The Foundational Economy and Citizenship: Comparative Perspectives on Civil Repair 9781447353386

Table of contents :
Front cover
Halftitle Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
List of figures and tables
Notes on the editors and contributors
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. The foundational economy and the civil sphere
Part I: Governance and public action
2. Re-embedding the economy within digitalized foundational sectors: The case of platform cooperativism
3. Reframing public ownership in the foundational economy: (Re)discovering a variety of forms
4. The non-profit paradox after the 2008 financial crisis: How to survive within a changing scenario
Part II: Housing and urban life
5. Planning with citizenship: An idea whose time has come in Greater Manchester?
6. Housing and the grounded city: Rent extraction and social innovations
Part III: Water and waste
7. Waste management and value extraction in Italy: Where is the citizen? Waste to worth
8. Civil society and the movement for public water: Water management and its transformation in the UK and Italy
Part IV: Food
9. Changing food supply chains: The role of citizens and civil society organizations in working towards a social economy
10. Foodscapes of hope: The foundational economy of food
Conclusions and new policy directions
Index
Back cover

Citation preview

THE FOUNDATIONAL ECONOMY AND CITIZENSHIP

Also available in the Civil Society and Social Change series Putting Civil Society in Its Place Governance, Metagovernance and Subjectivity By Bob Jessop HB £75.00 ISBN 978 1 4473 5495 6 304 pages September 2020

Civil Society and the Family By Esther Muddiman, Sally Power and Chris Taylor HB £75.00 ISBN 978 1 4473 5552 6 208 pages October 2020

Civil Society Through the Life Course Edited by Sally Power HB £75.00 ISBN 978 1 4473 5483 3 200 pages October 2020

Published with the Wales Institute of Social & Economic Research, Data & Methods Civil Society Research Centre

For more information about the series visit bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/civil-society-and-social-change

THE FOUNDATIONAL ECONOMY AND CITIZENSHIP Comparative Perspectives on Civil Repair Edited by Filippo Barbera and Ian Rees Jones

First published in Great Britain in 2020 by Policy Press, an imprint of Bristol University Press University of Bristol 1-9 Old Park Hill Bristol BS2 8BB UK t: +44 (0)117 954 5940 e: [email protected] Details of international sales and distribution partners are available at policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk © Bristol University Press 2020 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-4473-5335-5 hardcover ISBN 978-1-4473-5338-6 ePdf ISBN 978-1-4473-5339-3 ePub The right of Filippo Barbera and Ian Rees Jones to be identified as editors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved: no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of Bristol University Press. Every reasonable effort has been made to obtain permission to reproduce copyrighted material. If, however, anyone knows of an oversight, please contact the publisher. The statements and opinions contained within this publication are solely those of the editors and contributors and not of the University of Bristol or Bristol University Press. The University of Bristol and Bristol University Press disclaim responsibility for any injury to persons or property resulting from any material published in this publication. Bristol University Press and Policy Press work to counter discrimination on grounds of gender, race, disability, age and sexuality. Cover design: Clifford Hayes Front cover image: Black and white geometric pattern © Freepik.com Bristol University Press and Policy Press use environmentally responsible print partners. Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

Contents List of figures and tables vii Notes on the editors and contributors ix Acknowledgements xiv Introduction 1 Filippo Barbera and Ian Rees Jones 1

The foundational economy and the civil sphere Filippo Barbera and Ian Rees Jones

PART I Governance and public action 2 Re-embedding the economy within digitalized foundational sectors: The case of platform cooperativism Davide Arcidiacono and Ivana Pais

7

27

3

Reframing public ownership in the foundational economy: (Re)discovering a variety of forms Leonhard Plank

51

4

The non-profit paradox after the 2008 financial crisis: How to survive within a changing scenario Sandro Busso and Joselle Dagnes

73

PART II Housing and urban life 5 Planning with citizenship: An idea whose time has come in Greater Manchester? Julie Froud, Mike Hodson, Sukhdev Johal, Hua Wei and Karel Williams 6

Housing and the grounded city: Rent extraction and social innovations Massimo Bricocoli and Angelo Salento

PART III Water and waste 7 Waste management and value extraction in Italy: Where is the citizen? Waste to worth Dario Minervini

v

105

129

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8

Civil society and the movement for public water: Water management and its transformation in the UK and Italy Sergio Marotta and Ferdinando Spina

PART IV Food 9 Changing food supply chains: The role of citizens and civil society organizations in working towards a social economy Fabio Mostaccio 10

Foodscapes of hope: The foundational economy of food Kevin Morgan

181

207

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Conclusions and new policy directions Filippo Barbera and Ian Rees Jones

249

Index

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List of figures and tables Figures 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 4.8 4.9 5.1 7.1 8.1

Labour force composition in the Italian social assistance sector Service models in Italy according to ownership, resources and management Resource flows and market actors’ funding channels in Italy Normalized social expenditure at national and local level in Italy Local expenditure for vouchers and cash transfers to purchase care services (assegni di cura) in Italy Local governments’ contribution to third sector organizations in Italy Banking foundations’ contribution to social assistance and support for third sector organizations in Italy Network of the non-profit institutions connected by participation in a consortium Network of the non-profit institutions connected by shared directors Net change in the 25–34 population across the Greater Manchester boroughs, 2001–14 Management modes of packaging waste (landfill disposal/ recycling and energy recovery) The framework of water tariffs in England and Wales and Italy

76 77 79 81 83 83 84 89 90 117 170 188

Tables 2.1 2.2 2.3 4.1 4.2 4.3 5.1

Comparing sharing mobility solutions 37 Comparing caring platforms’ cases 44 Comparing traditional vs platform services 45 Pensions expenditure in Italy and Europe, 2016 82 Overall labour force of not-for-profit sector and enterprises 86 by contract type in Italy, 2011 Organizational structure of non-profit organizations 91 A century of remaking Greater Manchester, 1945–2045 109

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5.2

7.1

Developers making the ‘New Manchester’: number of apartments under development in the City of Manchester, 2016 Quality-range fees (plastic packaging waste collection)

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115

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Notes on the editors and contributors Davide Arcidiacono is Researcher in Economic Sociology at the University of Catania in Sicily, Italy. His research work focuses on the platform economy and digital trasformation and its impact on organization and labour. His most recent publications include: Sharing Mobilities: Questioning Our Right to the City in the Collaborative Economy (with M. Duggan, Routledge, 2020); ‘Platform work: From digital promises to labor challenges’, PACO-Partecipazione e Conflitto, 12(3) (with P. Borghi and A. Ciarini, 2019); and The Sociological Review Monograph: Unboxing the Sharing Economy: Opportunities and Risks of the Era of Collaboration (edited with A. Gandini and I. Pais, 2018). Filippo Barbera is Professor of Economic Sociology at the CPS Department of the University of Turin, Italy, and is affiliated with the Collegio Carlo Alberto. He deals with social innovation, the foundational economy and the development of marginal areas. His recent publications include Alternative Food N with A. Corsi, E. Dansero and C. Peano, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) and etworks: An Interdisciplinary Assessment (edited Foundational Economy (Manchester University Press, 2018). Massimo Bricocoli is Professor of Urban Planning and Policies and Head of the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies (DASTU) at Politecnico di Milano, Italy. He undertakes research in urban policies, housing policies and projects, urban regeneration programmes, social policy and qualitative social research. Sandro Busso is Associate Professor of Political Sociology at the Department of Cultures, Politics and Society of the University of Turin, Italy. His research addresses poverty, inequalities and income support policies. He also deals with the transformation of the governance of social policy, and the changing role of non-profit actors. Joselle Dagnes is Assistant Professor of Economic Sociology at the CPS Department of the University of Turin, Italy, where she teaches the sociology of markets and social network analysis. Her research focuses on the forms of institutional regulation in advanced economies, specifically dealing with the relationship between formal regulation

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and informal practices implemented by actors. Her latest publications include: ‘Establishing, or failing? That is the (puzzling) question. An attempt to introduce a complementary currency’, Partecipazione e Conflitto, 13(1) (with L. Storti, 2020) and Ai Posti di Comando. Individui, Reti e Organizzazioni nel Capitalismo Finanziario Italiano (il Mulino, 2018). Julie Froud is a Professor at Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, UK. Her current research interests on the foundational economy have grown out of earlier work with Sukhdev Johal, Karel Williams and others on financialization, corporate business models and public policy analysis including privatization and outsourcing. She is a member of the international Foundational Economy Collective and also of the WISERD Civil Society Research Centre Work Package ‘Foundational Economy, Citizenship and New Form of Common Ownership’. Mike Hodson is Senior Research Fellow in the Sustainable Consumption Institute, Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, UK and a member of the Manchester Urban Institute. His research interests address the future shape of sustainable cities; the role and politics of the built environment, networked and digital infrastructures in shaping the future of the city; and how urban transition/transformation to more sustainable futures can be theorized and conceptualized. Mike has published widely on this agenda. Sukhdev Johal is Professor of Accounting and Strategy at Queen Mary, University of London. His research interests focus on the innovative use of social and economic statistics, including the development of new understandings of industries, organizations and their wider relations. Current work with Colin Haslam and others is based on developing metrics and accounting frameworks for the foundational economy, to contribute to new ways of thinking and new ideas about policy and as part of the broader Foundational Economy Collective. Ian Rees Jones is Professor of Sociological Research at Cardiff University and the Wales Institute of Social & Economic Research & Data (WISERD). He is Director of the ESRC-funded WISERD Centre focusing on changing perspectives on civic stratification and civil repair. His research addresses processes of social change and their impact on individuals, institutions, communities and civil society.

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Notes on the editors and contributors

Sergio Marotta is Professor of Sociology of Law at University of Naples Suor Orsola Benincasa, Italy. He is the Director of the Master’s degree in Business and Public Communication. His main research interests focus on the relationship between law and society in the context of globalization and post-globalization. He is currently dealing with the critical relationship between citizenship and governance related to the management of water services in Italy. Dario Minervini is Senior Lecturer at the Department of Social Sciences of the University of Naples ‘Federico II’, Italy. He teaches environmental sociology and advanced qualitative research methods. His research interests deal with the sociomaterial construction of sustainability, focusing on governance arrangements as well as on value and values informing ecological discourses and practices. Kevin Morgan is Professor of Governance and Development in the School of Geography and Planning at Cardiff University, UK, where he is also the Dean of Engagement. His research interests revolve around urban and regional development; place-based politics; multilevel governance systems; sustainable food systems; and the foundational economy. Many of these interests were woven together in two co‑authored books: Worlds of Food: Place, Power and Provenance in the Food Chain (with T. Marsden and J. Murdoch, Oxford University Press, 2006) and The School Food Revolution: Public Food and the Challenge of Sustainable Development (with R. Sonnino, Routledge, 2010). Fabio Mostaccio is Lecturer of Economic Sociology at the University of Messina, Sicily, Italy. His main research addresses the foundational economy, agri-food supply chains and processes and the solidarity economy. Ivana Pais is Associate Professor in Economic Sociology at Università Cattolica, Milano, Italy. Her research interest focuses on the platform economy and digital labour. She is the principal investigator of the SWIRL project (Slash Workers and Industrial ReLations), funded by DG Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion (2019–21). Her recent publications include: ‘Digital Platforms and the Transformations in the Division of Labor’, in K. Zimmermann (ed) Handbook of Labor, Human Resources and Population Economics (Springer, 2020); The Sociological Review Monograph: Unboxing the Sharing Economy: Opportunities and Risks of the Era of Collaboration (edited with D. Arcidiacono and

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A. Gandini, 2018); and ‘Sharing economy: A step towards the re‑embeddedness of the economy?’, Stato e mercato, (3), 347–78 (with G. Provasi, 2015). Leonhard Plank is Senior Scientist at the Centre of Public Finance and Infrastructure Policy in the Institute of Spatial Planning at TU Wien, Austria. His research focuses on global production arrangements and their socioeconomic consequences as well as on critical infrastructure research and financialization. Angelo Salento is Associate Professor of Economic and Labour Sociology in the University of Salento, Lecce, Italy. He has researched the regulation of economy and work, financialization, local and rural development and the foundational economy. His latest book is: Foundational Economy: The Infrastructure of Everyday Life (co-authored with the Foundational Economy Collective, Manchester University Press, 2018). Ferdinando Spina is Assistant Professor of Sociology of Law at the University of Salento, Italy, where he teaches courses on the sociology of law and crime and media. He has published on environmental conflicts and law and popular culture. His current research interests include the foundational economy, social licence and water sustainability. Hua Wei is a researcher at the Centre for Occupational and Environmental Health (COEH) at the University of Manchester, UK. She is the lead researcher on two MRC-funded projects focusing on health and safety for delivery workers in China and the UK amid the COVID-19 pandemic. She has previously worked at the Alliance Manchester Business School on projects analysing the prospect of the UK’s textiles industry and the impact of devolution on transport and housing in Greater Manchester. Karel Williams is Professor of Accounting and Political Economy at Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, UK, a founder member of the Foundational Economy Collective, and has been involved in the development of foundational thinking since the original manifesto of 2013 published by the Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change, where he collaborated with Julie Froud, Mick Moran and others on outputs including widely read public interest reports. Most recently, he has been working with John Law

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and others on the NHS and English public health laboratory system after COVID-19. Their report, When Systems Fail, is available on the foundationaleconomy.com website.

xiii

Acknowledgements This book would not have been possible without the support of the Economic and Social Research Council which funds the WISERD Civil Society Research Centre (Award Number ES/L009099/1 and ES/S012435/1). We would like to thank not only the individual chapter contributors but also the wider WISERD community and the members of the Foundational Economy Collective for their support and for their generous comments and suggestions. The ideas in this book were developed through debates and discussions with colleagues at conferences and seminars. In addition to the academic input from WISERD colleagues, this book would not have been possible without the technical and administrative support from the WISERD hub team. Particular thanks go to Alex Williams and Tina Woods for their general oversight of the WISERD. We would also like to thank the team at Policy Press for their attention, as well as our colleagues, Paul Chaney, Esther Muddiman and Mike Woods, who oversee the book series.

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Introduction Filippo Barbera and Ian Rees Jones The ‘foundational economy’ encompasses those goods and services, together with the economic and social relationships that underpin them, that provide the everyday infrastructure of civilized life. A nonexhaustive list includes gas and electricity, water, waste and sewerage, retail food supply, telecommunications, health and social care, housing, education and public transport. Since the 1990s, many of these goods and services have been increasingly incorporated within market logics by policies that promote commodification, privatization and financialization. The failure of these policies and their impact on the daily lives of citizens have been documented in a body of work that has applied foundational thinking to a number of substantive areas of social and economic relations and geographic regions (see Bentham et  al, 2013; Barbera et  al, 2017, 2018; Foundational Economy Collective, 2018). This edited collection takes this scholarship further using comparative perspectives on the foundational economy in relation to governance, urban life, welfare critical goods and food systems. We extend theoretical and empirical work on the foundational economy to explore its relevance to key policy areas and to civil society. Addressing a range of substantive areas of concern, individual chapters use case studies at different national and regional levels to illustrate the arguments being developed. In so doing we provide a unique perspective on the relationship between civil society, democracy and the foundational economy. Our aim is to advance foundational thinking in three key areas. First, we set out detailed evidence on the impact of growth-based and financialized solutions on local democracy, citizenship and civil society and explore alternative approaches to citizenship and social justice that are rooted in the foundational economy. Second, for the first time we provide important comparative perspectives on the development of foundational thinking. And third, we document detailed and critical case studies in core areas of economic and social life. Each chapter addresses different aspects of the foundational economy from a comparative perspective, illustrating key points with case studies. Areas that are considered in detail include the rise of platform capitalism and the so-called sharing economy that extend commodification and

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value extraction into mundane activities. In contrast, foundational economy thinking can utilize the same technological developments to offer potential alternative forms of social and economic organization through platform cooperativism. Just as foundational economy analysis has exposed the expansion of financialization into a range of utilities (water, electricity, pipes and cables) and the market failures that have accompanied these trends, it also offers alternatives that avoid the top-down bureaucracy of past statist solutions by means of public governance that involves citizen stakeholders and democratic accountability. In the third sector, foundational economy thinking has exposed the impact of austerity policies on civil society organizations that are facing increasing pressure to take up responsibility for the gaps left by the decline in state funding for services. These trends have gone hand in hand with increasing pressure on the third sector to adopt market-based approaches to service delivery, organizing and fundraising, but research set out in this collection suggests that adopting foundational perspectives can offer new ways of working at community and local levels that look beyond delivering narrow market-based outcomes. Foundational thinking has also been applied to the concept of the ‘grounded city’ to critique current obsessions with property development at the expense of supporting local communities. Instead, a foundational approach focuses on intermediary institutions as a means of supporting social and economic relations at the city level. Foundational thinking is also a means of moving beyond neoliberal logics that have been applied to public goods and services and to incorporate values based on understandings of environmental sustainability, solidarity (shared duties) and citizen participation. Here there are strong links between the foundational economy and ideas surrounding the governance of the commons. Food supply is one key area where foundational thinking views food networks as part of the moral economy that moves beyond ethical critique of food systems to political practice. Examples include alternative food networks (AFNs), Solidarity Purchasing Groups (SPGs) and the concept of ‘food for life’ as a means of promoting concerted activity between municipal governments, civil society, local communities and urban/ rural relations. These examples are considered in detail within different sections of the book, organized under the themes of ‘Governance and public action’, ‘Housing and urban life’, ‘Water and waste’ and ‘Food’. Specifically in relation to the theme of ‘Governance and public action’, in Chapter  2 Davide Arcidiacono and Ivana Pais address

2

Introduction

the sphere of platform cooperativism and argue that the rise of the platform model has enabled financialized forms to be inserted into key sectors of the foundational economy. They focus their analysis on two foundational sectors, mobility and care, and show how platforms control and manage three core processes in our everyday life: commodification, datification and selection. They show that there are considerable differences between the two sectors, and while platform cooperativism provides exciting and innovative possibilities as a counter-movement, there are also limitations to public action that we should be aware of. In Chapter 3 Leonhard Plank considers different forms of public ownership as a means of developing a common good agenda, as reflected in foundational thinking. He examines three cases that have the potential to provide goods and services through more democratic and emancipatory forms of governance: Austrian limited-profit housing associations, French water companies and water cooperatives in Austria. He concludes that public ownership across different foundational fields should be a democratic collective endeavour that is informed by a vision of universalism. In Chapter 4 Sandro Busso and Joselle Dagnes explore paradoxes and tensions within the non-profit sector in the context of the economic crisis. In relation to the theme of ‘Housing and urban life’, in Chapter 5 Julie Froud, Mike Hodson, Sukhdev Johal, Hua Wei and Karel Williams provide important insights into how planning has evolved over time. Taking a comparative historical perspective, they trace successive periods of town hall planning and developer-led regeneration in Greater Manchester, draw some historical lessons from Vienna and Bologna, and set out an alternative to developer-led regeneration through the possibilities of a civic future for Manchester. In Chapter 6 Massimo Bricocoli and Angelo Salento focus on housing and urban land policies in Italy. They set out the decline in housing policies and how, since the 2000s, urban rent has been transformed and financialized before setting out recent radical experiments that counteract rent-seeking and promote the social use of public heritage. The theme of ‘Water and waste’ is addressed in Chapter 7 by Dario Minervini, who focuses on waste management policy in Italy and the role of citizens in processes of value extraction. He presents a detailed, document-based analysis of official reporting of actors performing Italian governance of waste management and recycling, and illustrates how different logics adopted in the institutional accounting strategy construct a particular and limited role for citizens. He concludes that a foundational economy approach to waste needs to develop calculative devices and methodologies of accounting developed in line with a

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holistic approach. This can be achieved through what he describes as a co-constructed social-material accountability based on a co-productive relation between science, expertise and all the actors of the network (from institutional agencies to citizens themselves and civil society actors). In Chapter 8 Sergio Marotta and Ferdinando Spina present a comparative analysis of the movement for public water in England and Italy. In doing so they highlight the complex and often problematic relationships between the public sector, the market and civil society. They unpick the implications of the new financialized economy and the point value approach for universal access to drinking water and the quality of the service before considering attempts in both countries by active citizens and responsive institutions to strengthen social justice and ensure sustainability in the water supply. The theme of ‘Food’ is addressed in Chapter 9 by Fabio Mostaccio who looks at the role of citizens and civil society organizations in food supply chains. Using detailed case studies to illustrate his argument, Mostaccio demonstrates the potential contribution of Solidarity Purchasing Groups (SPGs) to the development of the foundational economy. In Chapter  10 Kevin Morgan gives a further reflection on the importance of the provision of food and food supply chains for foundational thinking. He sets out the case for exceptionalism in relation to food as it makes a unique contribution to the wellbeing of people and the planet alike, and is therefore inextricably linked to the concept of moral economy. Following on from this Morgan argues that we need to move from a moral economy as an ethical critique to the foundational economy as a political practice, thus ensuring a food system that is more socially and ecologically sustainable. Finally, Morgan considers specific initiatives as examples of such practices involving collective action among local authorities, civil society organizations and local communities. In the Conclusions we focus on the insights provided by comparative perspectives for policy development under each theme. There is clear evidence that the foundational economy is already influencing policy-making at devolved nation and city region scales and is having international reach. For example, it underpins the foundation sectors supported in the 2018 Welsh Government Economic Action Plan,1 and has strong affinities with thinking related to the solidarity economy, with Universal Basic Infrastructure,2 Universal Basic Services3 and with a new approach to urban strategic planning (Estela Barnet, 2018). We consider affinities with utopian thinking (Levitas, 2013) (Wright, 2013) and the role of civil society in social experiments to build better futures (Unger, 2015) through experiments in social

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Introduction

innovation and the potential for a maximalist approach that has citizen activism at the heart of foundational thinking and practice. This suggests ‘performative citizenship’ that is rooted in effervescent rituals of production and management of foundational goods and services as local commons. In contrast to exclusively ‘bottom-up’ approaches, however, we maintain that a foundational economy approach requires us to address the key institutions of our societies and the role of public action in those institutions. We begin, however, in Chapter 1, by focusing on the relationship between the foundational economy and the civil sphere. In particular, we develop the argument that the foundational economy, through delivering the goods and services that are essential for human needs (whose intermediate qualities are socially, culturally and place-specific) is also linked to a moral basis for citizenship that potentially transcends territorial boundaries. Notes 1

2

3

Available at https://gov.wales/sites/default/files/publications/2019-02/prosperityfor-all-economic-action-plan.pdf See the report of the Industrial Strategy Commission (2017), available at http:// industrialstrategycommission.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/The-FinalReport-of-the-Industrial-Strategy-Commission.pdf See the UCL Social Prosperity Network report (2017), available at www.ucl. ac.uk/bartlett/igp/sites/bartlett/files/universal_basic_services_-_the_institute_ for_global_prosperity_.pdf

References Barbera, F., Dagnes, J., Salento, A. and Spina, F. (2017) Il Capitale Quotidiano: Un Manifesto per l’Economia Fondamentale, Rome: Donzelli. Barbera, F., Negri, N. and Salento, A. (2018) ‘From individual choice to collective voice, Foundational Economy, local commons and citizenship’, Rassegna Italiana di Sociologica, 2: 371–91. Bentham, J., Bowman, A., de la Cuesta, M., Engelen, E., et al (2013) Manifesto for the Foundational Economy, November, CRESC Working Paper No  131, Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change (CRESC). Estela Barnet, O. (2018) ‘On Barcelona’s first steps towards a foundational strategy’, Paper presented at the Social Innovation in the Foundational Economy Colloquium, 5 September, Cardiff University, available at https://foundationaleconomy.com/2018/10/05/2018colloqium-outputs/

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Foundational Economy Collective (2018) The Foundational Economy: The Infrastructure of Everyday Life, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Levitas, R. (2013) Utopia as Method: The Imaginary Reconstitution of Society, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Unger, R. (2015) ‘The Task of the Social Innovation Movement’, in A. Nicholls, J. Simon and M. Gabriel (eds) New Frontiers in Social Innovation Research, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 233–51. Wright, E. (2013) ‘Real utopias’, Introduction to the Special Issue, Politics & Society, 41(2): 167–9.

