State-Led Capitalist Water Regime, Water Services, and the Reproduction of Inequality and Injustice

This chapter discusses the long-term emergence of what by the early twentieth century would become the state-led capitalist water regime, which substituted the failed “free market” privatist water regime that had prevailed in England between the 1780s and 1890s and had been exported worldwide with mixed results during the nineteenth century. It examines the consolidation of this regime after the First World War and its success in expanding essential water services in developed countries. It also addresses the diversity of arrangements for the public provision of these services that coexisted, particularly in Europe and the United States, where different levels of government were involved, particularly municipal authorities. The chapter addresses the pivotal role of state intervention, investment, leadership, and regulation in this regime, and the impact of national cultural and institutional practices. It shows that, though this regime was successful in the leading capitalist countries, in the peripheral regions of global capitalism, with few exceptions, it tended to reproduce the conditions of structural inequality and injustice that had characterized the old “free market” water regime, conditions that significantly worsened in many developing regions after the Second World War, in contexts of rapid social transformations, and increasing demands for the substantive democratization of water politics and management.