Urbanities,
Vol. 4
·
No 2
·
November 2014
© 2014
Urbanities
39
On The Critical Relationship Between Citizenship and Governance:
The Case of Water Management in Italy
1
Sergio Marotta
(University of Naples Suor Orsola Benincasa)
‘
Extensive empirical research leads me to argue that instead,
a core goal of public policy should be to facilitate the development of institutions
that bring out the best in humans’.
(Ostrom 2010: 665)
Over the past fifteen years, water management has been a highly problematic issue in Italy. With particular
attention to the situation in Naples, this article addresses the sharp conflict that has emerged between citizens’
politically-expressed will to keep water management under public control and the actions of Parliament and of
various governments. The discussion looks at issues of legitimacy and the law, taking into account the effects of
popular action that combines protest and legal action.
Keywords
: Water Services, Public Good, Citizenship, Governance, Law.
Introduction
In the early 1930s two Americans, August A. Berle jr.
2
and Gardiner G. Means
3
, concluded
their outstanding study on
The Modern Corporation and Private Property
asserting that ‘The
future may see economic organism, now typified by the corporation, not only on an equal
plane with the state, but possibly even superseding it as dominant form of social organization.
The law of corporations, accordingly, might be well considered as a potential constitutional
law for the new economic state, while business practice is increasingly assuming the aspect of
economic statesmanship’ (Berle and Means 1932: 357).
So, the question after the Great Depression of 1929 seemed to be, between the political
organization of society and the economic one which would prevail? In the context of the
current global financial crisis, this old question seems to have found a definitive answer in the
predominance of economic organization; or, better, of economic organism, in the words of
Berle and Means. I shall argue, however, that an alternative is still possible.
The case of water management in Italy will help to demonstrate that there exists in the
country a kind of rationality regarding the use of such a common good as water that can at
once constitute a form of resistance to the so-called economic rationality and become a
fragment of a new, constituent power. In the discussion that follows I shall first outline the
jurisprudence on the issue of water management in Italy; then, I shall briefly describe the
1
This article expands on a paper that I presented at the Annual conference of the Commission on
Urban Anthropology (University Jean Monnet, St Etienne, France, 8-11 July 2014) and, in revised
form, at the Kent Law School Staff-Graduate Seminar, while on a Visiting Scholarship the University
of Kent, UK. I am grateful to the participants to both events for their comments and criticism. In
particular I wish to thank Italo Pardo for his encouragement and comments throughout the production
of this article.
2
A member of the US President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Brain Trust.
3
An influential economist who worked at Harvard.