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The foundational economy and the civil sphere Filippo Barbera and Ian Rees Jones

Introduction This chapter focuses on the relationship between the foundational economy, citizenship, democracy and social justice. Our argument is that the foundational economy approach is rooted in a conceptualization of citizenship rights and obligations that are derived from human needs, needs that are met through intermediate satisfiers that are contextdependent and responsive to sociotechnical system change – that is, they are socially, culturally and place-specific, and require agreement through continuous political negotiation and dialogue over time. A key area that becomes apparent from this approach is that there is an increasing and damaging asymmetrical relationship between the rights and duties of corporations as legal entities and the stratified rights and duties of individual citizens qua citizens. A second and related point is that while economies are zonal, people, households and groups live in places. Citizen wellbeing is therefore based on the contingent, place-based drivers of income, from jobs, pensions and welfare, and infrastructure, including grounded (housing, utilities, health, education and care), mobility (cars and public transport systems) and social (parks, libraries, community centres). We begin this chapter by examining the scope of the foundational economy, and proceed to focus on the importance of foundational thinking for critiques of capitalist formations that involve financialization and extraction. We then discuss the relationship between the foundational economy and human needs and capabilities before developing the argument for a moral basis to the foundational economy and how this links to citizenship. We consider how an impoverished form of citizenship has developed, and within the literature on citizenship we delineate the links between the foundational and civil society, citizenship and the commons, focusing in particular on the potential for developing democratic governance and public

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action. We conclude by arguing that foundational thinking provides a means of linking citizenship to attempts to manage the commons. This proposes a citizenship based on universal human needs and rights to intermediate goods and services combined with recognition of heterogeneity and diversity in economic and social relations. If social relations and institutional arrangements vary contextually across space and time, this then requires innovative solutions based on experimentation at different scales.

Scope of the foundational economy The scope of the foundational economy incorporates those goods and services necessary to everyday life, consumed by all citizens, whatever their wealth or income. These are generally distributed in correspondence with demographic factors, through branches and networks, and are sheltered from market relations through political franchise. This formulation draws inspiration from Braudel’s work (1981) on economic and social relations operating at different levels and in different zones. Instead of viewing the economy in monolithic terms based on a universalizing market, economic relations are considered to be heterogenous across place and time. In itself, the general idea is hardly new and it lies at the core of economic sociology (Granovetter, 2017) and comparative political economy (Trigilia, 2002). But the perspective of foundational economy adds to these approaches by what we might call a ‘zonal’ view – the foundational economy is that ‘zone’ close to wellbeing and the needs of everyday life that constitutes the economic infrastructure of social citizenship. It hence represents different forms of consumption (private and collective) of outputs that make diverse contributions to wellbeing. From this perspective the foundational economy encompasses a number of zones. The first, the material foundational economy, covers infrastructure and services (pipes and cables, networks and branches) that connect households to daily essentials. This includes the provision of water, electricity, retail banking and food. It is noteworthy that these are areas that have been considered ripe for privatization, financialization and marketization policies. The second zone, the providential foundational economy, covers welfare-critical activities such as health and education and income transfers. While much of these are considered by many to be universal services that should be available to all citizens, funded through taxation or insurance systems and free at the point of use, in many countries their provision is partially privatized and outsourced or, where there

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is state provision, it is increasingly means-tested and linked to state surveillance and punitive welfare regimes. The extent of the spread of financialization into ordinary households and in daily life is, for some, a new ontology for life in the 21st century (Martin, 2002), where expenditure is driven by debt and material objects are viewed as potential income streams. Examples include the payment of student fees, equity release for care home fees and pension cash-ins for consumer spending. Financialization is driven in the providential domain by an ideology that views welfare provision as an individual responsibility that needs to be planned for and funded through asset and debt restructuring (Watson, 2009, 2013). In the UK, forms of financialization have penetrated into key areas of the British welfare state through privatization, outsourcing and subcontracting. The processes involved go beyond ones of simple extraction, however, because the mechanisms identified above transform what have been low-risk, localized and stable activities with strong state direction regulation and ownership into fragile, fragmented business models often involving regular selling on of ownership and debt. Moreover, by adopting an approach of light regulation combined with a choice agenda based on concepts of personalization and competition (Le  Grand, 2007, 2010), opportunities have been opened up for extending the mechanisms of accumulation and exploitation that drive inequality (Tilly, 1999). Finally, there is an outer zone that we refer to as the overlooked foundational economy. This includes household spending from discretionary income on culturally varied lifestyle and comfort support systems. These three zones overlap and are historically contingent and politically contested. Over time the boundaries between these different zones have become porous, as goods that might have previously been considered luxury items become standardized and ubiquitous (for example, new technologies and mobile phones). Thus, through the act of constructing, delineating and making the scope of the foundational economy visible, we are engaging in sociopolitical work that is subject to contestation and debate. Nevertheless, it is possible to estimate the size and nature of the foundational economy. Labour market analysis, for example, indicates that the material and providential zones account for 43.8 per cent of UK employment, 41.3 per cent of German employment and 36.9 per cent of Italian employment (Foundational Economy Collective, 2018), although we need to bear in mind that these percentages will vary by region and rural/urban divides. Foundational goods and services are based on branches and

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networks, backed by state regulation and investment to ensure universal and comprehensive coverage. Mobile phone network coverage is an incomplete example in the present day. This is an indication of the size of the foundational economy and its importance to local communities, something that becomes clearer when we consider the relationship between the foundational economy and theories of human needs and capabilities.

The foundational economy, human needs and the idea of a moral economy Our argument is that the foundational economy provides the essential goods and services that are necessary for wellbeing and human flourishing. In other words, foundational provision is welfare-critical because any constraints on access to material and providential goods leads to diminished fulfilment of human needs and capabilities. Economic resources are therefore not an end in themselves but a means to achieve wellbeing (Sen, 1999), and within a capabilities framework, welfare policies and economic relations should be evaluated in relation to whether they increase or harm human capabilities. In effect, investments in welfare are ways and means of supporting free and flourishing citizens rather than social reproduction for the maintenance of the capitalist economy. While Sen avoids listing capabilities, Nussbaum (2000) has gone further to construct a detailed list with the proviso that there may be cross-cultural variation in terms of priorities and specific forms of capabilities. The capabilities approach has provided a critique of, and alternative to, neoliberal policies, but, as Sayer notes (2012: 593), it can provide ‘an appealingly humanistic cover for the neoliberal naturalization of capitalist structures of domination and exploitation.’ Indeed, Dean (2009) has gone further to argue that it ignores human interdependency, has a problematic notion of the public realm (lessening the space for deliberative justice and identification of needs) and ignores the exploitative nature of capitalism. The assumed neutrality of markets in the theory leads to a focus on the achievement of capabilities without taking account of the consequences for others and the effects of power, domination and exploitation. Drawing on Sen’s work, but in tension with its individualized approach, is an alternative, rights-based route to an emancipatory politics founded on the mutual interpretation of human needs. The theory of human need (Doyal and Gough, 1991; Gough, 2015, 2017) offers a universal, objective and empirically grounded non-substitutable and sustainable account of human flourishing and

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wellbeing that has strong correspondence with the foundational economy. Within the theory, the basic needs of health and autonomy are universal while need satisfiers are relative, and culturally and context-dependent. Human needs are not fixed but are continually open to dialogue and negotiation. They are open to political struggle, disagreement, debate and dialogue (Doyal, 1993). This framework amounts to an immanent moral theory of citizenship but, as Soper (1993) has indicated, the emphasis on universal needs risks slipping in top-down concepts of need that are unable to accommodate local and cultural norms. The foundational approach addresses both the emphasis on individual autonomy in Sen’s formulation of capabilities and the collective policy approach to intermediate needs suggested by Doyal and Gough. The link to the foundational economy comes through the material and providential domains that are central to citizen entitlements in the modern state. While providential services correspond with entitlements of social citizenship as part of the welfare state, the material domain includes access to utility services such as domestic energy and clean water. These also amount to basic citizenship entitlements and are part of public health infrastructures that benefit current and future generations (Gough, 2017). In this respect, the foundational economy has a moral significance because it delivers those essential goods and services that constitute the intermediate needs that underpin the universal needs of health and autonomy necessary for human flourishing. Sayer (2005, 2015) has argued that a critical political economy can move us beyond the evaluation of the impact of economics and markets on people’s lives in terms of costs and benefits. This resonates with Boltanski and Thevenot’s (2006) view that in modern society there are multiple orders of worth and principles of evaluation: in other words, we should avoid simple, one-dimensional measures of value. Instead, we need to examine the standpoints from which evaluations are made, and focus on drawing out and making explicit the normative judgements that form their basis. Foundational goods and services enable participation, security and autonomy, and in this sense, we would suggest, are essential to human need and flourishing (although they may vary by cultural and historical context). This means that key sectors of the economy that provide the socioeconomic foundations of citizenship can be identified, but this requires alternative frames of value that are rooted in continual and evolving political engagement and democratic dialogue. Orthodox economics treats values as subjective preferences, but moral values are concerned with how we treat others, and so cannot be reduced in this way. As Sayer argues,

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‘the moral economy embodies norms and sentiment regarding the responsibilities and rights of individuals and institutions with respect to others’ (Sayer, 2000: 79). Norms can relate to how much inequality is acceptable, what can and cannot be commodified, who should work, the quality of work and who should be supported and protected; in essence, what constitutes the good life. This puts citizenship and, in particular, critiques of current thin and constrained forms of consumer citizenship, at the heart of the foundational economy approach.

The foundational economy and citizenship Our argument in this chapter is that there is an urgent need to rethink and develop citizenship in the context of human needs and foundational goods. Crouch (2011) has argued that we are in a neoliberal post-citizenship era dominated by elites implementing rights regimes that are punitive towards the poor and masked by an ideology of citizen-consumers and individualism. Processes of financialization and neoliberal policies have constrained the political and moral basis of citizenship – first, through demandside processes that promote and construct citizen-consumers. These include the valorization of individual sovereignty, personal choice and responsibility, which have grown in parallel with the setting of limits and constraints on rights and entitlement by means of conditionality (Lister, 2005). And second, through supply-side processes that open up the delivery of welfare-critical goods and services to privatization, debt-based financing, rentierism and the extraction of social value. These processes have been amplified by means of the granting of rights without corresponding obligations to corporations and firms. These have had real effects on the entitlements of individuals and on the provision of foundational goods and services, particularly in the context of austerity policies. The citizen as consumer is an idea that reflects the penetration of modern practices and expectations of consumption into the public sphere (Streeck, 2012) and the adoption of choice and competition as solutions to welfare policy problems. Marshall’s descriptive account of the development of civil, political and social rights over the 19th and 20th  centuries (Marshall, 1992 [1950]) culminated in a social order where equality of status was viewed as the key goal as opposed to equality of income or resources. While the welfare state was the mechanism for introducing social rights, in the British case, Marshall’s ideal was never achieved and, as the New Right and Thatcherism took hold, rights to welfare were increasingly linked to means-testing,

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The foundational economy and the civil sphere

welfare to work and conditionality (Morris, 2011). In recent years there has been an increasing emphasis on inequalities in citizenship, with some arguing that an increasing proportion of Western populations are living in precariousness. Too many lives are dominated by chronic uncertainty and insecurity. People fall out of or never become full citizens; instead, they are considered ‘denizens’ (Standing, 2012, 2014). But, as Turner (2016) argues, this goes further, for the erosion of Marshallian social citizenship, captured by the supplementary concept of denizenship, is a fate that befalls both those who lie outside formal citizenship and those who possess it. Some see these trends as tied to a political project of constructing subjects through processes of othering, exclusion and desubjectivization (Butler and Athanasiou, 2013). Citizenship is an ideal whose actual attainment is less than complete, but as Lockwood argued (1996), it has a strong role to play in the structuring of group interests and thus social inequality. Spatially extensive markets are dependent on the civil rights of citizenship, political rights and the social rights of individuals and groups (applied by bureaucracies through impersonal rules and legitimated through appeals to efficiency and social justice). The tensions and contradictions between capital and citizen rights is predominantly managed by the fine-turning of social rights, balancing the system integrative need for efficiency and the social integrative need for tolerable and acceptable levels of social welfare. Much political discourse revolves around these tensions and is couched in terms of merit and demerit, valorizing ‘struggling’ families and stigmatizing those considered ‘undeserving’. Some have argued that the Keynesian national welfare state has been superseded by Schumpterian workfare post-national regimes that are dominated by imperatives to introduce flexibility, competition and innovation (Jessop, 1999, 2002). In turn, state practices are based around increasingly sophisticated forms of individual governance and guidance of behaviour (Jessop, 2015). According to the Keynesian conception of citizenship, the recognition of rights translated into the individual’s capacity to reach key functioning (for example, to be healthy, educated, mobile, have access to a minimum level of consumption), independently of the market. The processes of social inclusion hence consisted in the extension of citizenship against market forces. The recognition of the collective power of voice historically played a key role in these decommodification processes against the market (Polanyi, 2001 [1944]). In contrast, the conception of citizenship within welfare state liberal reforms was based on the recognition of the right to search for and gain better opportunities within the market.

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The Foundational Economy and Citizenship

Sassen’s analysis of the dynamics of the global economy in ‘Expulsions’ (2016) aptly digs deep in the consequences of predatory capitalism. Here, in a nutshell, the path from subjects to citizens (Marshall, 1992 [1950]) seems to have been radically reversed, becoming a path from citizens to subjects. To the historical context outlined above we would add that these trends have been deepened and extended by means of the financialization of welfare. Thus, over time, choice has become both a virtue and an expectation for citizen-consumers whose participation and construction of forms of distinction and differentiation in social life have shifted from the arena of production to that of consumption (Cohen, 2003), a choice agenda that has often been portrayed by its proponents as ideologically neutral as well as beneficial (Paton, 2014). However, this naive economism legitimates cuts in key sectors of the foundational economy through a process of social engineering whose goal is to produce consumercitizens who are open to forms of marketization, individualization and commodification (Dowling, 2016). Another important facet of citizenship that foundational thinking both reveals and challenges is the relationship between individual citizens and corporations. Kohn (2016) has explored how contemporary economic relations create a social product that lies outside of the control of individual citizens, and the current form of advanced capitalism excludes citizens from their rightful claim to a share of the social wealth. The social product accruing from economic relations is illegitimately appropriated by capitalists through rent. Moreover, this socially created unearned increment (rent) does not naturally belong to the property owner. Kohn applies these arguments to city life to describe how private returns on land and rent are dependent on values generated by public investment in infrastructure and social goods produced through social interaction and participation. These returns, she argues, constitute a social debt and should be returned and shared as a form of commonwealth. This offers a new way of examining urban life and identifying sites of conflict over ownership and control of city spaces, and most importantly, provides the basis for a normative theory of social property. Crucially Kohn reviews the evidence on ways in which urban planners and community activists have experimented with applying such theoretical perspectives in practice, including redefining zoning in terms of citizenship and inclusiveness and of capturing and redistributing value and profits for investment in public goods and infrastructure. Decades of neoliberal policies of privatization and outsourcing have been built on an asymmetrical notion of citizenship. On the one side there has been an emphasis on

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The foundational economy and the civil sphere

promoting a consumer-citizen who is said to benefit from the dual effects of ‘exit and voice’. On the other side there is an emphasis on promoting and supporting, through state subsidies, corporations and private companies that are treated as juridical persons with rights and very few duties. In reality passive consumers are exploited through the dual mechanisms of consumer inertia and asymmetry of knowledge while private contractors are treated as individuals holding a monopoly on provision. As Bell (2016) has argued, the increasing tendency to assign the status of citizenship to corporations is inherently problematic at a number of levels. ‘Corporate citizens’ are increasingly benefiting from rights accorded to individuals while avoiding the duties and responsibilities that accompany citizenship, and simultaneously retaining power and influence to redefine and shape the access of individual citizens to rights according to market and financial needs. While individual and group rights are increasingly stratified, there is a failure to recognize the consequences of the treatment of corporations as legal entities and the asymmetrical relationship between rights and duties. These include the abuse of limited liability and debt-based finance (which were privileges granted originally to allow the pooling of savings for social utilities such as railway construction) to shelter profits. Increasingly, corporations have been able to avoid their social duties (including paying taxes) while individual human subjects are burdened with an increasing duty to participate in the labour market. In addition, corporations have benefited from state-sponsored policies of privatization and outsourcing to enable the incursion of unsuitable business models and the levering of returns through the devices of financialization into foundational activities. In all this, what is forgotten is that corporations are vehicles for capitalists, and what is needed is a new constitutional settlement to ensure that corporate institutions recognize and meet their obligations to the citizenry (Johal et al, 2016). A number of commentators have argued, that under contemporary conditions, mere governance is insufficient (Offe, 2009). Differences in emphasis remain, but there are common concerns about the ways in which global capitalism have outgrown the capacity of nation states to govern it and subject it to social disciplines that protect the welfare of citizens. This includes failures at the level of supra-state governance. Foundational thinking calls for a new constitutional settlement (Johal et al, 2016), where organizations (corporations, firms, not-for-profits, not-for-dividends and cooperatives) providing welfare-critical services are considered to be within the public domain (regardless of ownership). They are thus

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The Foundational Economy and Citizenship

considered as public bodies that have obligations and requirements to pursue public interest goals through a system of social licensing. These would include reciprocal obligations to provide social returns and limits on financial practices (for example, debt financing). Instead of citizenship based on the idea of sovereign consumers, we argue for alternative approaches that link the rights of citizenship to the preconditions for supplying foundational goods that meet human needs (infrastructure, networks and connectivity). As our discussion of human needs and the moral economy suggests, citizen entitlements based on needs and capabilities will vary over time and place and intermediate needs are culturally relative. Hannah Arendt’s famous dictum, ‘the right to have rights’, pointed out a paradox at the heart of universal notions of human rights in that access to the entitlements that accompany these rights are constrained by the territorial boundaries of citizenship. A territorially delimited citizenship thus both includes and excludes, and presents a problem for attempts to make links between the foundational economy and citizenship in that entitlement to goods and services is contingent and spatially bounded. There is a further need therefore to try to connect citizenship to the moral imperative of universal human needs rather than territorial limits. A list of the goods and services that constitute citizen entitlements within a bounded territory does not fully address the issue. Indeed, we argue that we need to develop a deeper conceptualization of citizenship entitlements that reaches beyond borders. Furthermore, citizenship and the provision of goods and services that satisfy intermediate needs also needs to be based on a consideration for future generations (environmental sustainability). In this sense, alternatives based on a foundational economy approach need to be cognisant of the danger of falling into the ‘local trap’ and a ‘generational trap’. This requires the development of a flexible calculus of social wellbeing that takes account of people now and in the future who are treated as participating citizens and not as a means within market forces of production and consumption. Thus, citizenship and the foundational economy cannot be solely based on choices made for specific groups of citizens within specific territorial systems at specific points in time, and this raises questions for any attempts to put foundational economy principles into practice.

The foundational economy, the commons and civil repair Our discussion so far indicates that agreement on intermediate human needs and the foundational goods and services that deliver citizen

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The foundational economy and the civil sphere

wellbeing is a political activity that presupposes a commitment to deliberative democracy based on an understanding of citizenship and entitlements that transcends space and time (Ellison, 1997, 2013). Work on deliberative democracy and citizenship has addressed the need to challenge political institutions, but is less developed in terms of promoting alternative forms of economic institutions. If citizenship is increasingly seen as a prerequisite for wellbeing, it is also seen as being in crisis. As Moro points out (2016), there is no clear agreed definition, and it both includes and excludes. Liberal approaches to citizenship have viewed it as a package of rights that enable individuals to achieve goals following Marshall’s famous delineation of a progressive accumulation of civil, political and social rights. Criticisms of this approach have identified blind spots in terms of gender, race and sexuality, with some writers proposing alternative, cosmopolitan forms of citizenship that bring a focus on identities. Nevertheless, while the concept of citizenship has moved beyond Marshall’s to incorporate studies of identity and difference, it is still the case that the compatibility of citizenship and human rights remains crucial for cultivating civic virtues and democracy (Isin and Turner, 2007). Communitarian accounts have placed a greater emphasis on duties that come from belonging to a community, norms, culture, habit, custom, ties of trust and interdependence. In contrast, the civic republican approach focuses on active participation in public life. These different approaches have been applied to substantive areas of concern including cities and urban life, the evolution of citizenship within cross-national and supra-national contexts, citizenship in the context of digital societies, consumer citizenship and active citizenship. Some have argued that these are not necessarily mutually exclusive approaches (Delanty, 2006). Indeed, all have a concern for citizenship as membership, whether this is based on material resources or legal status, on claims to rights and on the political context that enables or hampers participation (Bellamy and Lacey, 2018). It is perhaps useful to distinguish between those who hold citizenship (bundles of stategiven rights and obligations) and actors of citizenship (who are acting subjects), either active in the sense of writing letters, volunteering or doing charitable work or activist in the sense of undertaking more challenging and creative practices of citizenship. Important work by Isin (2017) has developed the concept of performative citizenship. This draws a distinction between formal, substantial, insurgent, active and activist forms of citizenship, and focuses on struggles over rights and what those struggles bring into being. This resonates with the idea of a new model of citizenship

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The Foundational Economy and Citizenship

(Crouch, 2011) and those writers who have tied citizenship to the commons (Stevenson, 2014, 2015), drawing on Williams’ argument that a genuine democracy of the commons is based on a system of self-government rooted in the satisfaction of human needs and the development of human capacities (Williams, 2005). This is important for foundational approaches because there is now a strong body of work that shows that self-organizing groups and communities are able to manage common resources at a local level (Araral, 2014). The complex relationships between global commons and social and environmental sustainability require multilevel and polycentric solutions (Ostrom, 2010). In this light, the foundational economy can be the basis for developing new practices of citizenship that revolve around the defence and management of local commons (Barbera et  al, 2018). These writers envision ways of creating spaces for sharing and cooperating that flow from a new democratic citizen they call ‘the commoner’, where networked identities and alliances defend common resources. They frame local commons within the foundational economy as a civic infrastructure serving everyday household needs through networks and branches across populations. They go on to draw a connection between local commons and citizenship in a Durkheimian sense, in terms of ‘effervescent rituals’ that enact capacity for collective action and have positive feedback loops that connect daily life needs to conceptions of a fair society. These ideas have elements of utopian thinking (Levitas, 2013) but combined with a focus on practical solutions (Wright, 2013) and the potential of the civil sphere to repair itself through social relations (Alexander, 2001, 2006). If the link between the foundational economy, citizenship and the commons is to be taken seriously, therefore, policy responses need to move beyond technical fixes based on a minimalist view of civil society to social experiments that are based on a maximalist view, leading to profound changes in social relations and institutional arrangements (Unger, 2015), the key word here being ‘experimentation’ and recognition that these social relations and institutional arrangements will vary contextually across space and time. This informs the critiques and policy responses to be found within the foundational economy. A heterogeneous and multiscalar view of economic and social relations calls for hybrid experiments and the nurturing of specific regimes that have the common goal of delivering human flourishing. In this respect, the foundational is more than the local economy; it is trans-scalar, but with a universal view of citizenship that enables management of the commons that emphasizes action at different territorial scales. These aims need to be connected to a key role for public action that ‘sets

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The foundational economy and the civil sphere

the scene’ for decision-making processes based on intense, open and informed exchanges between central and marginal actors, between social, development and economic policies, and between low-tech and high-tech places and processes.

