially in the energy sector. Decoupling refers to the separation of a firm’s revenues from the volume of its product consumed, which allows companies to pursue resource efficiency free from financial risk. Similarly, when private firms provide public services, they separate public policies from their political costs. This political decoupling allows governments to pursue controversial policies while avoiding their attendant political risks. Applied to environmental policy, this theory implies that potentially unpopular conservation policies are more likely to be adopted and succeed when implemented through private firms. As an initial test of the theory, we analyze California water utilities and their responses to that state’s drought from 2015–2017. Analysis shows that, compared with those served by local government utilities, private utilities adopted more aggressive conservation measures, were more likely to meet state conservation standards, and conserved more water.     

Public Assistance and Promotion of Local Rail Projects.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, and again in the middle of the twentieth century, federal, state, and local governments were involved in large-scale subsidizing and promoting of railroad infrastructure for economic development purposes. In the 1800s, public financial involvement centered on the expansion of railroads to develop the West. In the 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s, public financial assistance focused on preserving rail freight services, and on restructuring the then oversized national rail network. In the 1990s and beyond, rail improvements and the need for public assistance are likely to be more incremental, with mostly local projects. Case study research was conducted on six local freight rail service projects, all of which had public sector investment. Five attributes were identified whose presence was associated with project success, or conversely, whose absence may have reduced the likelihood for project success. These success attributes should be used as an adjunct to sound economic analysis, and incorporated within future policies governing selection of local rail projects to receive public assistance.