The Commonification of local public services: the transformation of public management under New Municipalism

Over the past few years, New Municipalism has emerged as an urban-rooted leftist political strategy aiming to challenge neoliberal austerity politics and breathe new life into progressive politics. In particular, New Municipalism has helped to challenge the persistent wave of privatisation and outsourcing of local public services and to re-invent new management models. With the implementation of the neo-liberal project, there has been a progressive privatisation and/or outsourcing of local public services. However, this process has not brought the benefits it promised. Research studies confirm that outsourced/privatised services do not tend to deliver efficient services while increasing unequal access, failing to provide an effective response in times of crisis, such as during the covid-19 pandemic, and also risking to undermine democratic values. Therefore, over the last few years, many New Muncipalist government have started to re-municipalise public services. Re-municipalisation under New Municipalism, however, does not mean to return to the classical public management model, meaning, instead, the re-invention of public management. New Muncipalism has done so by applying the logic of “Common” to public management which involves the implementation of the principle of self-government and non-appropriability. Applying these principles means giving space to self-governing civil society to manage public services within state institutions; and preventing public services being fully appropriated by any institutions, even the local government itself, thus avoiding decisions about it being taken exclusively by the institutions that manage it. The paper shows the application of the logic of the “Common” in two New Municipalism city contexts, Barcelona and Naples, through the analysis of their respective common-logic transformed public services: local cultural facilities and water services. It does so by triangulating different sources of evidence, such as document analysis and interviews. The first case shows how, during the “Barcelona en Comú” government, local cultural facilities that had previously been provided by the local authority began to be managed by community organisations, through a new regulatory framework -“Patrimoni Ciutadà”-. The second case shows how, during the “Democracy and Autonomy” government, the privatised water services in Naples were re-municipalised, but with the establishment of a governance structure where a “water parliament” now prevents the services from falling into speculative dynamics.