Concluding remarks This chapter has discussed what and who the foundational economy is for. In doing so we have linked a theory of human needs to foundational domains to argue that a form of inclusive citizenship is possible, and that the foundational economy can provide the material basis for the delivery of citizen rights. Drawing on the idea of a moral economy, we have set out critiques of financialization and neoliberal policies, and the ways in which these construct a constrained and limited form of citizenship based on the idea of citizen-consumers. In addition, we have discussed how this is strongly tied to processes of privatization and commodification of the providential domain that are amplified by tendencies to grant citizen rights with few obligations to large corporations. While recognizing that theories of citizenship have contradictory inclusive and exclusive aspects, we suggest that a foundational economy approach, based on human needs and capabilities, offers an alternative conceptualization of citizenship. This, we suggest, can be further linked to the idea of the commons in a way that offers potential solutions and new ways of working. This requires experimentation at different scales, but looking comparatively, with a foundational lens, may provide new insights into how a maximalist approach can provide moments of transformation. References Alexander, J. (2001) ‘Robust utopias and civil repairs’, International Sociology, 16(4): 579–91. Alexander, J. (2006) The Civil Sphere, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Araral, E. (2014) ‘Ostrom, Hardin and the commons: A critical appreciation and a revisionist view’, Environmental Science & Policy, 36: 11–23. Barbera, F., Negri, N. and Salento, A. (2018) ‘From individual choice to collective voice, foundational economy, local commons and citizenship’, Rassegna Italiana di Sociologica, 2: 371–91. Bell, E. (2016) ‘From Marshallian citizenship to corporate citizenship: The changing nature of citizenship in neoliberal Britain’, Revue Française de Civilisation Britannique, XXI-1, available at https:// journals.openedition.org/rfcb/850

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Bellamy, R. and Lacey, J. (2018) ‘Balancing the rights and duties of European and national citizens: A democratic approach’, Journal of European Public Policy, 25(10): 1403–21. Boltanski, L. and Thevenot, L. (2006) On Justification: The Economies of Worth, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Braudel, F. (1981) The Structure of Everyday Life, Civilization and Capitalism, Volume 1, New York: Harper & Row. Butler, J. and Athanasiou, A. (2013) Dispossession: The Performative in the Political, Cambridge: Polity Press. Cohen, L. (2003) A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Post War America, New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Crouch, C. (2011) The Strange Non-Death of Neoliberalism, Cambridge: Polity. Dean, H. (2009) ‘Critiquing capabilities: The distractions of a beguiling concept’, Critical Social Policy, 29(2): 261–78. Delanty, G. (2006) ‘The cosmopolitan imagination: Critical cosmopolitanism and social theory’, British Journal of Sociology, 57(1): 25–47. Dowling, E. (2016) ‘In the wake of austerity: Social impact bonds and the financialisation of the welfare state in Britain’, New Political Economy, 1–17. Doyal, L. (1993) ‘Thinking about human need’, New Left Review, 201: 113–28. Doyal, L. and Gough, I. (1991) A Theory of Human Need, London: Macmillan. Ellison, N. (1997) ‘Towards a new social politics: Citizenship and reflexivity in late modernity’, Sociology, 31(4): 697–717. Ellison, N. (2013) ‘Citizenship, space and time: Engagement, identity and belonging in a connected world’, Thesis Eleven, 118(1): 48–63. Foundational Economy Collective (2018) The Foundational Economy: The Infrastructure of Everyday Life, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Gough, I. (2015) ‘Climate change and sustainable welfare: The centrality of human needs’, Cambridge Journal of Economics, 39(5): 1191–214. Gough, I. (2017) ‘Recomposing consumption: Defining necessities for sustainable and equitable well-being’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical Physical and Engineering Sciences, 375(2095). Granovetter, M. (2017) Society and the Economy, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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Isin, E.F. (2017) ‘Performative Citizenship’, in A. Shachar, R. Bauböck, I. Bloemraad and M. Vink (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Citizenship, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 500–23. Isin, E.F. and Turner, B.S. (2007) ‘Investigating citizenship: An agenda for citizenship studies’, Citizenship Studies, 11(1): 5–17. Jessop, B. (1999) ‘The changing governance of welfare: Recent trends in its primary functions, scale, and modes of coordination’, Social Policy & Administration, 33(4): 348–59. Jessop, B. (2002) The Future of the Capitalist State, Cambridge: Polity. Jessop, B. (2015) ‘Crises, crisis-management and state restructuring: What future for the state?’, Policy & Politics, 43(4): 475–92. Johal, S., Moran, M. and Williams, K. (2016) ‘Breaking the constitutional silence: The public services industry and government’, Political Quarterly, 87(3): 389–97. Kohn, M. (2016) ‘The critique of possessive individualism: Solidarism and the city’, Political Theory, 44(5): 603–28. Le Grand, J. (2007) The Other Invisible Hand, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Le  Grand, J. (2010) ‘Knights and knaves return: Public service motivation and the delivery of public services’, International Public Management Journal, 13(1): 56–71. Levitas, R. (2013) Utopia as Method: The Imaginary Reconstitution of Society, London: Palgrave Macmillan. Lister, M. (2005) ‘“Marshall-ing” social and political citizenship: Towards a unified conception of citizenship’, Government and Opposition, 40(4): 471–91. Lockwood, D. (1996) ‘Civic integration and class formation’, British Journal of Sociology, 47(3): 531–50. Marshall, T.H. (1992 [1950]) ‘Citizenship and Social Class’, in T.H. Marshall and T. Bottomore (eds) Citizenship and Social Class, London: Pluto Press, 53–93. Martin, R. (2002) Financialization of Daily Life, Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Moro, G. (2016) ‘Democratic citizenship and its changes as empirical phenomenon’, SocietàMutamentoPolitica, 7(13): 21–40. Morris, L. (2011) ‘Understanding social citizenship: Themes and perspectives for policy and practice’, Journal of Social Policy, 40: 866–68. Nussbaum, M. (2000) Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Offe, C. (2009) ‘Governance: An “empty signifier”?’, Constellations, 16(4): 550–62.

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Ostrom, E. (2010) ‘Polycentric systems for coping with collective action and global environmental change’, Global Environmental Change: Human and Policy Dimensions, 20(4): 550–7. Paton, C. (2014) ‘Garbage-can policy-making meets neo-liberal ideology: Twenty-five years of redundant reform of the English National Health Service’, Social Policy & Administration, 48(3): 319–42. Polanyi, K. (2001 [1944]) The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time, Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Sassen, S. (2016) ‘At the systemic edge: Expulsions’, European Review, 24(1): 89–104. Sayer, A. (2000) ‘Moral economy and political economy’, Studies in Political Economy, A Socialist Review, 61(1): 79–103. Sayer, A. (2005) ‘Class, moral worth and recognition’, Sociology, 39(5): 947–63. Sayer, A. (2012) ‘Capabilities, contributive injustice and unequal divisions of labour’, Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, 13(4): 580–96. Sayer, A. (2015) Why We Can’t Afford the Rich, Bristol: Policy Press. Sen, A. (1999) Development as Freedom, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Soper, K. (1993) ‘A theory of human need’, New Left Review, 197: 113–28. Standing, G. (2012) ‘The precariat: From denizens to citizens?’, Polity, 44(4): 588–608. Standing, G. (2014) ‘Understanding the precariat through labour and work’, Development and Change, 45(5): 963–80. Stevenson, N. (2014) ‘The socialist blues? Citizenship, class and civil society’, Sociological Review, 62(1): 189–205. Stevenson, N. (2015) ‘Post-citizenship, the New Left and the democratic commons’, Citizenship Studies, 19(6–7): 591–604. Streeck, W. (2012) ‘Citizens as customers’, New Left Review, 76: 27–47. Tilly, C. (1999) Durable Inequality, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Trigilia, C. (2002) Economic Sociology: State, Market, and Society in Modern Capitalism, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Turner, B.S. (2016) ‘We are all denizens now: On the erosion of citizenship’, Citizenship Studies, 20(6–7): 679–92. Unger, R. (2015) ‘The Task of the Social Innovation Movement’, in A. Nicholls, J. Simon and M. Gabriel (eds) New Frontiers in Social Innovation Research, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 233–50.

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Watson, M. (2009) ‘Investigating the potentially contradictory microfoundations of financialization’, Economy and Society, 38(2): 255–77. Watson, M. (2013) ‘The welfare state sources of bank instability: Displacing the conditions of welfare state fiscal crisis under pressures of macroeconomic financialization’, Public Administration, 91(4): 855–70. Williams, R. (2005) Culture and Materialism, London: Verso. Wright, E. (2013) ‘Real utopias: Introduction to the Special Issue’, Politics & Society, 41(2): 167–9.

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PART I

Governance and public action

2

Re-embedding the economy within digitalized foundational sectors: The case of platform cooperativism Davide Arcidiacono and Ivana Pais

Introduction: The ‘platformization’ of everyday life In 2015, Robin Chase, founder of Zipcar, an innovative short-term car rental service, stated, ‘everything that can become a platform will become a platform’ (Chase, 2015). The iconic expression of the American entrepreneur is emblematic of a process of digital transformation that is penetrating every economic sector. Digital platforms have become a pervasive aspect of daily life: booking a restaurant, ordering a taxi, finding accommodation, and so on. According to Srnicek (2017), a platform is a digital infrastructure that enables interaction between two or more groups of actors, and can be classified into five types: advertising, cloud, industrial, product and lean platforms (such as Uber and Airbnb) that minimize the direct ownership of assets, starting from the workforce. We can also distinguish between platforms that begin as greenfield start-ups based on service innovations, founded by young digital entrepreneurs, and brownfield platforms arising from the digitalization of existing services in a context of process innovation. According to van Dijck et al (2018), platforms are not a disruptive innovation, as the media and public discourse seem to suggest, but are part of a sort of silent and long-rooted transformation that starts before platforms were invented. They are the last ‘phase’ of a flexibilization trend, where decision-making processes and resources are distributed and shared (albeit often unfairly), so that organizations tend to go far beyond their formal boundaries. Platforms are then boundaryless organizations (Robbins and Coulter, 2009), based on a core central system (not exclusively digital) that engages and coordinates diversified production systems and networks of human and nonhuman cooperators and complementors. The platforms are set up,

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therefore, with light organizational structures that greatly reduce the relevance of the amount of physical and human capital. According to MIT (2017), as many as 70 per cent of the ‘Largest Global Firms’ top list are platform firms, and just considering Uber, Airbnb and Facebook, they are valued at 60 per cent of the total market cap of the DAX (Deutscher Aktienindex, or German stock index). The strength of the platform model relies on the peculiarity of its value-extractive strategy. First, the companies that own the major platforms openly reject the role of producers as well as that of intermediaries, far preferring the term of enablers as a distinction that allows them to argue against regulation, even if they actually produce, distribute and intermediate work, goods and services. They act as heterarchies (Stark, 1996) or Möbius organizations (Stark and Watkins, 2018), based on the cooptation (which is sometimes aggressive) of assets and resources without any alliance or fully formalized constraints. Second, as Marx (1887) argued, technology affects the relationship between capital and work, redefining even the boundaries between productive and socially reproductive work. However, technology acts more as a tool for dispossession rather than of alienation: dispossessing worker identity in itself trying to eliminate the word ‘work’ in the platform vocabulary, using instead terms such as riding, sharing, gamification or super user, and so on; dispossessing the ‘sacrality’ of our private space – in the platform economy, our home, our cars, even our thoughts and feelings are ‘on sale’; and, according to Morozov (2011), dispossessing our data, that are transformed into tradable assets or as a tool for mass surveillance. It is the ‘Onlife’ paradigm (Floridi, 2014), as a hyperconnected and fluid reality without any distinction between online and offline, that exposes our everyday experience and even our personal assets to financialization, fragmentation and value-extractive strategies. These changes have been widely adopted, almost like a ‘silent revolution’, and the reasons for this are to be found mainly in the fact that the platform model is developing within the same ‘moral economy’ (Thompson, 1971) and justification regime (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006) in which the new spirit of capitalism developed. Moreover, the platform also represents a sociotechnical construction (Garcia-Parpet, 2007) that aims to realize a reasonable approximation to ‘perfect market’ functioning with relatively homogeneous commodities, low barriers to entry and the ‘apparently’ open competitive encounter of the buyers and sellers, empowering at the same time knowledge availability (for example, through the algorithmic coding of trust or feedback between transactors) and personalization of the price-making process (that is,

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through dynamic pricing mechanisms). There is an evident discrepancy between the narrative of platformization and the nature of the platform economy. The myth of the platform is based on the idea of overcoming inefficient intermediaries and burdens, finally getting free matching between demand and supply, but in reality, it is also commodifying every aspect of private life that becomes part of the production process in the name of a better and more satisfying consumer experience. Moreover, this myth is also empowered by the relational nature of the platform device that is presented as a way of resocializing the economy, abusing, for example, the term ‘community’, while it is often based on individualized networkers. However, despite the narrative of freedom and individual empowerment typical of neoliberal capitalism, platforms are forming the basis of a new eco-system (van Dijck, 2013) that draws its strength from the hegemonic role of the ‘Big Five’ (GAFAM, or Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft), which define a social infrastructure that is crucial for any socioeconomic activity. Therefore, platforms are reproducing the risks of the neoliberal experiment: from production to financialization, from waged labour to free or precarious labour, from profit to rent, from welfare to charity, from liberty to control (as in the Cambridge Analytica case and/or in the case of the social credit system in China). If, in the first half of the 19th century, municipal administrations or central government played a fundamental role in the quality of life by supplying gas, water and health services, since the end of the 1970s, the role of private action has grown in order to develop the quality of services in an increasingly segmented and complex society, whose needs and demand for wellbeing had to be renewed (Foundational Economy Collective, 2018). The rise of the platform model enables even more private action to be inserted and grow in the ‘foundational economy’, but with a profound difference from previous eras; as van Dijck et al (2018) observe, the Big Five own the ‘infrastructure’, and public administrations are increasingly reliant and subordinate to them, accessing or transiting their services through their platforms. In conclusion, platforms are at the same time multisided markets (Boudreau and Hagiu, 2009) as well as social infrastructure (van Dijck et al, 2018), and not simply digital devices. Platforms control and manage three core processes in our everyday life: commodification, transforming personal activities, assets and emotions into tradable commodities, generating (or extracting) value from any under-utilized asset or idle capacities; datification, rendering into data any aspects of social life, codifying them into measures and information that could

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The Foundational Economy and Citizenship

be transferred or converted from one infrastructure to another; and selection, driving and shaping content, trends and desires.

The emerging movement of platform cooperativism Criticism of platforms that do not adhere to the democratic principles outlined above has led to the emergence of an alternative proposition, known as ‘platform cooperativism’: worker-owned cooperatives based on open-source technologies, which respect ethical working conditions and redistribute to the users the value they have created (Scholz and Schneider, 2017). The expression ‘platform cooperativism’ was coined by Trebor Scholz in a 2014 article entitled ‘Platform cooperativism vs the sharing economy’ in which the author based an exploration of the platform cooperativism construct on the idea that ‘the algorithmic heart of any of these citadels of anti-unionism could be cloned and brought back to life under a different ownership model, with fair working conditions, as a humane alternative to the free market model’ (2014: 1). Scholz further divided this idea into 10 principles (Scholz, 2016a, b): collective ownership; decent pay and income security; transparency and data portability; appreciation and acknowledgement; codetermined work; a protective legal framework; portable worker protections and benefits; protection against arbitrary behaviour; rejection of excessive workplace surveillance; and the right to log off. The meeting between platforms and cooperativism may take three directions: the first and most widely discussed concerns the introduction of cooperative governance criteria to digital platforms; the second is the complementary route, namely, the platformization of existing cooperatives; and last, we have recently seen partnerships formed between global digital platforms and local cooperatives, particularly in marginal territorial contexts (Pais and Provasi, 2015). In recent years there has been no shortage of experimental attempts at cooperative platforms, which encountered problems with securing significant funding, with the development of complex technological assets, and with managing mutual exchanges between multiple stakeholders. If platform capitalism reproduces the same limits and risks of the ‘neoliberal experiment’ (Bowman et al, 2014), at the national and global level, platform cooperativism brings back to the core of the debate the potentialities of projects and initiatives developed more in the local and sub-national areas, as a ‘laboratory’ of an innovative model of governance.

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The most well-known platform experiences are developed in the sphere of platform capitalism, strongly supported by private financial capital and mainly following a strictly market logic, not even hiding in some cases their extractive purposes. Cooperative platforms work more through alternative paths, beyond the public/private dichotomy, rooted in the ‘foundational’ value of services understood as daily infrastructure, but also as a tool of reconnection (and hybridization) among the existing forms of value creation and distribution. In what follows we try to focus our analysis on two ‘foundational’ sectors – mobility and care – highlighting the impact generated by the recent digital transformations and the adoption of a ‘platform-based’ service model. We attempt to compare histories and repertoires within the two polar governance systems, those attributable to platform capitalism and those related to platform cooperativism, trying to identify evidence for the trends of transformation exposed above, and highlighting risks and opportunities that the platform model can generate.

Urban mobility platforms: between financialization and innovation Mobility is a foundational sector increasingly exposed to financialization and value-extractive strategies over the last 30 years. The technological transformation of the urban mobility industry appears to follow the same path. The extreme challenges that seem to characterize the age of the global megacities, such as London, New York, Beijing, and so on, have stimulated a broad debate and a profound rethinking of the models of governance of urban mobility through technology. Sharing mobility services use digital technologies to facilitate the sharing of vehicles and journeys, to create flexible and scalable mobility services (Arcidiacono and Duggan, 2019). However, sharing mobility is not a complete ‘innovation’. The first forms preceded this debate and also the diffusion of digital technologies, but were restricted mainly to the informal sector and to domestic reciprocity, sometimes supported by the public actor: from hitchhiking to borrowing and sharing cars among neighbours; the case of the first car-sharing experience dates back to 1947 with the Sefage programme (Selbstfahrergemeinschaft), which began in Zurich within a housing cooperative; the first bikesharing experiment took place in Amsterdam (the ‘White Bikes’) around the 1960s thanks to a Dutch anarchist group with a strong ecological sensitiveness, called Provo; the Car-Sharing Club, led by

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the US government, was set up as a way to save fuel during the Second World War; and the carpooling special lanes in the US, the so-called HOV (highly occupied vehicles) lanes for cars with more than one occupant, were experimented with successfully in Washington DC, Los Angeles and San Francisco. However, these experiences encountered evident difficulties in terms of scalability and service dysfunctions (a high rate of vandalism, theft, and so on) compromising their sustainability over time, or in the better cases, they simply represented a vanguard or niche market. Since 2000, technological transformation has been the biggest driver of their revival, transforming this ‘old idea’ into a dynamic, interactive and flexible new service, thanks also to the digital disintermediation process through the diffusion of mobile connections and apps. The big players, above all the automotive industry, started to enter this sector, supported by financial investors (see Table  2.1 later in this chapter): considering the main start-ups funded by investment funds and business angels in 2016, 44.5 per cent of the total is related to the shared mobility services, especially in emerging countries such as Asia, where it represents almost 60 per cent of start-ups in the mobility sector, Latin America, at almost 47 per cent, and exceeding 50 per cent in Africa (Canales et al, 2017). In the unicorn ranking, mobility startups appeared among the most financed: Uber, with US$72 billion, is in 2nd place in this ranking, closely followed by Didi Chuxing Technology Co, with US$56 billion, a sharing mobility operator in China, Lyft, is in 14th place, with US$11.5 billion, and Grab Taxi is in 15th, with US$11 billion. From this decisive point, the offer of sharing mobility started to expand. The communitarian or ecological motives were incorporated or hybridized with utilitarian-economic motivations. This new wave of sharing mobility was led by the new ridesourcing and e-hail platforms, such as Uber and Lyft. They started to develop within a sort of grey area between the licensed transport services and those carried out in an informal way. In some cases such as in California, in 2013, they were officially recognized and legally framed as a transportation network company (TNC); in other cases they were banned and considered illegal by national judges. The public attention of investors and policy-makers has grown rapidly, driven by analysis produced mainly by the consulting sector (Deloitte, McKinsey & Company, Research and Markets, Roland Berger, and so on) or the financial sector (Goldman Sachs, ARK Invest, Merrill Lynch, Bank of America, and so on), that support the ‘progressive fate’ of this promising market. According to these

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estimates, for example from Merrill Lynch and the Bank of America (2018), vehicles used in mobility services (car rental/sharing, ridehailing and carpooling) is expected to grow to 130 million vehicles in 2030, representing 8 per cent of the global vehicles parc (the total number of vehicles on the road). China is currently lagging behind in global revenue for Mobility Services (US$67.0 billion compared to US$117.6 billion in the US and US$102.8 billion in Europe, of which US$22.0 billion is from the UK alone), but has the highest forecasts of growth in sector revenue by 2022 (approximately 13.8%), compared to the US (+5.7%) and Europe (+8.1%). Despite the growth and expectations, not all sharing mobility operators have achieved the expected market penetration. For example, in Switzerland, where car sharing was born and has the longest tradition, less than 3 per cent of the licensed population are car-sharing members, and the average occupancy rate for cars remains at 1.56 persons (Swiss Federal Statistical Office, 2017). In Italy, where the service developed later than the rest of Europe, no more than 2 per cent of Italians with a licence car share (ONSM, 2017). In the municipality of Milan, where there are five active operators (car2go, DriveNow, GuidaMi, Share’n’Go and Enjoy), only 0.25 per cent of driving annually in the city is done via car sharing. Research in Italy (Quattroruote, 2017) confirms this: the five principal service providers had losses at €27 million, €4,700 for each vehicle shared. Even the American car-sharing market, now among the most profitable, has faced many difficulties. Between 1997 and 2009, from the 34 car-sharing programmes available, only 15 remained operative. The over-financialized ridesharing system, despite reasonable market performance in terms of user penetration, especially in the US and Asia, is not always financially successful. For example, Sidecar, a competitor to Uber and Lyft, shut down in December 2016 after it attracted ‘only’ US$45 million in funding in 2016 compared to Uber, with US$12.5 billion, and Lyft, with US$1.8 billion, giving it little chance of development in a competitive and concentrated market. In 2017, Uber generated US$7.5 billion in net revenue worldwide. However, it reported a loss of US$8.5 billion for 2019. Despite the great expectations and predictions of the big investors, sharing mobility has to face a limited customer base and maintain high management costs; these services consequently generally operate at a constant loss. It is easy to understand why competitors such as car2go and DriveNow merged in 2019 to form the global mobility provider ShareNow, in order to optimize their efforts in a market that is still not mature, while market competition and the failure rates of many operators continue to grow.

