Albert Aristide Mamilo

Thesis proposal

Working title: – Key dynamics and factors in the process of returning water management to public control within the Montpellier intermunicipal community in 2014: a sociological analysis of a highly political decision

The management and sharing of water resources have taken a wide variety of forms depending on the era, location, scale, or social and cultural systems involved. Generally, all these models of water governance have affirmed and protected water’s status as a public good or a common good.
In recent years, however, the model of private water management has appeared to become the dominant one. In France, the proportion of public service delegation is almost the opposite of that in the rest of the world: nearly 80% of the water supply is managed by Suez, Veolia, and Saur, and since the late 1980s, there has been a prevailing sentiment that private management of all assets is far superior to public management, which is perceived as bureaucratic and inefficient.

This vision of governance has been in crisis since the mid-2000s, coming up against a movement advocating for the remunicipalization of water. This has been demonstrated in numerous cities in France and in most European cities, highlighting the fact that public management that involves citizens, politicians, and utility employees in the decision-making process can enable socially responsible and sustainable management that protects this natural resource (Le Strat, Anne, 2010, “Paris: How a Local Authority Can Take Back Control of Water Management,” article written for the French edition of Reclaiming Public Water)

In 2014, the report by the Observatory of Public Water and Sanitation Services (SISPEA) indicated that 69% of public drinking water services are directly managed, covering a population of nearly 25 million people, or 39% of the French population. Services managed under delegation, on the other hand, account for 31% of services but cover nearly 61% of the population, or approximately 41 million people.

The issue of choosing management approaches from ideological, political, technical, economic, environmental, and other perspectives has been the subject of numerous studies, which tend to show that decision-makers’ choices were made solely on the basis of purely universalist considerations. However, in light of the example of Montpellier in 2014, I wish to demonstrate that an examination of decision-makers’ mental models can help transcend this debate and provide a better understanding of what is at stake in local governments that are changing the way they manage their services.

Edited by Emmanuel Négrier, Research Director, CEPEL – University of Montpellier.