Privatization and Citizenship: Local politics of water in the Philippines

Abstract

Nai Rui Chng explores the different ways in which water privatization has impacted on the constitution of political community in the context of local politics. Based on recent fieldwork on small-scale water providers in an urban poor community in Taguig City, Metro Manila, in the Philippines, he describes collective action by the Taguig urban poor in response to water privatization. He outlines how Taguig's experience informs the wider debate on water privatization and citizenship. Development (2008) 51, 42–48. doi:10.1057/palgrave.development.1100444

Regulatory mobilization and service delivery at the edge of the regulatory state

“…Relationships between POs and their customers were therefore not purely economic. As one officer claimed, people in the community reported water leakages even if they were not affecting their own water network, because of malasakit (Chng 2011, p. 165). Community Water exercised much latitude in allowing members a range of payment means without resorting to cut‐offs.…”

“…A second goal is to reconfigure the means by which the constituents may gain access. This may be seen as a form of resistance in the Philippines that emerged from a defensive counter movement against the commodification of water (Chng 2011). Such forms of mobilization are not necessarily set against the state and may involve penetrating the state to “augment or activate its regulatory capacity” as seen in Latin America (Roberts 2008, p. 331).…”

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

“…The first wave of case study literature on privatization in Buenos Aires (Hardoy and Schusterman 2000; Loftus and McDonald 2001; Botton, Braïlowsky, and Matthieussent 2005; Delfino, Casarain, and Delfino 2007; de Gouvello, Lentini, and Brenner 2012), Manila (Dumol 2000; Esguerra 2003; Chng 2008; Wu and Malaluan 2008; Neville 2011; Cheng 2013), and Cochabamba (Assies 2003; Beato and Vives 2003; De La Fuente 2003; Olivera and Lewis 2004; Hailu, Osorio, and Tsukada 2012) largely coalesces into a single narrative. The first contract term in each city was judged a failure on the whole, with Cochabamba serving as the most spectacular example.…”

Water and Sanitation Utilities in the Global South: Re-centering the Debate on “Efficiency”

“…As neoliberal governments change the boundary of the state, water justice movement advocates contend that there is a similar transformation in the sphere of rights, as notions of "social citizenship" are giving way to a form of "lean citizenship," defined as the attempt to strip citizenship of any collective or social attributes in favor of a wholly privatized and marketized notion of rights. With privatization, the notion that all citizens should have access to a certain amount of water regardless of their ability to pay is replaced by the concept that consumers should have access to water based upon their willingness to pay (Bakker 2001;Chng 2008).…”