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But the story of the rise of companies such as Uber and Lyft is also a story of labour exploitation, with the term ‘uberization’ (Scholz and Schneider, 2017) becoming synonymous with the evasion of labour rules. Behind the false myth of encouraging micro-entrepreneurship through a new flexible worker engagement model, e-hail drivers are not entirely free to accept the rides they want, and they only know the destination after accepting the ride. Furthermore, the e-hail driver is implicitly required to be ‘always on’, always connected, because this can be a prerequisite for accessing work. In addition, through the app system the e-e-hail driver is continuously monitored or requested to perform through a system of push notifications that, even if lacking an explicit authoritative language, direct and organize content and performance modalities; finally, the e-hail driver’s performance is subject to the judgement of those who use the service, legitimizing among these workers a performance model based on overworking and on user-driven servilism, as those who do not guarantee performance below a certain threshold could be banned from the app. These services do not guarantee positive outputs for their customers. A study by the non-profit organization AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety in the US calculated that an American user of Uber and Lyft travelling about 10,841 miles per year would spend about US$20,118 (€17,382) per year, more than twice the total cost of owning a vehicle. Uber’s surge-pricing system disadvantages ‘the market failure’ areas where demand is less concentrated, somehow limiting the affordability of the service for people who cannot bear this additional cost. In the same way, some car-sharing operators demand extra fees if leaving the car in a more peripheral area in order to concentrate available vehicles in the city centre. It is evident that in a market in search of profitability the main target is high-spending consumers with sufficient financial resources and ‘intensive’ mobility needs such as city users and flexible workers. Accessibility of service is not only an economic issue but is also a question of digital literacy and physical skills. Despite the openness to participation, the design of the service includes a specific target of users with the sufficient availability of resources such as time, money and skills, constituting a specific ‘digital participation divide’ (Andreotti et al, 2017). Moreover, the providers of sharing mobility services collect an enormous amount of data on drivers, consumer information and consumer behaviours, which are mostly used to improve the service. However, there are no guarantees of data being improperly used or leaked because of inadequate security strategies (Calo and Rosenblat, 2017).

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In order to face the risks and limitations of a similar expansion of platform-sharing mobility, a series of alternative experiences, based on cooperative governance and mostly rooted in the local environment, have started to appear. In contrast with this strongly globalized, financialized and extractive urban mobility model, alternative experiences have developed in different countries and deserve attention precisely because of their ability to rethink governance models and value creation and distribution. Take the case of LeCab (ex VTC Cab), a ride-hailing platform born in 2015 in Paris, initially directly co-financed by 30 drivers. Now the platform has more than 300 workers, retains a 7 per cent commission and imposes a limit of €8 as a minimum rate per single run. The ownership of the platform is attributed to a non-profit organization, the association of French private drivers, Association des VTC de France. Modo is an interesting case from Canada. Founded in 1997, it was set up in Vancouver with 16 initial members and 2 cars. The project originated from a degree thesis, and today (2020) has more than 800 vehicles and about 20,000 users active in Nanaimo, Vancouver, Greater Victoria. The Modo app allows you to find vehicles (owned by the cooperative) nearby and to rent them with fixed rates on an hourly basis, differentiated by the type of user. Member-owners are shareholding members of the cooperative, which means they get a vote as well as the best rates for car sharing. The service is open to both members and external users. Members pay a registered capital of CA$500, and get reduced rates on the services offered by the cooperative; 61 per cent of users are also members of the cooperative. Over time, the business model has evolved progressively, integrating additional services such as ridesharing. Modo is a cooperative of consumers and social enterprise; the board of directors is composed of volunteers and elected within the membership base. The paid-up share capital is fully repayable, and precise clauses within the memorandum of the cooperative ensure the organizational model and the pursuit of its social mission. Another interesting case is Ridygo, a cooperative ridesharing platform founded in France in 2015 with 5,000 active users. The interesting aspect of this cooperative experience is that part of the revenue is donated to social projects that fight unemployment. It also operates on a market niche composed of workers who would be forced to refuse jobs because they couldn’t get to the workplace due to the lack of public transport. The legal form adopted is that of the SCOP, a cooperative and participatory company, a hybrid form that, according to new French legislation, includes both production

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cooperative companies and companies of collective interest (SCIC). The membership base is currently very restricted and limited to working members (software developers), but it is the cooperative’s goal to open up to user-members. Ridygo uses ‘virtual credits’ worth 10  cents, and each credit corresponds to 1  km travelled. Ridygo retains a 20  per cent commission on transactions, 50  per cent of which is used for bank transactions and to support projects to combat unemployment. Partago is a Flemish electric car-sharing cooperative and it was involved in creating a European platform cooperative called The Mobility Factory (TMF). Each person can invest a maximum of €5,000, and all users of Partago have a vote, regardless of their financial contribution, on the profit allocation, 5 per cent of which is intended for projects to promote sustainable mobility. Since 2017, Partago has been part of the network for local electric mobility cooperatives, which has three objectives: renewable energy use, networking with mobility cooperatives (Som Mobilitat in Catalunya, with renewable energy cooperative providers such as Enercoop, SomEnergy and Copernico), and developing data/information sharing among network providers and collaborating in the platform development. However, the most innovative example in terms of a business model and financial tool can be found in Austin, Texas, called Arcade City. The initiative started with the Facebook group ‘Arcade City Austin – Request a ride’ founded by Christopher David. Its business model is a cryptocurrency based on the Ethereum technology (ARCD tokens). This funding system, called ICO (initial coin offering), allows a business to raise a large amount of capital without having to go through the rigorous and regulated process of traditional venture capital. In simple terms, the start-up releases tokens (ARCD) on the Ethereum blockchain, with tokens the primary means by which to purchase services in the Arcade City ecosystem. A total of 100 million tokens were created, and 84 per cent was publicly available during a 28-day campaign starting on 1 November 2016. Now Arcade City is currently active in the city of Austin and in the Philippines, and it is expanding in another 10 countries with a customer base of about 70,000 active users. The activation of the new markets is entrusted to the so-called ‘guild leaders’, drivers encouraged by the receipt of a substantial portion of the platform’s own cryptocurrency (ARCD). Table 2.1 provides an overview of sharing mobility organizational forms comparing their governance, funding, business model, market type, scale, infrastructure and data, users and economic value strategy.

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Table 2.1: Comparing sharing mobility solutions Platform carpooling/or person to person car sharing (BlaBlaCar, Auting)

Governance

Distributed (informal)

Centralized

Centralized

Centralized

Funding

Self-funded

Stock market exchange Shareholders Banks

Venture capital Venture capital

Business model Absent

Subscription + pay per use

% on pay per ride

Subscription + % on pay per ride

Cooperatives’ membership

Cooperatives’ membership + private and public fees + volunteering

Market type

No market

Oligopoly

Competitive

Competitive

Market encapsulation, multistakeholder arrangements

Competitive

Scale

Local

Scale out

Scale out

Scale out

Local

Scale deep

Digital infrastructure

Absent

Closed code

Closed code

Closed code

Closed or open code

Open code

Data

Absent

As a commodity

As an asset

As an asset

As a commons

As a commons

Users

Community members

Clients

As prosumers

As prosumers

As cooperative members

As citizens

Extractive

Extractive

Redistributing value between the company and the carpoolers

Redistributing value for cooperative members and for the community

Redistribution value for cooperative members

Economic value Absent strategy

Co-op vehicle sharing (Modo, Partago)

Co-op ridesharing (LeCab, Arcade City)

Distributed

Distributed

Cooperative members’ investments

Cooperative members’ investments + cryptocurrency

Re-embedding the economy within digitalized foundational sectors

Platform Platform vehicle sharing e-hailing (Uber, Lyft) (car2go)

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Traditional sharing mobility (informal carpooling, experimental bike sharing, etc)

The Foundational Economy and Citizenship

Welfare services: toward the platform model, with some unique characteristics The emergence of platforms, as we have seen, initially involved the tourism and transport sectors, but more recently it has begun to spread into other sectors. Just as McDonald’s became the symbol of globalization (Ritzer, 1993), Uber fulfilled the same role for ‘platformization’, with the company’s operating logic being adopted in highly disparate sectors in a quest to create ‘the Uber of…’ a given sector. Will this race toward ‘uberization’ also affect welfare services? Of those welfare services currently present in the market, the experience closest to a ‘pure’ platform model is Care.com, a private assistance and personal care service platform that brings together people seeking caregivers and those offering care services in four areas – childhood, friends and family networks, pets and home – some of which relate to welfare services. The platform was established in October 2006 in Waltham, Massachusetts, USA, thanks to an initial investment of US$5 million, followed by a further investment of US$10 million in 2008, another US$20 million in 2010, and a fourth injection of US$50 million in 2012. Entry into the international market came with the platform’s UK opening in 2012. It was listed on the stock market in January 2014, and in June 2016, Google Capital became the platform’s largest shareholder, with an investment of US$46.35 million. Care.com has been the world’s largest care platform since 2012: in 2018 it dealt with 17.7 million families worldwide and 13.1 million caregivers in 20 countries. It offers a range of services for families and businesses, including a service to help families manage their financial obligations relating to working from home and to assist work providers. It also includes an area dedicated to the Care.com community, a network for sharing advice and experiences. The basic subscription to the platform is free and enables the user to view and send offers of work, and to receive newsletters with suggestions and advice on assistance-related issues. ‘Premium’ members pay a monthly or yearly subscription fee, which allows them access to additional functions such as viewing contact details, contacting an unlimited number of caregivers, purchasing a CV veracity check and accessing an individual professional’s references. A service provider’s profile contains a range of information, including a reputation rating system, price range, geolocation, personal details, areas and years of experience, type of services offered, user reviews and information

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verified by the platform (telephone number, email, social media profiles, and so on). Care.com displays traits of the platform model as it is implemented in other sectors: a company financed through venture capital, that tends toward convergence with the Big Five platform services. It is therefore interesting as a platform that considers welfare equal to every other service, and that was not implemented by chance, in a privatistic regulatory system such as the US. If we exclude Care.com, analysis of other welfare platforms in contrast reveals unique sectorial features leading to the creation of at least partly ad hoc organizational models for the sector. One typical case is the Casserole Club. This is a free, community-based foodsharing project, enabled by a collaborative platform that helps people to share excess food with others living nearby who are struggling to cook for themselves. Casserole Club was established in 2011 in Barnet, UK, based on an idea by FutureGov, which supports organizations with the digital transformation process. Casserole Clubs are now widespread in the UK and Australia, and more than 7,000 people have subscribed to contribute to the food-sharing service. The project arose from the awareness that one of the major obstacles to volunteering is lack of time, and so the platform seeks to make available a service that combines the fragments of people’s time with activities they already do every day, such as cooking a meal, thus helping volunteering fit more easily into modern lifestyles. One of its main benefits is a reduced demand for traditional ‘meals on wheels’ services, which, in England, cost local councils £4.90 per meal on average. Other benefits linked to home food deliveries concern the cooks’ potential ability to recognize and address potential dangers to an elderly person’s health, and preventing and curing problems of social isolation, mental health issues and malnutrition. Another interesting case is that of Sanitaire-social.com, which has been active for more than 15  years as a ‘showcase’ for healthcare and social services for French citizens, although it only manages the flow of information and not the provision of services. More than 42,000  organizations are present on the platform across the whole of France, including social and healthcare bodies, hospitals, retirement homes, centres for people with disabilities and home care services, which can be browsed using a search engine. This is not an advanced tool from a technological or organizational viewpoint, but with appropriate upgrades it could move toward becoming a public platform.

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These welfare platforms, in their variety, display obvious unique characteristics compared with the platform model as it is traditionally understood and prevalent in other sectors (see Table 2.2 later). First, in the platform model, governance coincides with the platform itself, from the moment the platform has an autonomous legal existence. Conversely, welfare platforms form part of organizations and even more often, wider networks, with clear repercussions on organization and management: they can be organized and managed by a public administration, by a third sector organization or even by a network of associations. From this viewpoint, of particular interest are those processes activated directly by public administrations using digital infrastructure implementation as a lever for change management as it affects accredited services. It is interesting to note here an unexpected role for public bodies; when faced with a reduction in available finance, rather than falling back on strategies of pure retrenchment (less generous social payments due to spending cuts) or resilience (the welfare system’s ability to resist attempts at cost-cutting), instead they adopt recalibration strategies (the ability of welfare systems to move toward changing and reforming social protection assets), not only in terms of orienting themselves toward new social risks, but also in terms of new strategies and relationship styles (Taylor-Gooby, 2004). With regard to geographic distribution, the platform model is based on economies of scale (scaling wide): both ‘scale out’ (replication and dissemination, increasing the number of people or communities impacted) and ‘scale up’ (changing institutions at the level of policy, rules and laws) (Westley et  al, 2014). The meeting of supply and demand is more effective the more richly both sides of the market are represented, with at least one side operating at an international level. This dynamic generates ‘winner-takes-all’ mechanisms that lead to the creation of monopolies (Kenney and Zysman, 2016). Conversely, in welfare contexts, supply and demand are rooted at local level and strategies aimed at ‘scale deep’ (changing relationships, cultural values and beliefs, ‘hearts and minds’) (Moore et al, 2015) are more effective, based on the local-level adaptability of mechanisms that are proven to be effective. The need to rapidly obtain a high number of users leads platforms to make significant investments in marketing, supported by risk capital, and once up and running, they sustain themselves by charging a percentage on transactions and selling data relating to activity on the platform (Andersson Schwarz, 2017). In welfare contexts, the lower volumes mean that charging a percentage on transactions is not

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profitable, and a focus on data protection has discouraged business models based on selling data. As a result, welfare platforms are more widely and more consistently based on philanthropic investment and forms of subscription, with the value of data regarded as a communal asset. From the user’s standpoint, access is open and their profile is visible to both operators and users. In welfare systems, the operator accreditation system and data privacy protection most often lead to relatively closed, anonymous models, although it is possible to detect some movement toward increasing openness, especially when services do not involve vulnerable users and operate according to market principles. Platforms divide up complex tasks, segmenting them into microtasks (Casilli, 2019). On welfare platforms this process is less evident, although we may note a division of labour between simpler tasks that can be assigned to volunteers (according to their own preferences), or performed by users themselves or their families, and more complex tasks that are allocated preferentially to professional operators, coordinated through the platform. The meeting of supply and demand on platforms is delegated to users, with the negotiation between the parties mediated by an algorithm, often in a non-transparent way (Pais and Origgi, 2018). In the welfare context, a form of mediation is performed by the organizations conveying the service, including mechanisms for the accreditation of suppliers. The main activity of platforms is matching; additional services vary according to the main function (insurance and pre-screening are among the most common), but are generally quite limited. However, one characteristic peculiar to welfare platforms is the investment in training users, operators in particular, in ways of working (culture of use, consumer behaviour, and so on). This coaching process may be considered necessary to the success of organizational transformation processes, while it is less necessary for marketplace platforms, where users self-select according to their own skills and requirements. Additionally, platforms facilitate digital communities, which generally engender a limited sense of belonging and in which building or reinforcing social capital is a byproduct of actions performed primarily for instrumental motives (O’Mahony and Lakhani, 2011). These are often considered brand communities, particularly when users perceive the services concerned to be part of an innovative lifestyle. Welfare platforms, at least in the initial stage of their life cycle, display a centrality in the community of operator practices, surely linked to the need for organizational transformation mentioned above. The user

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community is a hybrid of online and offline interactions, in which the digital enables relationships rooted in the local area. Consequently, more care is devoted to the intentional production of social capital. Identifying these unique characteristics of welfare platforms raises the question of whether cooperative platforms are able to respond to the needs discussed here. For the moment, the overview of current practices suggests the answer is no. The number of examples of the digitalization of welfare cooperatives is small. One is Centro Servizi Welfare, an e-commerce platform for local welfare services in the Verona area of Italy. Centro Servizi Welfare was established as a social enterprise and limited company in November 2018, the fruit of a spinoff from a branch of the Consorzio Sol.Co Verona, a local Veronese consortium of social cooperatives combining 26 private social entities. Centro Servizi Welfare sells cooperatives’ products and services directly to the public and to businesses. The cooperatives contribute to the governance of the platform, deciding local policies and pricing. Services offered on the platform are diverse and include multiple offerings that tend to lengthen the welfare supply chain. To offer services on the platform, cooperatives sign an agreement with Centro Servizi Welfare specifying the services offered, territories covered and availability. Common pricing, service standards and the management model are then defined. From the demand side, a personal profile must be created before services can be purchased. Services can be pre-booked and paid for by credit card or bank transfer directly on the platform, and a telephone support service is available if required. When a service request is received, before calling on the cooperative’s services, Centro Servizi Welfare proceeds to analyse the need, plan a personalized solution, conclude an agreement, monitor user satisfaction and manage complaints. An example of a cooperative start-up, still in the prototype phase, is Equal Care Co-op (also known as eccoo), being promoted in the Upper Calder Valley in the UK. The cooperative has been registered but is not yet operational. The vision that inspires this cooperative is to create a fair, relationship-centred service with opportunities for people receiving support to offer their skills, experience and support to others, either on a paid or voluntary basis, with the help of digital technologies. People access care and support in one of two ways: they pay for it themselves through their own funds or a personal budget, or they get referred to a commissioned service by their social worker or health provider. To launch the service, they received several small grants from established funding bodies (Nesta, Paul Hamlyn Foundation and The Reach Foundation), and in December 2018 they

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started a crowdfunding campaign that raised £22,000 in a month. They are advised and supported by Co-operatives UK through the Unfound Project and the Bright Ideas Fund. One of the platform’s aims is to take an innovative approach to care, transforming the balance of power that exists between welfare services, care providers, families and the people receiving support, rebalancing the power relationship between the giver and receiver of help. A key element in reaching this objective is the collaborative platform, which mediates the creation of trust relationships and eliminates much of the decision-making burden on social operators regarding shifts, assignments and planning care work, by enabling co-performance of this work together with the direct recipients of social care. Table 2.2 provides a comparative overview of different caring platforms. In summary, the propagation of ‘greenfield’ platforms is rather limited; it is more often a question of ‘brownfield’ platforms linked to the digitalization of existing services or to procedural innovations. Analysis also leads us to conclude that, in contrast to managerial rhetoric, the platform is not neutral with respect to the goods or services it is brokering. Last, this characteristic of platforms has not yet taken the form of platform cooperativism. And this is the point that raises the most questions compared with the transport sector.

Concluding remarks To conclude this review of the characteristics of digital platforms in two central sectors for the foundational economy – mobility and welfare – it is interesting to introduce a comparative perspective (see Table 2.3). We can see how platform capitalism is based on ‘network effects’, so platforms are valuable only if many people use them and they can collect data and access information from a huge collectivity. Therefore, scalability (scaling up and scaling out) is the only possible strategy in order to make the investment economically sustainable and profitable. However, such expansion neglects social sustainability, in terms of accessibility, focusing on the richest part of their potential customer base. In this sense, the platformization of the economy accentuates and make more visible the limits of the neoliberal paradigm. Platform cooperativism, sometimes nostalgically, resumes the idea of the cooperative model, trying to adapt it to the new challenges of digital technology, implementing: a participatory governance model through the creation of a distributed system of decision-making based on a multistakeholder approach; working in federation with other

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Table 2.2: Comparing caring platforms’ cases Casserole Club, traditional service, digitalized

Sanitaire-social.com, traditional service, Centro Servizi Welfare, digitalized platform cooperative

Equal Care Co-op, platform cooperative

Governance

Centralized

Centralized

Centralized

Distributed

Distributed

Funding

Venture capital (Google capital)

Public funding

Public funding

Cooperative members’ investment

Public funding + crowdfunding

Business model

Freemium

Volunteering

Irrelevant

Cooperatives’ membership

Cooperatives’ membership + private and public fees + volunteering

Market type

Oligopoly

Public monopoly

Public monopoly

Market encapsulation, multistakeholder arrangements

Market encapsulation, multistakeholder arrangements

Scale

Scale out

Local + scale out

National

Local

Scale deep

Digital infrastructure

Closed code

Closed code

Closed code

(Not declared)

Open code

Data

As a commodity

As an asset

As an asset

(Not declared)

As a commons

Users

As users

As citizens

As citizens

As cooperative members + citizens

As cooperative members

Economic value strategy

Extractive

Irrelevant

Irrelevant

Redistributing value for the cooperatives’ members

Redistribution

The Foundational Economy and Citizenship

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Care.com platform capitalism

Re-embedding the economy within digitalized foundational sectors Table 2.3: Comparing traditional vs platform services Traditional service

Platform capitalism

Platform cooperativism

Governance

Centralized

Centralized

Distributed

Funding

Public funding

Venture capital

Impact investing, patient capital, crowdfunding

Business model Service fees (partial)

Advertising, freemium, transaction fees

Cooperative membership + fees

Market type

Public monopoly/ oligopoly based on public authorization or accreditation

Monopoly/ oligopoly

Market encapsulation, multistakeholders arrangements

Scale

Local

Scale up/scale out

Scale deep

Digital infrastructure

Procedural tool: closed code

Mediation tool: closed code

Mediation tool: open code

Data

As an asset

As a commodity

As a commons

Users

As citizens

As prosumers

As cooperative members

Economic value strategy

Irrelevant

Extracting value for the investors

Redistributing value for the community

stakeholders; using an open architecture in terms of code and data openness; and the choice of redistributing to the community part of the value generated through the development of collateral social projects. Moreover, these initiatives are characterized not only by localism, but also by their desire to scale differently from the previous model (scale deep), through partnerships and networks with other operators and through alternative financial tools (impact investing and patient capital). The innovativeness of these experiences has not escaped the attention of big players of the digital economy such as Uber and Airbnb, who have even recently declared (Kokalitcheva, 2018) that they are considering the idea of involving their users in company ownership, confirming the habit capitalist actors have to ‘cannibalize’ any antagonistic movement. In both sectors, important differences exist between platforms that begin as greenfield start-ups and brownfield platforms. The former are more prevalent in transport, the latter in the welfare sector, due in part to greater barriers to entry for people lacking sector-specific skills and experience. An additional factor here is the different maturity level in digital innovation in each of the two sectors: while the transport sector was

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a forerunner in trialling digital platforms, the welfare sector has only recently begun the process, with all the inherent consequences in terms of the advantages and disadvantages for early adopters compared with second movers. Another difference concerns usage: the potential vulnerability of welfare users demands particular care in prefiguring an active consumer, especially in terms of the consumer-producer profile. At the same time, the skills required in transport are widespread throughout the population, whereas welfare services also require expert technical and professional skills. If these factors enable us to interpret the differences between the ‘platformization’ processes in the two sectors, they do not explain the central issue in this discussion: the different patterns of platform cooperativism. As we have seen, while the concept is giving rise to numerous experiments in the transport sector, it remains weak in the welfare domain. The rarity of platform cooperatives in the welfare sector cannot definitely be attributed to the characteristics of the services and users involved, considering the vitality of the cooperative movement itself in the welfare context. There are two possible explanations. One, more contingent, is linked to the sector’s delay in digitalization, as previously described. The second concerns a structural feature of platform cooperativism, which arose in response to the distortions in the platforms’ market mechanisms. In a sector such as welfare, where platforms strongly bound to extractive principles are currently few, the need to resort to cooperative principles as a mechanism to correct market distortions has yet to emerge. This hypothesis highlights an intrinsic limitation of platform cooperativism, which is presented as a ‘counter-movement’, and has therefore principally attracted activists and critical consumers likely to make an investment or accept less favourable service conditions in a bid to boycott the market platforms. To proceed to large-scale adoption, the service must be carefully designed in accordance with the principles highlighted by Scholz, without this entailing acts of ‘heroism’ by consumers (Manzini, 2015). This challenge applies particularly to the foundational economy because it deals in both cases with the ‘infrastructure of everyday life’, which defines people’s quality of life. Their close correlation with collective wellbeing requires consideration of what role public stakeholders should play in supporting and implementing the platform model in the services discussed. In the cases analysed, the public stakeholder at times limited itself to the role of spectator, or was (as in the case of Uber) somewhat hesitant in proposing regulation. In reality, the

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public role is essential to preserving the foundational value of the two sectors studied. An essential area of intervention concerns the use of the data collected by the platforms, that must be opened and used in accordance with public values and guidelines that promote the common good; in this sense, the proposal of a social licence that focuses on the use of data by private parties can limit data exploitation, driving it towards specific public values, and can even revoke the possibility of extracting value from these resources when these values are threatened. Also tax innovation is needed in order to redistribute the value to provide economic support to developed alternative ‘eco-systems’, to create more sustainable cooperative experiences or other alternative forms of governance. It could also guarantee a ‘plurality’ of solutions in the platform economy in order to avoid the building of new oligopolies oriented to capture value, and not to generate it, through the powerful leverage of the financial systems. References Andersson Schwarz, J. (2017) ‘Platform logic: An interdisciplinary approach to the platform-based economy’, Policy & Internet, 9(4): 374–94. Andreotti, A., Anselmi, G., Eichhorn, T., Hoffmann, C.P. and Micheli, M. (2017) Participation in the Sharing Economy, available at www.alexandria.unisg.ch/250785/1/Participation%20Working%20 Paper.pdf Arcidiacono, D. and Duggan, M. (2019) Sharing Mobilities: Questioning Our Right to the City in the Collaborative Economy, London: Routledge. Boltanski, L. and Thévenot, L. (2006) On Justification: Economies of Worth, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Boudreau, K.J. and Hagiu, A. (2009) ‘Platform Rules: Multi-Sided Platforms as Regulators’, in A. Gawer (ed) Platforms, Markets and Innovation, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, 163–91. Bowman, A., Ertürk, I., Froud, J., Johal, S., et al (2014) The End of the Experiment? From Competition to the Foundational Economy, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Calo, R. and Rosenblat, A. (2017) ‘The taking economy: Uber, information, and power’, Columbia Law Review, 117(6): 1623–90. Canales, D., Bouton, S., Trimble, E., Thayne, J., et al (2017) Connected Urban Growth: Public–Private Collaborations for Transforming Urban Mobility, Coalition for Urban Transitions, Cities Working Papers, London and Washington, DC, available at http://newclimateeconomy. net/content/cities-working-papers

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Casilli, A. (2019) En attendant les robots: Enquête sur le travail du clic, Paris: Editions du Seuil. Chase, R. (2015) ‘Everything that can become a platform, will become a platform’, Medium, 28 October, available at https://medium.com/ the-wtf-economy/everything-that-can-become-a-platform-willbecome-a-platform-216bcfb89855 Floridi, L. (ed) (2014) The Onlife Manifesto, London: Springer. Foundational Economy Collective (2018) Foundational Economy: The Infrastructure of Everyday Life, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Garcia-Parpet, M.F. (2007) ‘The Social Construction of a Perfect Market: The Strawberry Auction at Fontaines-en-Sologne’, in D. MacKenzie, F. Muniesa and L. Siu (eds) Do Economists Make Markets? On the Performativity of Economics, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 20–53. Kenney, M. and Zysman, J. (2016) ‘The rise of the platform economy’, Science and Technology, 32(3): 61–9. Kokalitcheva, K. (2018) ‘Airbnb asks SEC to let it give hosts equity’, Axios, 21 September, available at www.axios.com/airbnb-asks-sec-tolet-it-give-hosts-equity-a7d99495-0782-4bce-92bb-4c692ef1b621. html Manzini, E. (2015) Design, When Everybody Designs: An Introduction to Design for Social Innovation, Boston, MA: The MIT Press. Marx, K. (1887) Capital, Volume  1, Hamburg: Verlag von Otto Meisner. Merr ill Lynch and Bank of Amer ica (2018) ‘Mobility as a service’, available at www.maas-market.com/sites/default/files/ MARTYN%20BRIGGS_0.pdf MIT (2017) Platform Strategy Summit Report, Boston, MA: MIT-Digital. Moore, M.L., Riddel, D.J. and Vocisano, D. (2015) ‘Scaling out, scaling up, scaling deep strategies of non-profits in advancing systemic social innovation’, The Journal of Corporate Citizenship, 58(2): 67–84. Morozov, E. (2011) The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom, London: Public Affairs. O’Mahony, S. and Lakhani, K. (2011) ‘Organizations in the Shadow of Communities’, in C. Marquis, M. Lounsbury and R. Greenwood (eds) Communities and Organizations (Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Vol 33), Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing, 3–36. ONSM (Osservatorio Nationale Sharing Mobility) (2017) I Rapporto Osservatorio Nazionale Sharing Mobility, available at http:// osservatoriosharingmobility.it/

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Pais, I. and Provasi, G. (2015) ‘Sharing economy: A step towards “reembedding” the economy?’, Stato e Mercato, 105(3): 347–77. Pais, I. and Origgi, G. (2018) ‘Digital reputation in the mutual admiration society’, Studi di Sociologia, 2(LVI): 175–94. Quattroruote (2017) ‘Car sharing, business in profondo rosso’, Quattroroute, 26  September, available at www.quattroruote.it/ news/mobilita_alternativa/2017/09/25/car_sharing_business_in_ profondo_rosso.html Ritzer, G. (1993) McDonaldization of Society, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Robbins, S.P. and Coulter, M. (2009) Management (10th edn), Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Scholz, T. (2014) ‘Platform cooperativism vs the sharing economy’, available at https://medium.com/@trebors/platform-cooperativismvs-the-sharing-economy-2ea737f1b5ad Scholz, T. (2016a) Uberworked and Underpaid: How Workers Are Disrupting the Digital Economy, London: Polity Press. Scholz, T. (2016b) Platform Cooperativism: Challenging the Corporate Sharing Economy, New York: Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. Scholz, T. and Schneider, N. (eds) (2017) Ours to Hack and to Own: The Rise of Platform Cooperativism, a New Vision for the Future of Work and a Fairer Internet, New York: OR Books. Srnicek, N. (2017) Platform Capitalism, Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons Stark, D. (1996) Heterarchy: Asset Ambiguity, Organisational Innovation and the Post-Socialist Firm, CAHRS Working Papers, No 21, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Center for Advanced Human Resource Studies. Stark, D. and Watkins, E.A. (2018) ‘The Möbius organisational form: Make, buy, cooperate, or co-opt?’, Sociologica, 12(1): 65–80. Swiss Federal Statistical Office (2017) Population’s Transport Behaviour 2015, Key Results of the Mobility and Transport Microcensus, Neuchâtel: Federal Statistical Office. Taylor-Gooby, P. (2004) New Risks, New Welfare: The Transformation of the European Welfare State, New York: Oxford University Press. Thompson, E.P. (1971) ‘The moral economy of the English crowd in the eighteenth century’, Past & Present, 50: 76–136. van Dijck, J. (2013) The Culture of Connectivity, New York: Oxford University Press. van Dijck J., Poell, T. and de Waal, M. (2018) The Platform Society, New York: Oxford University Press.

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Westley, F.R., Antadze, N., Riddell, D., Robinson, K. and Geobey, S. (2014) ‘Five configurations for scaling up social innovation: Case examples of nonprofit organizations from Canada’, The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 50(3): 234–60.

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3

Reframing public ownership in the foundational economy: (Re)discovering a variety of forms Leonhard Plank

The return of the state and public ownership The collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008 and the ensuing global financial and economic crises has prompted a wave of nationalization and more generally state interventions of an unprecedented degree. While some have argued that this comeback of the state will be of a temporary nature, recent developments in a variety of countries, form liberal market economies (for example, the UK) to organized capitalism (read Germany) suggest a different path. Most surprisingly, at least for the orthodox (German) economists, is the announcement of a new German industrial policy, including active state intervention in the stock market to avoid unfriendly (read Chinese) takeovers as well as promoting European and national champions in close collaboration with France (Zettelmeyer, 2019). Equally, the set of European fiscal rules which originated in Berlin that are co-shaping the austerity states and hence, restricting efficient public investment in the foundational economy in Europe, are called into question by the ones promoting these rules a decade ago (Financial Times, 2019). Beyond the already well-known cases of remunicipalization in water and energy (Wollmann, 2016; Kishimoto and Petitjean, 2017), a new push for affordable housing is being articulated across Europe and will likely strengthen via a new European Citizen Initiative (Housing for All, 2019). The recent announcement of a local referendum on the expropriation of large housing companies such as Deutsche Wohnen in Berlin is reflective of the need to tackle rising housing prices and decreasing housing affordability. In short, it appears that the state is here to stay. However, the state has always been there, in particular in its key roles as regulator and financier. What most citizens experienced

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was a retreat of the third important role, namely, of direct provision by the public sector as a result of various forms of depublicization (ranging from outsourcing over public–private partnerships to fullblown privatization). This clearly differed from the previous period after the Second World War where large centralized state-owned enterprises (SOEs) had become important policy tools for steering the economy beyond fields of the foundational economy, including for R&D (research and development) and industrial policy (Millward, 2011). But extending the market logic into these new fields required an overhaul of the regulatory and financing regimes underpinning the previous era. In this way, the talk about ‘retreat’ or ‘hollowing out’ of the state is rather misleading as it required active state action and often new rules and institutions to open these areas for market-like rule. It is better understood as a phased process of roll-back of post-Second World War Keynesian institutions and the subsequent roll-out of neoliberal rule, including ‘purposeful construction and consolidation of neoliberalized state forms, modes of governance, and regulatory relations’ (Peck and Tickell, 2002: 384). Hence, it is important to note that the public sector continues to play an important, albeit subordinated, role in what some have termed ‘regulatory capitalism’ (Levi-Faur, 2005; Braithwaite, 2008). But this expansion of neoliberal rule occurred in uneven ways. The public sector has proven resilient in many key foundational sectors in Europe, in particular in water supply and sanitation (Getzner et al, 2018). Full divesture has also been resisted in other sectors such as electricity, gas and telecommunications, where the state continues to control key enterprises, both at the national and subnational level. Moreover, persistence of public ownership in foundational sectors can be observed in diverse national institutional contexts, ranging from Italy to Sweden to Germany (Florio, 2013a). However, the way in which these public enterprises function and operate has profoundly changed with the great liberalization experiment since the 1980s (Florio, 2013b) and the rise of the New Public Management doctrine (Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2011). In particular, they became more profit-oriented and commercial in outlook (Clifton and Diaz-Fuentes, 2018), which makes it hard to reconcile this orientation with their traditionally wider set of goals as reflected in a public mission agenda. In parallel to this increasing push to commercialize, the national players were driven to internationalize as the formerly protected national markets and monopolies were dismantled, particularly via the European single market project. In this way, they were developing from mainly inward-oriented

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providers of essential services and goods into outward-oriented transnational corporations (TNCs) themselves (Clifton et al, 2016). The emergence of this new set of mainly European multi-utility TNCs can be assessed through UNCTAD’s1 list of the biggest nonfinancial TNCs. While there was no multi-utility TNC among the top companies in the early 1990s, a decade later Suez, Vivendi, Eon, RWE & Co were among the top players in this list (UNCTAD, 2002). In their quest for new markets beyond the national borders, these globally operating multi-utilities often lost sight of their public mission (Florio, 2014). Against this background, this chapter focuses on public ownership as an instrument and lever that is dedicated to a common good agenda as reflected in foundational thinking (Foundational Economy Collective, 2018). This partly overlaps with recent calls of public economists for a new generation of research on ‘public mission’-oriented enterprises and public ownership as one of the elements of an alternative to failing neoliberalism (Florio, 2013a, 2014). However, it takes a different approach in that it follows an agenda that seeks to strengthen the role of citizens as active economic and political agents and aims at redistributing power and democratization (Rahman, 2017). Following Cumbers (2012), it will argue for a new framing of public ownership that also includes new (and old) forms of collective ownership beyond the central state. We will look at three cases that provide the potential for a more democratic and emancipatory form of foundational provisioning with a more active role for citizens. These are: Austrian limited-profit housing associations that operate as a ‘social licensed’ housing provider; remunicipalized French water companies with new governance mechanisms; and water cooperatives in Austria as a form of self-governed provisioning system in rural areas.

Rethinking public ownership beyond the central state Rethinking public ownership beyond the central state and the rediscovery of the actually existing variety of collective ownership requires us first of all to unthink. In particular, we must dismiss our current perspectives on the public sector that have been shaped in no small part by neoclassical (public) economics, particularly ‘public choice theory’ developed at the Virginia School of Political Economy. Based on this unlearning we can reconstruct a broader idea of public ownership that addresses some of the neoliberal framing of the welfare state as ‘paternalistic’. In contrast, and unlike the neoliberal ‘solution’ of restructuring the public sector according to market

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axioms and practices, the progressive and emancipatory answer must aim at creating more democratic and more localized forms of public ownership (Cumbers, 2012). Unthinking public ownership Given this mentioned resilience and the continuing existence of a variety of entities controlled by the public sector, it does come as a surprise that most current textbooks on public economics do not have a dedicated chapter that deals with public enterprises as an object worth being explored on its own (Florio, 2013a). What one usually finds instead is a text on privatization that is reflective of the general turn – or ‘group think’ – within the community of mainstream economists. A statement from one of the most active economists in the field of privatization underlines this: ‘It is (also) astounding to see a professional economist assert today that we cannot definitively conclude that private ownership is superior to public ownership in almost all circumstances’ (Megginson, 2006: 173). This ‘consensus’ is in no small part the result of a collective ideological crusade by the New Right during the second half of the 20th century, including the Austrian, Chicago and Virginia Schools of neoliberal thought (Backhouse, 2005). While prominent figures from the Chicago School, such as Milton Friedman, pointed to the limits of Keynesian demand management (supposed, among others, to ensure full employment), the works of Austrians such as Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises praised the virtues of individual free market choice that was conceived to be superior to state-led planning and directed collective action. The Virginia School is best known for theories on ‘public choice’ that provided another important challenge to the post-Second World War consensus on the Keynesian welfare state. In particular, the works of James Buchanan, Gordon Tullock and Mancur Olsen were influential in its ideological demolition (Sekera, 2018). They applied micro-based methodological individualism to the public sphere and analyses of public decision-making. In their conceptions, decisionmakers in the public sector, including civil servants and politicians, were conceived as rational self-interested utility maximizers seeking to optimize their preference function. Rather than optimizing a collectively determined social welfare function, individuals in the public sector maximized their political power and budget, thus resulting in an expansion of the public sector beyond what is justifiable on welfare grounds (Backhouse, 2005).

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This conception of the public sector, as articulated by public choice theories, paints a completely different picture when compared with the ideas underpinning the Keynesian welfare state. The latter was shaped by a bureaucratic ideal informed by works from Joseph Schumpeter and Max Weber, which saw bureaucracy not ‘as an obstacle to democracy but an inevitable complement to it’ (Schumpeter, 1976: 204). Here, the bureaucracy was characterized by its ‘dispassionate rationality, its expertise, its knowledge base, its competence, its independence, its industry, its integrity […], and above all, its inclination to perceive its work as a vocation and to labour primarily for the public good’ (Thompson, 2008: 356). This may be a lofty ideal and as such, it has been attacked upfront by the Austrians, as a quote from von Mises (1944: 44) underlines: ‘[…] nobody doubts that bureaucracy is thoroughly bad and that it should not exist in a perfect world.’ Public choice theorists linked the alleged irrationality of an ever-expanding public sector to the missing information flows in the public sector. Unlike the private sector, there were no market signals (read prices) that indicate the preference of the citizens (read consumers). Furthermore, the negative side effects of the pursuit of self-interest by civil servants are explained by their monopoly of decision-making power (Backhouse, 2005; Thompson, 2008). Against this conception, their remedies were to subject the public sector to market axioms and principles: more competition, more choice and more entrepreneurialism. In consequence, and over time, the public sector was reduced via a range of privatization methods. Where this was not possible, policy prescriptions aimed at introducing private sector logics into the public sector so as to remake and model the public sector along the free market ideas and ideals (Root, 2007; Sekera, 2018). This entailed the introduction of competition from within and outside of the public sector, the valorization and promotion of consumer sovereignty as an element of choice (for example, via voucher programmes for schools, nurseries or training), and the application of other private sector ideas, including benchmarking and other institutional reforms to make the public sector more responsive to the ‘consumer’ (formerly known as ‘citizen’) (Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2011). The result was a significant transformation of the public sector that blurred the boundaries between the public and the private sector as the state drew in more non-governmental actors in provisioning and as the public bureaucracy became fragmented, by creating corporatized entities and new agencies outside of the core state apparatuses (Clifton and Diaz-Fuentes, 2018). In particular, the latter were expected to

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insulate those entities from direct interventions of ill-intentioned politicians and allow them to be more responsive to their customers in new public service markets (Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2011). However, this managerialist and technocratic model has also been criticized for the same problems initially identified by the public choice theorists. In particular, the issues of rent-seeking and regulatory capture have been highlighted as outcomes of an accountability challenge (Rahman, 2017; Wedel, 2018). As a reaction to the injection of market forces into foundational service provision citizens have increasingly tried to resist and push back along the lines of a Polanyian counter-movement (Warner and Clifton, 2014). This is also echoed by remunicipalization cases in a number of foundational sectors that have been accelerating across the globe since the 2000s (Kishimoto and Petitjean, 2017). This new global propublic movement is often based on local alliances of a variety of actors, including ordinary citizens (Kishimoto and Petitjean, 2017). It faces a number of challenges, ranging from fiscal constraints to resistance from powerful private corporations as well as allegedly neutral multilateral organizations (McDonald and Swyngedouw, 2019). Against this background, recent ideas of how to rethink public ownership and service provision have been voiced by Rahman (2017), who draws on the legacy of the progressive era in the US from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Progressives sought to redress unaccountable power by democratic means – by introducing and operating checks and balances in the public and the private sector. This call for democratization also resonates with earlier critiques from the left on the ‘paternalistic’ Keynesian welfare state (see, for example, McLennan et al, 1984). Rethinking public ownership as collective democratic endeavour In contrast to the conventional state vs market debates and associated dichotomies, our approach to public ownership follows Karl Polanyi’s call against dogmatism, and argues for a plurality of institutional forms and mechanism in a ‘mixed economy’. In this way, more democratic and hybrid forms of public ownership that transcend the public vs private debate can be important ingredients in an alternative agenda to a ‘market society’ (Polanyi, 1979). This requires a different conception of the role of citizens – because, in the radical versions of ‘laissez-faire’, their role is reduced to ‘market citizenship’ or ‘citizen-consumer’ (Root, 2007). This is still a strong narrative as it speaks to ‘virtues of individual freedom, choice and

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consumer sovereignty: the freedom to purchase one’s council house, to choose between utility suppliers and, in the aftermath of successive privatizations, to participate in the equity market’ (Thompson, 2009: 60). It is, surprisingly, of little importance if the promised land of consumer citizenship materializes, or not. Furthermore, the more managerialist variants that are characterized by supposedly neutral and rational expertise have a very limited conception of citizens in democracy (Rahman, 2017). A recent proposal from Corneo (2018) serves as a good example. In his version of ‘shareholder socialism’ he highlights the importance of public ownership across the economy as a different lever that goes beyond classical redistributive policy. His ideas are refreshing, but his institutional design – the establishment of a sovereign wealth fund and a subsequently established federal shareholder – critically depend on the stock market where the public sector should intervene as active shareholder. In the long term large private corporations should be taken over by the federal shareholder and their boards and strategy should be streamlined against a wider set of goals. Even in this rather progressive proposal, there is only space for professional expertise, and no mention of ordinary citizens. In contrast, progressive and emancipatory answers that are aligned with the normative vision underpinning foundational thinking highlight the agency of citizens, both in the political as well as economic spheres, beyond ‘market choice’ and ‘public choice’ (Cumbers, 2012; Rahman, 2017). Democratization of the political as well as economic sphere are emancipatory remedies against unaccountable powers in the public as well as in the private sector. The reframing of public ownership also goes beyond the statecentric view, and in particular, the Morrisonian model of centralized state ownership that was realized in the 20th  century (Cumbers, 2012). Public ownership here involves a variety of collective forms that are beyond the central state and recognizes that many of these arrangements have existed for some time ‘under the radar’. These forms are embedded in and often critically depend on a regulatory framework that promotes – or obstructs – their success. Hence, a revival of these hybrid and more democratic form of public ownership needs to be conceived in a multiscalar regulatory frame within an enabling state.

(Re)discovering varied forms of publicness In the following section, we will look at three cases that provide the potential for a more democratic and emancipatory form of

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foundational provisioning with a more active role for citizens. These are: Austrian limited-profit housing associations that operate as ‘social licensed’ housing providers; remunicipalized French water companies with new governance mechanisms; and water cooperatives in Austria as a form of self-governed provisioning system in rural areas. Limited-profit housing providers in Austria: a hybrid model operating under social licence Vienna is often praised for its achievement of ‘housing the many’. This is most often thought of in terms of the Gemeindebauten – social housing complexes distributed all over the city that are owned and operated by the city of Vienna and make up around 25 per cent of the housing stock (Kadi, 2015). But housing provision in Austria has another peculiarity that sets it apart from other European countries. An important share of Austrians (around 2 million people) live in housing provided by housing associations that are subject to the Limited-Profit Housing Act (GBV, 2018). This segment is built on a mechanism that grants housing associations exemptions from corporate taxation in return for specific obligations; in particular, to provide a continuous stream of affordable housing that is often additionally supported by supply-side housing subsidies. Hence, it can be conceived as a hybrid model that combines limited-profit cooperatives and other legal forms with a social licence idea promoted by foundational thinking. As of 2017 there were 185 housing providers organized under an umbrella organization that is also responsible for supervision of its members. The latter include 98  entities organized as cooperatives and 87 organized as capital societies (GBV, 2018). The ownership of capital societies is characterized by an important share of state ownership (regions and municipalities) alongside other players such as trade unions and larger private enterprises, particularly banks and insurance companies (Gutheil, 2018). The origins of this segment of housing provision can be traced back to three developments starting in the second half of the 19th century (Bauer, 2006). Cooperative housing societies are undoubtedly among the oldest forms and ranged from more pragmatic cooperatives for civil servants of the Habsburg empire supported by dedicated funds (for example, Kaiser Franz Josef Jubiliäums Fonds) to more emancipatory forms of self-help (the most well-known is the Vienna settlers movement). The second important strand is constituted by company housing provided for workers of industrial and railroad companies that were also important beyond urban areas. Through their financial

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support, via company pension funds, they can also be seen as a precursor to the system of residential building subsidies as it came to be institutionalized by the federal state during the 20th century. The most recent aspect relates to ‘outsourced’ municipal housing during the Nazi regime. The diverse self-governed cooperative sector was seen as an obstacle to Nazi rule and hence, was systematically crushed or streamlined. In parallel, new capital societies were created that were owned by municipalities. Since the end of the Second World War, limited-profit housing associations have produced more than a million units and currently manage around 900,000 housing units. This stock represents around one-fifth of the total Austrian housing stock and around half of it is in the hands of cooperatives. On average rents are comparable to municipal housing, which are 20–30 per cent below the private rental market (Gutheil, 2018). Given the varied origins and changing history over the 20th century it is difficult to speak of one coherent ideological segment and field (Bauer, 2006). However, what unites these actors is that they are bound by the rules set out in the Limited-Profit Housing Act that was newly conceived and enacted in 1979 and has undergone several revisions since. The key provisions that set limited-profit housing providers apart from other commercially driven companies are related to ceilings on profits (a maximum 3.5–5% return on equity, depending on the level of average government bond yields), restrictions on equity sales (only at nominal value) and commitment to re-reinvest in housing stock, which creates a stable and closed system of capital circulation dedicated to affordable housing. In return for these societal obligations limitedprofit housing providers are exempted from corporate taxation. In addition, dedicated public funds, provided by the regional authorities, are available but are tied to standards that go beyond the affordability criteria as they also seek to raise environmental building standards. In both dimensions limited-profit housing providers perform better than the average private real estate companies. The limited-profit housing provider segment is an important element of the Austrian system of housing provision, which is highly efficient when compared with other European countries (Wieser et al, 2013). It uses comparatively little amounts of public funds to achieve a very good performance in terms of volumes supplied, diversity offered and affordability as well as stability of prices. Countries such as the UK and France spend twice as much and the Netherlands almost four times as much as Austria when considering the full set of state support, including tax benefits (Wieser and Mundt, 2014). In particular Austria

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spends little money on directly supporting users via housing benefits (0.1% of GDP) but focuses on creating enough supplies via directly supporting building owners (0.5% of GDP). Until recently, this approach has been on the decline across Europe, not least because of neoliberal thinking (pushed in no small part by EU regulations) that focuses on supporting individual users directly (Streimelweger, 2014). This is thought to be in line with ‘freedom of choice’ and the ‘residual’ approach (only those unable to afford housing supplied by the ‘free market’ will be supported). While on aggregate and by international comparison the performance is impressive, there are challenges that need to be addressed by the sector. One set of problems relates to internal governance issues – in particular, insufficient transparency and oversight (for example, occasional cases of nepotism). This has to be seen in the context of a general retreat of ideas of self-governance over time in the sector. Hence, in the everyday operations of most limited-profit housing associations the average user or member does not perform any important role. However, recent trends towards more participatory forms of housing provision offer chances to revive the ideals of self-governance. A local expression in Austria of this global phenomenon is known under the name of Baugruppen.2 While the term is blurry, it usually refers to collectives that seek to jointly develop their own housing projects which address concerns of affordability, ecological considerations and add value to the community. Limitedprofit housing associations are frequently getting involved as partners in these projects. But ‘conventional’ new housing projects are also increasingly integrating participatory elements – for example, by giving future residents a voice in the planning of common amenities or by other forms of community building workshops. In Vienna, this is also actively encouraged by the revised federal housing subsidy scheme. The other important external threat relates to rising land rents and the problems that they cause, particularly for social housing providers, including limited-profit housing associations. As the production costs of dwellings critically depend on the cost for land to build on, the finance-driven rise in land prices, both in urban and rural Austria, threatens the long-term viability of the model (Springler, 2018). French municipal water companies: a new generation of public service provider France is known as the heartland of private (read public–private partnerships) water provision – and an island in a sea of public (municipal)

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water operations. But this general perception is only valid if one looks at the most recent era. In fact, public provision predominated in France over much of the 20th century until, from the 1980s onwards, private water companies conquered the French water market and expanded their market share until the early 2000s (Pezon, 2000; Lieberherr et al, 2016). Since then the tide has turned, and Veolia, Suez and SAUR have lost market shares (Getzner et al, 2018) as dozens of cities, including Paris and a number of other large cities such as Montpellier, Nice, Rennes and Grenoble, have brought services in house. There is a similar trend among smaller cities (Kishimoto and Petitjean, 2017). Generally speaking, the return of public water has been driven by the failure to deliver value for money. Prices charged by private companies are on average higher – and that gap remains if one controls for other factors such as the quality and source of water or the degree of treatment (see Getzner et al, 2018, for a general overview). But beyond a narrow economic focus, many of the French deprivatization cases are driven by a wider agenda of democratizing public service while addressing concerns for social justice and ecological sustainability. This is in no small part underpinned by a movement for public water, including citizens and local as well as national non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Hence, they are not only committed to provide water services at lower prices and better quality, tackle water losses via network investment and maintenance and improve transparency, but also seek to establish a new generation of public service operators. This agenda includes more democratic governance structures where a number of new stakeholders such as users and NGOs are represented on the company boards as well as other mechanisms to increase transparency and accountability to a wider audience. Also, beyond reducing water losses, many new public operators are encouraging citizens to save water and be more efficient in their water use – something that runs counter to the conventional business model of private companies (Petitjean, 2017). Among this new generation of public water operators, Eau de Paris – the newly created public provider that has served Paris since 2010 – is noteworthy given its comprehensive agenda that seeks to address water conservation, sustainability and democracy. As an iconic case it also inspired other newly created public providers in France and beyond, for example the return of public water companies in Spain (Kishimoto and Petitjean, 2017). A key theme pioneered by Eau de Paris relates to enhanced democratic governance, both towards external as well as internal stakeholders. Internally, the company seeks to break new ground by

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promoting gender equality and fostering anti-discrimination policies. A key innovation in the corporate governance is the inclusion of a number of external stakeholders with full voting rights, ranging from citizens and NGOs to other associations. Currently the board consists of 20  members, including 13  elected officials from Paris City Council, 2 employees’ representatives, 2 NGO representatives, 2 qualified experts and 1 representative of the Water Observatory (Eau de Paris, 2018). In addition to opening up its board, it has also created an additional body: the Water Observatory. This is an extramunicipal commission intended to foster civil society engagement and improve citizen oversight on the Parisian water policy (OECD, 2016). All important documents, including acts and reports, must be submitted to the Observatory before they are considered by the Paris City Council. While the Observatory itself does not have decisionmaking power, it provides an important improvement in access to information (Petitjean, 2017). Beyond the push to increase democratic control over water policy and operations, the new provider has also set out an environmental strategy that takes account of the wider water cycle. In particular, Eau de Paris is collaborating with more than a hundred farmers in its catchment areas to encourage and support their transition towards organic farming (Vincent and Fleury, 2015). In the long term, this should reduce pesticide contamination, support sustainability and increase water quality. Since the start of the collaboration, the company has taken various measures: first, a coordinator was hired for the regional organic association for raising awareness and activating conventional farmers in the area concerned; in addition, a separate fund was set up to financially support the conversion to organic farming; furthermore, through a partnership with the local real estate fund, further land could be bought up for land transactions in the catchment area in order to make it available to organic farmers. Since the beginning of these measures, the links to agricultural associations have been strengthened, so that the problems of organic farmers have increasingly become the focus of the project, which was originally conceived from the point of view of water management. This is reflected not least in the increased commitment of Eau de Paris to build up local and regional value chains. This innovative approach is in line with the European precautionary principle, and breaks with the conventional business model that relies heavily on technology at the treatment stage of the water cycle. This alternative model could, in the long run, prove both cheaper and more effective at protecting water resources and ecosystems.

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Recently, the Chambre régionale des comptes (2017) has investigated the performance of Eau de Paris, and its findings support the political decision and strategic shift of a return into municipal hands. In particular, it highlights that Eau de Paris has been able to reduce prices while maintaining an ambitious investment programme. As an important side effect, the public ‘alternative’ in the City of Paris has also translated into significant price reductions in the larger Parisian metropolis as Veolia and Suez had to concede more on the bargaining table. One of the few recommendations by the regional audit court is to improve the transparency of Eau de Paris’ financial accounts. Beyond affordable prices Eau de Paris has also performed well on quality of service as it has won the best customer service award for six years in a row (Eau de Paris, 2018). In 2017 it won the prestigious UN Public Service award in the category ‘Promoting Transparency, Accountability and Integrity in Public Service’ (Aqua Publica, 2018). It remains to be seen if this momentum for a new generation of public service providers that opens up the space for multiple actors to cogovern public service provision in a more democratic, efficient and ecologically sound way can be sustained in the long run. Water cooperatives as self-governed forms Beyond the increasing interest in a new generation of public water providers in predominantly urban areas there is a long-standing tradition of community-run water and sanitation services. These are often operating in sparsely populated rural areas where network extensions to municipal or privately run systems are difficult and costly. Their long existence, global spread and resilience is well known by now (Trawick, 2003; Ostrom, 2015). They can be found in very different sociopolitical contexts, from North America (US, Canada) to Latin America (Bolivia, Chile, Brazil, Argentina) to Europe (Ruiz-Mier and van Ginneken, 2006; Arvonen et al, 2017). Within Europe, community-based water providers are particularly relevant in Denmark, Finland and Austria – more than 40 per cent of the Danish population is supplied by a total of 2,500 water cooperatives; in Finland, there are around 1,400 water cooperatives in the country providing services for roughly 13 per cent of the population (Pietilä et al, 2014); and Austria has around 5,300 water cooperatives serving approximately 11 per cent of the population (Getzner et al, 2018). A particular interesting case is OÖ  Wasser, with its more than 1,700 water cooperatives operating in the federal state of Upper Austria, where it supplies around 200,000 people. It was formally founded in

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1946 and acts as an umbrella organization for its members. They are especially located in rural areas and are in charge of decentralized, small-scale water supply and sewerage installations as well as flood protection and irrigation (OÖ Wasser, 2018). Water cooperatives in Austria are public law organizations regulated under the Federal Water Act of 1959. Newly founded water cooperatives must register with the respective local water protection authority and comply with the same regulations as other water providers. Their general aim is to secure sufficient, high-quality and cost-efficient drinking water supply through the construction and operation of autonomous installations. The personal involvement and voluntary work of members make this collective quality-controlled water supply an economical method of supply (Schönbäck et al, 2003). Like other water providers in Austria, cooperatives can draw on financial support from the central state for larger investment needs and complementary dedicated sources from the federal state of Upper Austria (Getzner et al, 2018). While public funds are an important element in the long-standing success of water cooperatives in Austria, the services provided by the umbrella association are key to maintain the everyday operations of the hundreds of water cooperatives, where roughly 15,000 people are volunteering. OÖ Wasser provides crucial support to its members on a number of technical, legal, financial and organizational issues (OÖ Wasser, 2018). It supplies operational and maintenance services (technical assistance, emergency supplies and mobile technical equipment), pooling programmes (for water meter purchase and water analyses, for example), and measurement services (such as leak detection, pipe and valve locations, flow rates and pressure, and aquifer tests). It also proposes education and training sessions and conducts networking activities and information exchange opportunities for its members. OÖ  Wasser also aims to transfer its organizational expertise to partners in the developing world. Since the mid-1990s staff of OÖ Wasser have helped to establish similar umbrella organizations in rural Uganda within the context of Austria’s development aid programme with Uganda. This type of public–public partnership delivers on many fronts as it has provided more than half a million people access to safe drinking water (ADA, 2013). There are a number of potential limitations to these approaches that need to be recognized. Water cooperatives can be a very effective way of self-governed provisioning systems under specific circumstances, particularly when they complement existing larger networks of water

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providers. But it remains, at least in the medium term, unrealistic to use them systematically to address infrastructure needs in cities of the Global South given the complexity of large urban areas and the scale of investment needed (McDonald, 2019). In addition, the case of OÖ Wasser points to the importance of supportive state policies at different scales that shape the possibilities for maintenance and long-term survival of, otherwise, largely selfgoverned initiatives. The examples discussed here rely to a significant extent on the involvement of active citizens as an enormous amount of voluntary, unpaid, labour is involved. As such they are praised as solutions from both, progressives and neoliberal, accounts (RuizMier and van Ginneken, 2006). This raises important questions for foundational economy policies and experiments in terms of what is meant and expected by citizen engagement in the commons. Nevertheless, beyond this ambiguity, water cooperatives have the potential to influence other more technocratic forms of (public and private) water management by highlighting that water is more than a ‘common’ resource. In particular, it could be conceived in relation to its users and the environment in more dialectic terms following ideas of the commons literature (McDonald, 2019).

Concluding remarks The global financial crisis that hit in 2008 required a massive, visible return of the state to stabilize global capitalism and save it from itself. This massive intervention represented an unexpected and major blow to the liberal economic policy consensus of self-regulating markets that had been embraced by policy-makers across the political spectrum and had shaped much of the world since the 1980s. While some of the measures were unprecedented (for example, enormous quantitative easing), others were based on previous policies that had been ignored since the narratives of market choice and public choice had promoted an ideal of minimal government intervention. Hence, states effectively socialized the massive amounts of private debt created in the financial system and even nationalized faltering financial institutions. In addition, beyond the financial sector, governments provided bailouts for selective industries, including automotive or important infrastructure sectors. While these responses have been largely perceived as temporary measures under extraordinary circumstances, recent developments lend themselves to a different interpretation. Germany’s announcement of a new industrial strategy in early 2019 that foresaw an active state beyond its regulatory and financing role runs counter to this narrative

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(Zettelmeyer, 2019). Equally, the rise of right-wing populism that promotes economic nationalism alongside increasingly authoritarian state rule (for example, Hungary or Russia) rests on conceptions of the state that are far beyond those of liberal market economies. The trajectory of Hungary from the poster child of neoliberal reforms during the 1990s (praised as the ‘Pannonian tiger’ by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD], International Monetary Fund [IMF] and Co) to the avant-garde of ‘illiberal democracy’ à la Orban is telling (Scheiring, 2018). Against this backdrop the return of public ownership per se does not necessarily indicate a trajectory towards progressive and emancipatory change. It simply indicates a return to more organized forms of capitalism (Nölke and May, 2019). Recent work on the water sector has underlined the variety of motives and ideological forms behind the rising numbers of deprivatization cases, ranging from more social democratic forms over market managerialism to authoritarian state rule (McDonald, 2018; McDonald and Swyngedouw, 2019). Hence, public responsibility or the reassertion of public control does not in itself secure progressive and emancipatory ends (Powell and Yurchenko, 2019). Therefore, public ownership as a policy lever that is grounded in foundational thinking needs to be conceived as a democratic collective endeavour that is informed by a vision of universalism. This crucially needs to address the right-wing agenda of exclusionary citizenship. To do so it is likely to require a defence and strengthening of existing democratic political institutions with their focus on minority rights, while expanding forms of participatory economic practices (Rahman, 2017). Hence, a more varied and decentred economy is needed that opens up space for a fuller version of citizenship (Cumbers, 2012). A main obstacle to the realization of this endeavour comes from the European level where the long-standing neoliberal consensus on the single market ideology – subjecting all areas of economic life to the same set of neoliberal rules – is still very much alive and fuels anti-European populist sentiments. It remains to be seen if the liberal European political and economic elites realize and accept the limits of their project of a ‘market society’ (Polanyi, 1979) and join hands with those actors that aim at a genuine third way of re-embedding the economy in a democratic way. Notes 1

The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) is a permanent intergovernmental body established by the United Nations General

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2

Assembly in 1964 and is the part of the United Nations Secretariat dealing with trade, investment and development issues. Its annual World Investment Report has a dedicated section on the role and development of TNCs. Baugruppen is an example of community-led housing where people play a leading role in addressing their own housing needs. Sometimes referred to as ‘social production of habitat’, there are examples of such projects across the world including Latin America, Europe, Asia and Africa (see http://habitat-worldmap.org).

References ADA (Austrian Development Agency) (2013) ODA-Bericht, Wien: ADA. Aqua Publica (2018) ‘Eau de Paris receives the UN Public Service Award’, available at www.aquapublica.eu/article/members-activities/ eau-de-paris-receives-un-public-service-award Arvonen, V., Kibocha, S.N., Katko, T.S. and Pietilä, P. (2017) ‘Features of water cooperatives: A comparative study of Finland and Kenya’, Public Works Management & Policy, 22(4): 356–77. Backhouse, R.E. (2005) ‘The rise of free market economics: Economists and the role of the state since 1970’, History of Political Economy, 37(5): 355–92. Bauer, E. (2006) ‘Gemeinnütziger Wohnbau in Österreich: Zu Geschichte, Funktion, und zukünftigen Perspektiven’, Kurswechsel, 3/2006: 20–7. Braithwaite, J. (2008) Regulatory Capitalism: How it Works, Ideas for Making it Work Better, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Chambre régionale des comptes (2017) La régie Eau de Paris – Enquête régionale sur l’alimentation en eau potable de la métropole du Grand Paris, Paris: Chambre régionale des comptes Île-de-France. Clifton, J. and Diaz-Fuentes, D. (2018) ‘The State and Public Corporations’, in A. Nolke and C. May (eds) Handbook of the International Political Economy of the Corporation, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 106–19. Clifton, J., Diaz-Fuentes, D. and Warner, M. (2016) ‘The loss of public values when public shareholders go abroad’, Utilities Policy, 40(C): 134–43. Corneo, G. (2018) ‘Public stock ownership’, Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, 89(1): 11–24. Cumbers, A. (2012) Reclaiming Public Ownership: Making Space for Economic Democracy, London: Zed Books. Eau de Paris (2018) Rapport annuel 2017 – L’eau est capitale, Paris: Eau de Paris.

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Financial Times (2019) ‘Doubts grow over Germany’s balanced budget rule’, available at www.ft.com/content/fff17750-65c8-11e9-a79d04f350474d62 Florio, M. (2013a) ‘Rethinking on public enterprise: Editorial introduction and some personal remarks on the research agenda’, International Review of Applied Economics, 27(2): 135–49. Florio, M. (2013b) Network Industries and Social Welfare: The Experiment that Reshuffled European Utilities, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Florio, M. (2014) ‘Contemporary public enterprises: Innovation, accountability, governance’, Journal of Economic Policy Reform, 17(3): 201–8. Foundational Economy Collective (2018) Foundational Economy: The Infrastructure of Everyday Life, Manchester: Manchester University Press. GBV (2018) 70  Jahre Österreichischer Verband gemeinnütziger Bauvereinigungen, Wien: Österreichischer Verband gemeinnütziger Bauvereinigungen – Revisionsverband. Getzner, M., Köhler, B., Krisch, A. and Plank, L. (2018) Comparison of European Water Supply and Sanitation Systems, Final report (abridged version), Information on Environmental Policy 197b, Vienna: Vienna Chamber of Labour. Gutheil, G. (2018) Präsentation des Österreichischer Verband gemeinnütziger Bauvereinigungen – Revisionsverband, Wien. Housing for All (2019) European Citizen Initiative, available at www. housingforall.eu/ Kadi, J. (2015) ‘Re-commodifying housing in formerly “Red Vienna”?’, Housing, Theory and Society, 32(3): 247–65. Kishimoto, S. and Petitjean, O. (eds) (2017) Reclaiming Public Services: How Cities and Citizens Are Turning Back Privatization, Amsterdam: Transnational Institute. Levi-Faur, D. (2005) ‘The global diffusion of regulatory capitalism’, The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 598: 33–51. Lieberherr, E., Viard, C. and Herzberg, C. (2016) ‘Water Provision in France, Germany and Switzerland: Convergence and Divergence’, in H. Wollman, I. Kopric and G. Marcou (eds) Public and Social Services in Europe: From Public and Municipal to Private Sector Provision, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 249–63. McDonald, D.A. (2018) ‘Remunicipalization: The future of water services?’, Geoforum, 91: 47–56.

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McDonald, D.A. (2019) ‘Finding common(s) ground in the fight for water remunicipalization’, Community Development Journal, 54(1): 59–79. McDonald, D.A. and Swyngedouw, E. (2019) ‘The new water wars: Struggles for remunicipalisation’, Water Alternatives, 12(2): 322–33. McLennan, G., Held, D. and Hall, S. (eds) (1984) State and Society in Contemporary Britain: A Critical Introduction, New York: Polity Press. Megginson, W.L. (2006) ‘Review of Florio M. (2004) The Great Divestiture. The Welfare Impact of British Privatizations 1979–1997’, Journal of Economic Literature, 44(1): 172–4. Millward, R. (2011) ‘Public enterprise in the modern Western world: An historical analysis’, Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, 82(4): 375–98. Nölke, A. and May, C. (2019) ‘Liberal Versus Organised Capitalism: A Historical-Comparative Perspective’, in T. Gerőcs and M. Szanyi (eds) Market Liberalism and Economic Patriotism in the Capitalist WorldSystem, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 21–42. OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) (2016) Water Governance in Cities, OECD Studies on Water, Paris: OECD Publishing. Ostrom, E. (2015) Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. OÖ Wasser (2018) ‘The Upper Austria Water Association – About Us’, available at www.ooewasser.at/de/ueber-uns.html Peck, J. and Tickell, A. (2002) ‘Neoliberalizing space’, Antipode, 34(3): 380–404. Petitjean, O. (2017) ‘Remunicipalisation in France: From Addressing Corporate Abuse to Reinventing Democratic, Sustainable Local Public Services’, in S. Kishimoto and O. Petitjean (eds) Reclaiming Public Services: How Cities and Citizens Are Turning Back Privatization, Amsterdam: Transnational Institute, 24–33. Pezon, C. (2000), Le service d’eau potable en France de 1850 à 1995, Paris: CNAM. Pietilä, P., Arvonen, V. and Katko, T. (2014) Role of Water Cooperatives in Water Service Production – Lessons from Finland and Denmark, Working Paper, Tampere: Tampere University of Technology. Polanyi, K. (1979) Ökonomie und Gesellschaft, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Pollitt, C. and Bouckaert, G. (2011) Public Management Reform: A Comparative Analysis – New Public Management, Governance, and the Neo-Weberian State, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Vincent, A. and Fleury, P. (2015) ‘Development of organic farming for the protection of water quality: Local projects in France and their policy implications’, Land Use Policy, 43: 197–206. von Mises, L. (1944) Bureaucracy, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Warner, M.E. and Clifton, J. (2014) ‘Marketisation, public services and the city: The potential for Polanyian counter movements’, Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, 7(1): 45–61. Wedel, J.R. (2018) ‘Bureaucracy shouldn’t be a dirty word: The role of people-responsive bureaucracy in a robust public economy’, RealWorld Economics Review, 84: 154–69. Wieser, R. and Mundt, A. (2014) ‘Housing subsidies and taxation in six EU countries: Trends, structures and recent measures in the light of the global financial crisis’, Journal of European Real Estate Research, 7(3): 248–69. Wieser, R., Mundt, A. and Amann, W. (2013) Staatsausgaben für Wohnen und deren Wirkung im internationalen Vergleich, Wien: IIBW. Wollmann H. (2016) ‘Public and Social Services in Europe: From Public and Municipal to Private Provision – And Reverse?’, in H. Wollmann, I. Kopric and G. Marcou (eds) Public and Social Services in Europe: From Public and Municipal to Private Sector Provision, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 313–34. Zettelmeyer, J. (2019) ‘The return of economic nationalism in Germany’, Policy Brief 19-4, Washington, DC: Peterson Institute for International Economics.

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The non-profit paradox after the 2008 financial crisis: How to survive within a changing scenario Sandro Busso and Joselle Dagnes

Introduction Since the 1990s, civil society organizations (CSOs), mainly within the category of ‘non-profit sector’ or ‘third sector’,1 have come to play a pivotal role within the field of social policy. Despite their historical record in providing assistance, their relevance and visibility has consistently grown with the unravelling of the public monopoly of social services that characterized Les Trente Glorieuses, and with the development of a market-based welfare system. The success of the non-profit sector is certainly due to economic factors – mostly its capacity to provide services at a lower price – but also to the legitimacy it enjoyed as a form of grassroots organization. Indeed, since Alexis de Tocqueville’s thoughts on pauperism, the ability of a society to grant fundamental rights through self-organization rather than depending on ‘state charity’ was valued as a sign of vitality and democracy, and as a way to avoid the perverse effects of public intervention. Thus, the social policy turn to civil society can be seen as a means of achieving full citizenship: third sector institutions can contribute to grant a decent standard of living to everyone through providing services, but may also act as intermediaries between the state and citizens, protecting them from its possible abuses and promoting their own capabilities (Janoski, 1998). The growth of non-profit organizations in an era of state retrenchment and within a market-based society may, however, provoke tension and threaten their potential in advancing citizenship. Starting from this paradox, this chapter explores the contradictions that the welfare mix can engender, with particular attention to the effects of the 2008 economic crisis, which acted as a shock that partially altered well-established balances and relationships. Resource

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constraints and the growing uncertainties that accompany them can indeed endanger citizens’ rights, triggering mechanisms of exploitation and value extraction that were previously little known in this field. Our analysis starts with an outline of the key characteristics of the market for social welfare in Italy, and we then consider its development during the 2008 financial crisis. The second part of the chapter focuses more strictly on the non-profit sector: using social network analysis, the strategies employed and resulting organizational networks are illustrated, together with the consequences of outsourcing and privatization on the quality of labour. Finally, we reflect on the resulting model of value extraction and on the consequences this has for citizenship and the foundational economy. As we will see, this model of value extraction relies on low-intensity mechanisms rather than on large-scale ‘predatory’ strategies, and on a prevalent redistribution, rather than appropriation, of the economic value. Despite its lower visibility, such a model has profound implications on citizenship. On the one hand it may affect the quality of the service offered, mining access to the basic rights of social citizenship. On the other hand, it brings pressure to bear on a lowering of labour standards and rights for a substantial – and growing – number of workers. Moreover, this transformation of the non-profit sector has effects at a higher level, since it threatens one of the pivotal functions of associations, namely, that of advancing the democratic capacity of a society, promoting participation and acting as a ‘school of citizenship’ (Warren, 2003; Clemens, 2006). Within this model, the foundational nature of the services offered plays an ambiguous role. Outsourcing to the non-profit sector may indeed be a strategy that allows the delivering of necessary services in times of budget constraints, and so seems to protect the system from further cuts and to preserve citizens’ rights. However, this goal may legitimate workers’ exploitation (and sometimes self-exploitation) in the name of the social relevance of the service offered, making low or unpaid work acceptable.

Development and structure of a market in social welfare in Italy The development in social policy of the ‘public official’s current romance with the market’ (Sanger, 2004: 1) has a common starting point in the so-called ‘Western democracies’, namely, the fiscal crisis that took place, even if with slight differences, at the end of the 1970s. The Keynesian welfare state that had become mainstream during Les

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Trente Glorieuses showed some cracks with the slowdown of economic growth, and the difficulties in facing its costs forced many governments to reduce public expenditure. Since the beginning of the 1980s, talking about a crisis of the welfare state became ‘almost a commonplace’ (Hindess, 2012: 1),2 and different narratives converged on the idea of its excessive growth and its unsustainability and perverse economic effects (Hindess, 2012). Boosted by the hegemonic neoliberal rhetoric, two different strategies were enacted in order to reduce costs: the contracting out of public services and their privatization (see Amin et al, 2002; Crouch, 2011; Wagenaar and van der Heijden, 2015), both paving the way to the entrance of private actors in what soon started to be called the ‘welfare mix’ and to the creation of a market. The two strategies, however, have very different effects on the structure of the newborn market. If outsourcing is based on a distinction between funding (public) and provision (private) of services, privatization tends to blur this distinction, since it relies on a complex and heterogeneous mix of public and private resources and on citizens’ direct purchase of services (Ascoli and Ranci, 2002). The decline of a model of service provision financed and managed entirely by public actors offered new opportunities to enterprises and non-profit actors, determining substantial growth, especially of the latter. Even the labels used to describe these organizations, which have, of course, existed for centuries (Barbetta, 1997; Borzaga et al, 2017), started to be used as a result of this transformation. ‘Third sector’ and ‘non-profit sector’ made their appearance to identify the positioning in the economic system of a part of civil society. A clear example is the well-known book edited by Burton Weisbrod in 1977, The Voluntary Nonprofit Sector: An Economic Analysis, that was published with the explicit objective of using the instruments of economic analysis to study a sector that had, until then, been neglected by this discipline. This general trend also applies to the Italian case, although the birth and institutionalization of the third sector cannot be considered an exclusive consequence of the crisis of the welfare state (Borzaga et al, 2016; Ianes, 2016). Its origins can be traced back to experience of the charities that were the forerunners of the establishment of a public system of welfare, and in the political experiences of the 1960s and 1970s. In Italy, along with the economic stimulus provided by outsourcing and privatization, an incentive for the growth of the third sector came from political transformations, and in particular from the end of the political mobilization that had started with the 1968 movement and finished a decade later with the maximum expansion of political terrorism.3 The boost of violence and the following repression

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‘undermined the possibility of using strategies of peaceful collective action and protest’ (della Porta, 2006: 31), putting the models of traditional militancy in serious crisis (Marcon, 2004). In these years ‘people started talking about non-profit and the third sector’ (Marcon, 2004: 9) as a new form of activism and participation in which ‘social experiences started in the phase of social movements, converted from the ideological political struggle to service provision’ (Ranci, 1999: 72). Economic and political factors gave birth to a trend of development in the third sector that was destined to last for many decades. The retrenchment of the public sector in the field of social welfare is clearly visible in the figures for the composition of the labour force in the sector (see Figure 4.1), which highlights the decrease in the number of public workers, and the growing relevance of those employed by the non-profit sector, which reached 64 per cent at national level. Such a percentage continues to grow more than two decades after the beginning of the transformation. The 30 years from the first welfare state crisis to the one that started in 2008 are therefore seen as the ‘golden age’ of the third sector in Italy. However, this was not only a change in the numbers and in the percentages of the workforce. During these years, the transformation of the models of social planning determined the entrance of nonprofits into decision-making and governance processes at the local level. The national reform law on social services approved in 20004 legitimated and institutionalized what in many territorial contexts had already been in place for many years. The new rules of the ‘integrated system of social interventions and services’ eventually overcame the Figure 4.1: Labour force composition in the Italian social assistance sector 2001

2011

Percentage of total labour force

70 60

64.0% 55.4%

50 40 30

36.8%

20 19.6%

16.4%

10 7.9%

0 Public

Non-profit

Source: Istat, census data (www.dati.istat.it)

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Private

The non-profit paradox after the 2008 financial crisis

distinction between service providers and actors in charge of planning, including third sector organizations, among the actors in charge of political functions. Such political inclusion had positive economic consequences, since involvement in the planning processes allowed non-profits to advocate for stronger investment in those sectors in which their presence was stronger, fostering a virtuous circle. These transformations determined a heterogeneity of service models, since the ‘completely public’ service model (owned, financed and managed by public actors) that was prevalent in the postwar Keynesian state was now part of a mixed system with other different service models that can be classified according to their ownership, resources and management (see Figure 4.2). The first of these is that of the ‘contracted-out public services’, and is the result of the outsourcing process: the public sector maintains the formal ownership and funding function, but transfers money to private actors that are responsible for managing services. The other models are instead the product of the privatization process, and have in common the private nature of ownership and management while differing in the nature of their Figure 4.2: Service models in Italy, according to ownership, resources and management High degree of public control

Public services

Contracted-out public services Ownership: Public Resources: Public Management: Private/Non-profit Privatization

Labour conditions Access criteria Service quality

Public-supported private services Ownership: Private/Non-profit Resources: Public and private Management: Private/Non-profit

Quasi-market private services Ownership: Private/Non-profit Resources: Private (through vouchers) Management: Private/Non-profit

Market private services Low degree of public control

Ownership: Private/Non-profit Resources: Private (including public transfers) Management: Private/Non-profit

Source: Authors’ own

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Outsourcing

Ownership: Public Resources: Public Management: Public

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funding. Some of the services can be financed entirely or partly by the public sector on account of the public nature of the demand they satisfy, while others rely completely on the purchase of services by private citizens (Caselli, 2015; Busso and Dagnes, 2016). Among private services, a further distinction should be made between those services that enjoy institutional recognition thorough the accreditation mechanism, and are therefore entitled to be paid through vouchers (the quasi-market private services), and those that work completely outside of the public circuit. Even in this last case, however, the public sector may play an indirect role, in providing citizens with the economic resources that are spent in the market, through pensions, vouchers and cash transfers in general. The blend of public and private that characterizes many of these models shows one of the main effects of neoliberalism on social policies. As stated by Soss et  al (2011), neoliberal politics led not only to a redistribution of competences and resources between public and private, but also (and primarily) to a blurring of the border distinguishing them. Within the space of this blurred border, services vary consistently on three dimensions. While moving toward totally private services, the standards of labour conditions and service quality as well as the access criteria become less severe and, most of all, unclearly defined. The heterogeneity of the models, therefore, results in an atomization of the rights of the individual actors involved, both as users and as workers: huge differences can be found not only between the different models, but also within the privatized services. Such differences have strong implications for citizenship in terms of a growing inequality in access to services and social rights. If, in principle, privatization does not necessarily imply a reduction in the individual (and overall) level of rights granted to citizens, the market model and competition between actors inevitably leads to growing inequalities that can damage the very nature of the social fabric. Following Balibar’s (2014) argument on ‘equaliberty’, it can be argued that the promotion of individuals depends not solely on the rights or freedom granted to every citizen (as the neoliberal rhetoric stated), but also on the collective distribution of such rights. A further consequence of this market structure is the proliferation of the flows of the resources within the system (see Figure 4.3), that can be briefly summarized as follows: • Direct transfers from the national level to beneficiaries: as a consequence of the lack of a national income support scheme, the

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Figure 4.3: Resource flows and market actors’ funding channels in Italy

National level

EU funds

Supranational level EU International donors

Private funders National funds

EU funds

Project financing and grants

Cash transfers (mainly pensions)

79

Local level Regions Municipalities Vouchers and cash transfers

Outsourcing Project financing and grants Cost sharing

Market actors

Project financing and grants

Non-profit For-profit Cash transfers and charity Direct purchase

Citizens – service users Own resources Cash transfers from public Source: Authors’ own

Banking foundations Church Other private funders

The non-profit paradox after the 2008 financial crisis

Ordinary funding Pensions Specific policies

The Foundational Economy and Citizenship

• • •

• •

transfers mainly involve the pensions system and are addressed to particular categories such as older people, people with disabilities and people with work-related injuries. Transfers from national government to local authorities: since social services are managed at a local level, different national funds provide municipalities with some of the resources. Direct transfers from local authorities to beneficiaries: this category involves all the social services ‘in cash’ benefits, such as income support or ‘care vouchers’. Transfers from local authorities to market actors: these may be payment for contracted-out services (but still owned by the public) or as grants and project financing to support non-profit activities (privately owned but considered of public interest). Beneficiaries purchase services in the market: some of the money may derive from the transfers outlined above. Banking foundation transfers to non-profit organizations: the foundations mainly finance projects carried out by civil society actors, which vary in nature.

This structure shows how, despite the trend and rhetoric about retrenchment, the public sector remains a relevant player in the Italian case. In the social welfare sector, contributions and contracts for outsourcing still constitute a significant share (56%) of the economic resources of third sector organizations (Lori and Pavolini, 2016: 52). Moreover, the resources that private individuals spend on market services often result from transfers provided by public institutions, according to a model that is very close to the quasi-market policies that have influenced the development of welfare in the UK (see Le Grand, 1991; Le Grand and Bartlett, 1993). The growth of the third sector, therefore, was conditioned by dependence on public resources, so much so that it can be defined in terms of ‘subordinate subsidiarity’ (Revelli, 1997; Carls and Cominu, 2014). Such subordination may represent an obstacle to citizens’ participation, since it inevitably limits the political voice of those organizations that aim to act as a counterpower to the public sector, devaluing or discouraging engagement. As a consequence, some non-profit actors consider being successful in the market as the only possible way to promote social choice, getting rid of the constraints set by the public sector (Busso, 2018). This reliance on the market as an instrument of emancipation is certainly not new for the third sector, although many analyses have long shown how marketization itself can be a driving force for depoliticization (Eikenberry and Kluver, 2004).

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Crisis, changes and trends If the recession of the 1970s opened windows of opportunity for non-profit actors, triggering a transformation that resulted in a longterm trend of market development, the 2008 crisis paved the way for a scenario that is at least partially new. Since 2010, no substantial change has occurred in the structure of the market, but two different elements have placed considerable stress on the equilibrium achieved in the previous 30 years: a decrease in the overall level of resources and a change in proportion between the different economic flows. This new phase is characterized by fewer opportunities and increasing instability for non-profit actors. Available data allows us to draw a picture of the changes based on different indicators. The first clue for the new scenario comes from recent trends in social expenditure in Italy. The overall per capita expenditure continued to rise after 2008, although slowing down considerably between 2010 and 2014 (see Figure 4.4). However, the Italian case differs significantly from the EU average as to expenditure composition, since the share of resources devoted to pensions is around 12 per cent higher (see Table 4.1). Such expenditure kept growing during the crisis, with the exception of a break in 2014 that followed the national reform.5 Among many other consequences, such Figure 4.4: Normalized social expenditure at national and local level in Italy National social expenditure National expenditure for pensions

Normalized expenditure – 2007 = 0

Local social expenditure 0.18 0.16 0.14 0.12 0.1 0.08 0.06 0.04 0.02 0

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

Sources: National data (social expenditure and pensions): Eurostat database (https:// ec.europa.eu/eurostat/data/database); local data: Istat, national survey on municipal social interventions and services, yearly reports and datasets (www.istat.it)

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a composition has a strong relevance for analysing the marketization process: more than half of the overall amount of resources are transferred directly from central government to citizens, while a proportion of resources feed the market for social services, especially that of elderly care. In contrast to the national trend, local expenditure for social interventions and services came to a halt in 2009 and it broadly declined in the years that followed. The trend in Figure 4.4, therefore, shows a progressive recentralization of spending, resulting in a contraction of public resources in the local services market. This figure is extremely relevant to understanding the changes occurring for the non-profit sector that mostly derive their resources from local systems in the welfare mix, missing the requirements to participate at national level. Moreover, outsourcing of local services had traditionally been, and still is, a key element in determining not only the amount of resources, but also their stability and complexity. Many key actors of the system suggest that, contrary to what happened in the 1970s, when outsourcing became a strategy to save public money, since 2008 the public sector has often chosen to cut back on outsourced services, since they do not involve problems of staff reallocation. Together with expenditure for pensions, a smaller-scale indicator shows that the trend toward the provision of interventions ‘in cash’ can also be detected at the local level. As shown in Figure 4.5, the expenditure of local government on vouchers and cash transfers bound to purchase care services (assegni di cura) grew more than 50 per cent during the first years of the crisis (2008–13) despite the overall contraction of resources. Furthermore, since 2008 the contributions given by the public sector at local level to support services of general interest, owned and managed by the third sector, dropped by more than 35 per cent (see Figure 4.6). This financing channel (albeit of minor importance in quantitative terms) plays a fundamental strategic role for non-profit organizations, since it allows management of the funds with less constraint when compared to contracting out.

Table 4.1: Pensions expenditure in Italy and Europe, 2016

European Union, 28 countries Euro area, 18 countries Italy

€ per inhabitant 3,616.83 4,126.32 4,578.27

% social expenditure 43.9 44.1 55.6

Source: Eurostat database (https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/data/database)

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The non-profit paradox after the 2008 financial crisis Figure 4.5: Local expenditure for vouchers and cash transfers to purchase care services (assegni di cura) in Italy

Overall expenditure (millions €)

210 190 170 150 130 110 90 70 50

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

Source: Istat, national survey on municipal social interventions and services, yearly reports and datasets (www.istat.it)

Figure 4.6: Local governments’ contribution to third sector organizations in Italy

Overall expenditure (millions €)

90 85 80 75 70 65 60 55 50 45 40 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 Note: 2013 data are missing. Source: Istat, national survey on municipal social interventions and services, yearly reports and datasets (www.istat.it)

Within a general framework of retrenchment, great attention has been paid to banking foundations,6 whose role, following the 2008 crisis, turned from one of relative marginality to that of structural and pivotal actors of the system. The funding of banking foundations, whose resources mainly come from the financial system, increased rapidly in the first years of the 2000s in many different public policy

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sectors, including social assistance and support of voluntary and third sector organizations. However, the financial nature of the foundations’ resources exposed them to the crisis to a greater extent than other public actors, and their contributions in the field of social policy, mainly devoted to third sector organizations, decreased significantly during the financial crisis (see Figure 4.7), even though this was less than in other sectors.7 All these transformations have resulted in a contraction of local funding for social welfare markets, which were previously able to guarantee a certain predictability of revenue for non-profit organizations. Such a decrease, together with the growth in the proportion of resources in the hands of citizens and the share of resources distributed to projects financed through competitive tenders at both national and EU level (De Ambrogio, 2016), led to considerable instability. The so-called model of ‘mutual adjustment’ (Pavolini, 2003), based on the idea that the third sector sustained the public one by providing services at a lower price in exchange for a long-term and guaranteed partnership, was therefore shaken to its foundations. Some of the drivers of this transformation are not a peculiarity of the Italian case, and were already visible just before the beginning of the crisis. As noted by Defourny and Nyssens (2008), the shrinking of public resources, together with competition with a growing forprofit sector, could have hindered the development of the third sector Figure 4.7: Banking foundations’ contribution to social assistance and support for third sector organizations in Italy

Overall contributions (millions €)

450 400 350 300 250 200 150

02 003 004 005 006 007 008 009 010 011 012 013 014 015 016 017 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2

20

Source: ACRI, Association of Banking Foundations and Saving Banks, various yearly reports (www.acri.it)

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all over Europe. In this scenario, those social enterprises that ‘have developed intensively in a niche’ would have been obliged to face the challenge of ‘the expansion of their activities in a wider set of economic sectors, and under a plurality of organizational forms’ (Defourny and Nyssens, 2008: 27). Recent analysis has shown the ability of the Italian third sector to ‘survive’ the crisis, although with some differences between the North and the South (Cheney et al, 2014; Costa and Carini, 2016). The impact of the crisis should therefore be seen, first of all, as a ‘shock’ in the market that could force organizations on the one hand to reduce their costs, by acting mainly on the labour costs component, and on the other hand to reorient their managerial strategies by forming alliances and articulating their market positioning (MacIndoe and Sullivan, 2014). The next section is dedicated to an analysis of how these two strategies have developed.

Crisis response strategies: leveraging labour costs, alliances and market positioning The first consequence of market instability is the flexibilization of the labour force, which can be seen as an unavoidable effect of the discontinuity of the flow of resources, but also as a voluntary strategy pursued by employers.8 The precariousness of non-profit workers plays a central role in the competitiveness of organizations and in the sustainability of the whole sector. Indeed, among the first factors that make outsourcing to non-profit organizations convenient at a systemic level is, above all, the possibility of applying contractual terms that are at lower levels of resource, and often more flexible, than those permitted by public sector regulation.9 With regard to the spread of fixed-term contracts and collaboration, the funding mechanism through short-term projects plays a fundamental role, creating a structural precariousness. Since projects are by definition conceived to be developed in a relatively short time span, the workforce is inevitably hired on fixed-term contracts. Ensuring the continuity of work thus becomes a very complicated balancing act, which rests on the ability of the organizations to ‘finance the ordinary with the extraordinary’, namely, developing long-term strategies on the basis of a combined sum of short-term projects. The model of ownership and management of the service and the features of the policy in which it is set up then weigh on the type of contract applied and on the remuneration that follows. In cases of ‘ordinary’ outsourcing procedures, the public institution that issues the tender guarantees the contract and the salary of non-profit

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employees; in the case of services whose ownership is not public, the constraints are considerably reduced. Of particular relevance, then, is the emergency logic with which certain interventions are entrusted to the non-profit, which authorizes associations and cooperatives to operate in derogation of rules and principles in the use of public funds. In the absence of detailed data related to the social welfare sector, a rough figure of the phenomenon can be rendered through comparison between the overall non-profit sectors and the enterprises at national and local level (see Table 4.2). The share of external contractors in the non-profit sector is five times higher than that of the enterprises at national level, while permanent workers are 16 per cent less. A further reorientation of the third sector following the financial crisis can be observed at the organizational-structural level. In order to deal with the increasing instability and uncertainty of the financing channels for social services, some of the actors involved strategically shape their interorganizational ties (MacIndoe and Sullivan, 2014). The production and reproduction of formal and informal relationships between the non-profit organizations is thus used to strengthen their own position in the market (Stoll et al, 2010). Market survival is favoured by a more flexible structure that is able to adapt to a new system of constraints and opportunities (cf Carmel and Harlock, 2008). The existence of highly diversified funding sources and the variability of the requirements for access – both in terms of area of expertise and organizational structure – foster two main schemes. First, the realization of forms of more or less stable collaborations between independent organizations can occur, for example, consortia, business associations, and so on. Through these alliances, organizations can reach the requirements established on an ad hoc basis by the various calls for competitive bids, while maintaining their autonomy (Milne et al, 1996; Omar et al, 2014). A second strategy can instead lead to an instrumental fragmentation of unitary organizations into a plurality of specialized sub-units, formally independent but substantially originating from a single non-profit player and managed as such. By Table 4.2: Overall labour force of not-for-profit sector and enterprises by contract type in Italy, 2011

Non-profit sector Enterprises

Permanent workers (%) 69.5 85.6

Workers on fixed-term contracts (%) 15.5 10.8

Source: Istat, census data (www.dati.istat.it)

86

External contractors or freelancers (%) 15.0  3.6

The non-profit paradox after the 2008 financial crisis

setting up this modular organizational structure, organizations gain the flexibility they need in order to deal with the uncertainty dominating the social services’ market, but at the same time, they are not forced to collaborate with other unrelated actors, retaining the ability to act independently (cf Anheier and Seibel, 2013). Obviously, these strategies are not mutually exclusive. In fact, both may be implemented within the same field, either by different actors or by the same actors simultaneously. To show empirically the spread of these strategies and to investigate its consequences, in this section we turn our attention to a regional social services market in Italy. A spatially located analysis is indeed appropriate to highlight the local level of market regulation, which is defined regionally, and to observe how the responses to the crisis are concretely put in place by local market players. Specifically, we focus on Piedmont, a north-western region of Italy. This case is interesting on the one hand for its innovative governance – for example, it is one of the first Italian regions to have a single register of the third sector (Bartoli et al, 2016); and on the other hand because of its distance from the cooperative models established in Catholic and Communist political subcultures typical, respectively, of North-East and Central Italy (Baccetti and Messina, 2009). Indeed, in a less politicized regional regulation system such as Piedmont, market players have been able to conquer spaces and carve out a relevant role. Within the local context of Piedmont, we will observe the described strategies through the reconstruction of formal and informal cooperation relationships between non-profit organizations. Data updated to January 2014 – the most recent period for which all the information we are interested in is available – allows us to show the existence of two different interorganizational networks between non-profit organizations. First, a formal network determined by participation in the same social consortium; and second, an informal network determined by overlapping directors in the governance bodies of the organizations (namely, interlocking directorates).10 Unfortunately, the available data do not allow us to observe to what extent these relational structures have spread in recent times, since there are no terms of comparison with the preceding situation. However, previous qualitative investigations suggest that the current interorganizational networks can be interpreted precisely as a response to the crisis and to the consequent uncertainty (De Ambrogio, 2016; Busso, 2018).11 In 2014 formal and informal ties between the non-profit sector involved a total of 594 organizations in Piedmont, mainly located

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in the province of Torino (Turin), the capital city of the region, confirming the role of a catalyst for social services’ initiatives played by the metropolitan area (Milligan, 2017).12 Among these organizations, the majority deal with the management of social, health and education services (57.1%), while about a third handle different kinds of activities – in the agricultural, industrial, commercial or service sectors – to provide employment opportunities for disadvantaged people (36%). Finally, a small number of units combine both functions (6.9%). Altogether, these non-profit organizations represent a non-negligible source of employment in the region, employing about 40,000 people (36,500 in January 2014, amounting to just over 2% of the employed in Piedmont). Micro and small organizations are prevalent (30.7% with less than 10 employees, 18.4% with less than 19 employees and 23.2% with up to 50 employees), even if medium-sized organizations are also well represented (23%). Finally, a residual but still significant number of units has more than 250 employees (4.6%). According to our data, the establishment of a formalized partnership applies to about 30 per cent of the sample, equal to 168 non-profit organizations, for a total of 31  operating consortia. The network resulting from the simultaneous participation in a consortium – for which two organizations are linked if they share membership in one or more business alliances – is formed by 781 ties. They are almost all single ties, meaning that the pairs of non-profit units are mostly involved in a single partnership (96.3%). However, there are also situations in which the simultaneous participation of the same cooperatives in two or even three consortia occurs (3.7%). In these cases, we are apparently observing the reproduction of an organizational structure that has proved to be effective: each alliance has, in fact, a core of stable and trustworthy relationships that is repeated two or three times, and each time ad hoc collaborations are added in order to fulfil the criteria established by the specific call for bids. The existence of these multiple formal collaborations, together with the fact that single organizations can simultaneously be part of several consortia – each cooperative has on average 2.6 collaborative ties with other organizations – leads to a well-connected network, as shown in Figure 4.8. The network includes a few dyadic relations, indicating consortia formed by two members, and a few triadic partnerships. In all other cases, the alliances are bigger, ranging from five to a dozen members, with some complex components comprising several different consortia for the abovementioned reasons. Comparatively, non-profit organizations that are part of a consortium tend to be bigger than the isolated ones and to be located in the

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The non-profit paradox after the 2008 financial crisis Figure 4.8: Network of the non-profit institutions connected by participation in a consortium

Source: Authors’ own

Central-Southern area of the region, supposedly because of the different constraints and opportunities provided by the local context. Moving to informal relationships, we focus on the network determined by overlapping directors in the governance bodies of the organizations (Mizruchi, 1996; Heemskerk, 2013). This can be considered as a proxy for the second strategy we referred to, that is, the instrumental subdivision of a single organization into different subunits, which are formally independent but advantageously managed by the same person(s). The percentage of non-profit organizations with personal ties mediated by the presence of the same directors in their governance bodies is higher than that of the organizations involved in the consortia. Specifically, about half of the sample (49.7%) have interlocked boards, that is, they share at least one member with another formally independent organization. The resulting network is composed of 457 ties: 353 of them are single ties (equal to 77.2%), representing one shared director between the organizations involved, but there is no lack of ties determined by the co-presence of two (78 ties, equal to 17%) or more (5.8%) common directors, up to a pair of organizations sharing eight members of the board. In addition to this, some cooperatives show a strong propensity to share administrators, possibly because they are, in fact, parent organizations reproducing themselves in smaller sub-units. The social cooperatives with higher centrality share directors with 26 other organizations, while several others exhibit more than 10 governance connections. The network deriving from

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these links is shown in Figure 4.9, where we observe a great number of dyadic relations (43 pairs of organizations sharing one or more directors exclusively with another institution) and various triads. In addition, several components involve a large number of organizations and display complex structures, creating very different agglomerates of connected vertices. For example, in one case 13 different organizations are comprised in a component in which everyone is linked to everyone else. In this case, closer analysis allows the observation that a sole administrator governs all the organizations involved. In comparison with the isolated organizations, the interlocked units tend to be significantly bigger and to have a composite structure, combining from the start the objectives of management of social services and employment integration of disadvantaged people. In other terms, it seems that the complex units, which already have a greater number of activities and specializations within them, choose the path of functional separation more frequently in order to secure themselves the flexibility to be able to compete on single calls for tenders. Moreover, as already observed for the association via consortia, organizations show a different relational propensity depending on where they are located (being comparatively more isolated in the Eastern part of the region than in the Western one), thus confirming that the local context has a role in defining the actors’ strategies (cf Lorenzen et al, 2012). To expand on this point, we consider jointly previous data in order to identify four possible situations in which a non-profit organization can find itself according to its formal and informal network, that is, participation in a consortium and the interlocking of governance bodies (see Table 4.3). As already mentioned, in our perspective these situations may reflect different survival strategies put in place at the organizational-structural level aimed at addressing market uncertainty. Figure 4.9: Network of the non-profit institutions connected by shared directors

Source: Authors’ own

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The non-profit paradox after the 2008 financial crisis Table 4.3: Organizational structure of non-profit organizations

Involvement in informal ties (interlocked governance)

Yes

No

Involvement in formal ties (consortium) Yes No Subsidiary/parent Fully connected organization cooperative 32.6% 17.8% Fully independent Consortium member cooperative 10.8% 38.8%

A fully independent cooperative, with no ties, operating on its own in the sector, is reported in less than four cases out of ten. This situation can identify not only marginal organizations, but also organizations that benefit from a lasting relationship with public local institutions, for example, having been managing the same contracted services for many years. Thus, they seem to be able to do without creating partnerships and consistent networks. In contrast, other cooperatives embed themselves in a strategic way: in one case out of ten joining a consortium to take part in local tendering; in about three cases out of ten sharing governance with others, presumably being closely affiliated with them according to a parent–subsidiary organization dynamic; and finally, in two cases out of ten combining the two strategies, namely, being at the same time the subject of a functional fragmentation and part of a temporary joint venture. The creation of an appropriate interorganizational structure, which is defined through ties with other individual and collective actors, is therefore part of a survival strategy implemented by some cooperatives to face the crisis. Research conducted in countries other than Italy confirms that the degree of connectedness of the non-profit organizations affects their ability to obtain funding. For instance, Faulk and colleagues (2016) show that the number and amount of grants won by non-profit organizations in the metropolitan area of Atlanta, US, a highly competitive local context, are significantly correlated with their informal embeddedness. Networks can indeed be a resource for remaining on the market when funding channels are reduced and competition increases (Granovetter, 2017). At the same time, however, these survival schemes reconfigure the market structure, defining a new system of constraints and opportunities the actors have to deal with, and at the same time generating new resources within the field (Granovetter, 2017). In fact, while it is true that the different forms of collaboration found between cooperatives are activated through relational resources, it

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is also true that the new social ties in turn create others, definable in terms of social capital (Coleman, 1990). And in accordance with Bourdieu (1986), social capital can be converted into other forms of capital, first of all economic and symbolic ones. As we will see in the next section, this conversion has as its main objective not so much a personal economic advantage, but rather as a way to face the crisis. Social relations can be a strategic resource from an organizational point of view, as highlighted above, but they can also be a way to generate additional resources to ensure the reproduction of the whole system. Similarly, the value extracted by reducing costs – in particular, labour costs, as shown – is often at least reinvested to guarantee the functioning of the care services and their continuation over time. A peculiar model of value extraction in the Italian social services sector is thus defined, which we will outline next.

A model of low-intensity extraction The mechanisms of exploitation and extraction that can be observed at work in the Italian social services field deviate from the classical neoliberal dynamics widespread in other sectors. This is due to the role of the third sector as outsourcer – instead of market operators – as well as to the difficulty of acting on the productivity lever because of the high labour intensity nature of the field (Stoy, 2014). Furthermore, social services players cannot press too much on users, since they risk deterioration in the quality and quantity of services provided. For these reasons, Italian non-profit cooperatives that have had to cope with public funding cuts set up a ‘distinctive model of labour exploitation without value extraction for capital’ (Foundational Economic Collective, 2018: 48). This is a low-intensity model, characterized by continuous drainage of small resources from the workers, since they constitute the only point in the chain on whose margins it is possible to act. Through unfavourable contractual conditions, intensive pace of work and reduced wages, labour costs are, in fact, compressed severely. The second feature of this low-intensity model is that its goal is not accumulation and profit maximization, but rather the survival of organizations and, through this, the possibility of continuing to provide services over time. In many cases, the value extraction strategy corresponds to the arduous attempt to maintain services with acceptable standards facing the gradual increase in users and ever-more consistent cuts in social spending. Here, the extraction processes are not oriented to generate private profits, which are not allowed by the regulation system that prevents third sector organizations from

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any model of profit distribution. On the contrary, the aim is the reproduction of a system that is in precarious balance and that risks being stuck, with massive and potentially ruinous consequences. In this sense, although extraction takes place, the model is far from the idea of the ‘predatory’ capitalism of financialization, and more ascribable to that of ‘productive’ capitalism (Mazzucato, 2018). The provision of services under the described conditions, however, is not only a problematic issue for organizations and their reproduction, but also has important implications in terms of citizenship rights, both for users and workers. On the users side, uncertainty and discontinuity of funding can result in uncertainty and discontinuity in the care services, which, as we know, are related to the quality and effectiveness of care (cf Jones et al, 2009). On the workers side, conditions imposed reduce the spending capacity of individuals – and consequently their capacity to access foundational goods and services – exclude workers from traditional forms of welfare protection, and make family–work reconciliation particularly difficult. These forms of exploitation, which are retraceable in many other sectors, within Italian social services also enjoy a sort of legitimacy – or at least of a certain tolerance – derived from their specific social function. The workers themselves are inclined to accept these conditions because they are aware of the social impact of their work, they feel a strong sense of vocation and responsibility towards the users, and because the type of work carried out constitutes in itself a sort of identity and symbolic reward for their efforts. Thus, working conditions that would appear unacceptable find a justification in the rhetoric of individual sacrifice for the common good. This is, obviously, an aspect to which social non-profit operators, that carry out their activities in direct contact with users, are particularly sensitive. The extraction of economic value can therefore allow the reproduction of a system with insufficient resources, the cost of which falls on the weakest and least protected workers, who struggle to ask for better conditions due to their awareness of the fragility of the sector. Here we observe a paradox: exploitation in care services takes place not despite the fact that the field provides an essential service that has little to do with classical neoliberal business models, but precisely because of this. To be part of the foundational economy, in fact, legitimizes exploitation and weakens the opposition more effectively than can be observed in other areas. Such a legitimacy of value extraction in foundational sectors can be better understood by referring to the categories of takers and

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makers, as used by Mazzucato (2018). The model described above has two relevant features: first, makers are more inclined to accept the exploitation of their work; second, since the value is redistributed through services, the takers are many and often stay outside of the ‘productive boundaries’ (Mazzucato, 2018: 19) and from the organizational field. Salary as a form of redistribution among makers, therefore, enjoys scarce legitimacy, both from inside and outside the field of social welfare. A further specific feature of the value extraction model described above derives from the change taken into account in the previous sections concerning the organizational strategies pursued by the non-profit institutions. As already shown, in the face of growing market instability cooperatives can act by deliberately redefining their borders, joining through formal ties and/or divide themselves into sub-components while maintaining informal ties. In this case, the resources involved are (also) of a different nature, since within this model the extraction of social and political capital can be even more relevant than that of economic value. On the one hand, in fact, the diffusion of the project approach, focusing on the allocation of dedicated budgets for the various user targets, favours the emergence of a fragmented scenario. On the other hand, however, the social market needs to guarantee continuity in the services provided and, to this end, to somehow stabilize the relationship between public bodies, profit-driven companies and non-profit organizations. Thus, the organizational strategies that emerged in the previous section highlight a use of the social and political capital available to the actors, which meets a double need: to guarantee the delivery of fundamental services and at the same time, to allow organizations to survive within a changing scenario. In fact, the existence of formal and informal ties between organizations can help to maintain a strong market position – for example, benefiting from a direct award of assignments by a public body with which there have been collaborations for a long time – but also to foster participation in projects that are too large or complex for a single cooperative, for example, by forming a consortium or a temporary joint venture. As De Ambrogio puts it, these are often ‘marriages for convenience’ rather than ‘for love’, driven by the will to increase the possibility of winning the calls/contracts that often implies an underestimation – sometimes even for reasons of time, linked to the tight deadlines of the calls – of the effective capacity of aggregation and work in collaboration (De Ambrogio, 2016: 2). As in the case of economic value, the value extracted in order to survive or to maintain the supply systems falls in the category of

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redistributed value. Managers and leading individuals of non-profit organizations are unlikely to derive directly significant economic benefits due to their role (also because the Italian non-profit regulation prohibits distribution of any profits except salary). However, formal and informal ties created to respond to market challenges can at some point also be used for particularistic purposes by individuals, giving rise to a form of extraction of relational value. In some cases, in fact, individuals with positions of responsibility in social organizations can use the network of relationships built up over time with local public actors, the world of volunteering and private citizens to their own advantage. Sometimes networks that are built through the world of non-profit may become the starting point for entrepreneurial projects in other fields, or may be used in order to lay the basis for a career in politics. Thus, the social capital accumulated over time, through cooperation with public and private actors, is put to other uses, constituting both an element of legitimacy in the field, and a solid electoral base in the local political arena and then, possibly, at national level (Busso, 2018). Once again, the legitimacy derived from the public relevance of social services can help individuals to become relevant players at the local level, and the position acquired (also) through work exploitation may be used to pursue private interests. In this scenario, a common trait that seems to emerge is a progressive fragmentation of positions that once appeared unitary and less exposed to uncertainty. The conditions of access to fundamental rights and the personal opportunities of the actors involved in the processes we have described are increasingly defined by contingent factors, on which individuals have little control, as does the public actor. On the one hand, users and workers face combinations of constraints that change rapidly over time, in different contexts and depending on individual positions. On the other hand, within the non-profit sector the individual social and political embeddedness becomes an essential competitive advantage, if not a survival factor, for both organizations and their leaders. The capacity to act strategically – also establishing relationships which, in some cases, can be exploited opportunistically – thus becomes decisive, while universalism gives way to particularism. Notes 1

The issue of the definition of ‘non-profit’ and ‘third sector’, which will be used in this chapter as synonyms, is at the centre of a long debate (see Salamon and Anheier, 1992). We adopt here a basic and widely shared definition that includes every organization ‘that is precluded, by external regulation or its own governance

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2

3

4 5

6

7

8

9

10

11

structure, from distributing its financial surplus to those who control the use of organizational assets’ (Steinberg and Powell, 2006: 1). A very relevant publication, that influenced the debate, was issued by the OECD (1981). In Italy, the 1968 movement, or Sessantotto, started with student protests in universities, and marked the beginning of an intense, yet very complex, decade of politicization, mobilization and political activism. Along with other forms of protest, political violence increased during these years, bringing the so-called ‘Years of Lead’ (Anni di piombo) marked by political violence and terrorism until the end of the 1980s (see della Porta, 2006). Law no 328, 8 November 2000. The so-called ‘Riforma Fornero’ was approved in December 2011 and gradually increased the retirement age. The Italian model of banking foundations is the result of Law no 218/1990 that reorganized the ‘semi-public’ banks in joint stock companies, able to compete with ordinary private banks. The foundations became the majority shareholders of the new banks, and used the dividends received for philanthropic purposes (Barbetta, 1999). The resources provided by banking foundations vary considerably according to geographical area and size. In 2017, the North of the country collected the largest share of payments (70.1%, concentrated mainly in the North-West, compared to 23.7% in the Centre and 6.2% in the South). As for dimensions, the so-called ‘large foundations’, which numerically represent 20.5% of the total, distribute 82.2% of the total amount disbursed and realize 52% of the interventions (ACRI, 2018). A focus on the complex dynamics of social workers in the non-profit sector has been published in Busso and Lanunziata (2016). Once again, this is not a peculiar trend of the Italian case, as it is well known that ‘outsourcing had an inherent tendency to intensify work and drive down terms and conditions below those prevailing in the public sector’ (Cunningham and James, 2009: 366; see also Cousins, 1988). Data presented in the following pages come from a complete database expressly built up for this research. The database combines the records from the Piedmont regional register of non-profit organizations with data obtained from the Chamber of Commerce company registration, along with other information collected by third party sources from the organizations themselves. This trend emerges in many qualitative interviews carried out with managers of social cooperatives and associations ‘with significant market activities’ (Borzaga et  al, 2016) and reported in Busso (2018). Here are some of these interview excerpts: ‘… of course we use all the possible legal form of cooperation. Temporary agreement between enterprises, unions “on purpose”, consortiums, and we adhere to the Cooperatives Central. And then we are part of some less institutionalized network “from below”’ (MPM, social cooperative, president); ‘it is obvious that we had to work with many other subjects, because […] we could never do it alone: we established networks with other cooperatives, volunteers, the third sector in general[…]. And I’m pretty sure when I say that if you want to play this game [entering the market of assistance to asylum seeker and refugees] you can either work this way or leave’ (MC, social cooperative, president); ‘[when a call is issued the organizations] receive requests to enter networks by many people … to join alliances of various nature. It’s the “assault to the stage coach”, like in Western

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12

movies. There is a great need for resources and where something opens up, we all try to run there in a more or less correct and more or less patchy way’ (ST, social cooperative, manager) (Busso, 2018: 10). About half of the non-profit organizations are located in the province of Torino (Turin). The others are mainly concentrated in the Southern provinces of the region, while the North part of the region is comparatively less affected.

References ACRI (Associazione di Fondazioni e di Casse de Risparmio Spa) (2018) ‘Ventitreesimo rapporto sulle Fondazioni di origine bancaria – Anno 2017’, available at www.acri.it/Article/PublicArticle/123/8311/ ventitreesimo-rapporto-sulle-fondazioni-di-origine-bancaria--anno-2017 Amin, A., Cameron, A. and Hudson, R. (2002) Placing the Social Economy, London: Routledge. Anheier, H.K. and Seibel, W. (eds) (2013) The Third Sector: Comparative Studies of Nonprofit Organizations, Vol 21, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Ascoli, U. and Ranci, C. (eds) (2002) Dilemmas of the Welfare Mix: The New Structure of Welfare in an Era of Privatization, New York: Springer Science & Business Media. Baccetti, C. and Messina, P. (2009) L’eredità: Le subculture politiche della Toscana e del Veneto, Padova: Liviana. Balibar, É. (2014) Equaliberty: Political Essays, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Barbetta, G.P. (ed) (1997) The Nonprofit Sector in Italy, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Barbetta, G.P. (1999) ‘Foundations in Italy’, in H.K. Anheier and S. Toepler (eds) Private Funds, Public Purpose: Philanthropic Foundations in International Perspective, Boston, MA: Springer, 199–218. Bartoli, G., Menegatti, V. and Ranieri, C. (2016) ‘La riforma del Terzo settore e il sistema di registrazione degli enti non profit’, Amministrazione in cammino, Isfol OA, available at http://isfoloa. isfol.it/xmlui/handle/123456789/1276 Borzaga, C., Franchini, G. and Galera, G. (2016) Mapping Study on Social Enterprise Eco-Systems – Updated Country Report on Italy, Brussels: European Commission, Directorate-General for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion. Borzaga, C., Poledrin, S. and Galera, G. (2017) Social Enterprise in Italy: Typology, Diffusion and Characteristics, Euricse Working Paper, Trento: Euricse (European Research Institute on Cooperative and Social Enterprises).

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De Ambrogio, U. (2016) ‘Fra matrimoni d’amore e di interesse: Le partnership interne al terzo settore nelle coprogettazioni’, Prospettive Sociali e Sanitarie, 4/2016: 3–5. Defourny, J. and Nyssens, M. (2008) Social Enterprise in Europe: Recent Trends and Developments, Emes Working Paper 08/01, Southlake, TX: Emes. della Porta, D. (2006) Social Movements, Political Violence, and the State: A Comparative Analysis of Italy and Germany, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Eikenberry, A.M. and Kluver, J.D. (2004) ‘The marketization of the nonprofit sector: Civil society at risk?’, Public Administration Review, 64(2): 132–40. Faulk, L., Willems, J., McGinnis Johnson, J. and Stewart, A.J. (2016) ‘Network connections and competitively awarded funding: The impacts of board network structures and status interlocks on nonprofit organizations’ foundation grant acquisition’, Public Management Review, 18(10): 1425–55. Foundational Economic Collective (2018) Foundational Economy: The Infrastructure of Everyday Life, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Granovetter, M. (2017) Society and Economy: Framework and Principles, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Heemskerk, E.M. (2013) ‘The rise of the European corporate elite: evidence from the network of interlocking directorates in 2005 and 2010’, Economy and Society, 42(1): 74–101. Hindess, B. (2012) Freedom, Equality and the Market: Arguments on Social Policy, London: Routledge. Ianes, A. (2016) Exploring the Origins of Social Enterprise: Social CoOperation in the Italian Welfare System and Its Reproduction in Europe (from the 1970s to the Present), Euricse Working Paper, Trento: Euricse (European Research Institute on Cooperative and Social Enterprises). Janoski, T. (1998) Citizenship and Civil Society: A Framework of Rights and Obligations in Liberal, Traditional, and Social Democratic Regimes, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jones, I.R., Ahmed, N., Catty, J., McLaren, S., Rose, D., Wykes, T. and Burns, T. (2009) ‘Illness careers and continuity of care in mental health services: A qualitative study of service users and carers’, Social Science & Medicine, 69(4): 632–9. Le Grand, J. (1991) ‘Quasi-markets and social policy’, The Economic Journal, 101(408): 1256–67.

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Le Grand, J. and Bartlett, W. (1993) ‘Quasi-Markets and Social Policy: The Way Forward?’, in J. Le Grand and W. Bartlett (eds) Quasi-Markets and Social Policy, Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, 202–20. Lorenzen, M., Maurer, I., and Staber, U. (2012) ‘Space and interorganizational relations’, Industry and Innovation, 19(3): 181–6. Lori, M. and Pavolini, E. (2016) ‘Cambiamenti organizzativi e ruolo societario delle organizzazioni di Terzo settore’, Politiche Sociali/Social Policies, 1/2016: 41–64. MacIndoe, H. and Sullivan, F. (2014) ‘Nonprofit response to financial uncertainty: How does financial vulnerability shape nonprofit collaboration’, Journal of Management and Sustainability, 4(3): 1–15. Marcon, G. (2004) Le  Utopie del Ben Fare, Naples: L’Ancora del Mediterraneo. Mazzucato, M. (2018) The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in the Global Economy, London: Allen Lane. Milligan, C. (2017) Geographies of Care: Space, Place and the Voluntary Sector, London: Routledge. Milne, G.R., Iyer, E.S. and Gooding-Williams, S. (1996) ‘Environmental organization alliance relationships within and across nonprofit, business, and government sectors’, Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, 15(2): 203–15. Mizruchi, M.S. (1996) ‘What do interlocks do? An analysis, critique, and assessment of research on interlocking directorates’, Annual Review of Sociology, 22(1): 271–98. OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) (1981) The Welfare State in Crisis: An Account of the Conference on Social Policies in the 1980s, Paris: OECD. Omar, A.T., Leach, D. and March, J. (2014) ‘Collaboration between nonprofit and business sectors: A framework to guide strategy development for nonprofit organizations’, Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 25(3): 657–78. Pavolini, E. (2003) Le  Nuove Politiche Sociali: I Sistemi di Welfare tra Istituzioni e Società Civile, Bologna: Il Mulino. Ranci, C. (1999) ‘La Crescita del Terzo Settore in Italia nell’Ultimo Ventennio’, in U. Ascoli (ed) Il Welfare Futuro, Rome: Carocci. Revelli, M. (1997) La Sinistra Sociale, Turin: Bollati Boringhieri. Salamon, L.M. and Anheier, H.K. (1992) ‘In search of the nonprofit sector. I: The question of definitions’, Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 3(2): 125–51. Sanger, M.B. (2004) The Welfare Marketplace: Privatization and Welfare Reform, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.

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PART II

Housing and urban life

5

Planning with citizenship: An idea whose time has come in Greater Manchester? Julie Froud, Mike Hodson, Sukhdev Johal, Hua Wei and Karel Williams The objects of town and country planning … are to secure a proper balance between the competing demands for land, so that all the land of the country is used in the best interests of the people…. The people whose surroundings are being planned must be given every chance to take an active part in the planning process … and when they have had it, the provisional plan may need a good deal of alteration…. In the past, plans have been too much the plans of officials…. (Lewis Silkin MP, Minister for Town and Country Planning, in the House of Commons Debate on the Second Reading of the Town and Country Planning Bill, Hansard, 29 January 1947, quoted in Silkin, 1947) Lewis Silkin was a minister in the postwar Labour government, which introduced the Town and Country Planning Act in 1947, and this Act figures in every history of UK planning as the landmark mid-century coming of age of a new practice of spatial governance that promised to make cities civilized. It is a useful reminder that the 1945 Labour government did contain radicals like Silkin, whose ambition was to change (not consolidate) urban planning practice, where his notions of participation went well beyond representative democracy and trade union balloting. Silkin argued from democratic first principles that urban planning in ‘the interests of the people’ exists to articulate a collective purpose, and that only becomes possible if plan making is participative and involves active citizens who can challenge priorities and change official plans. This radical theme – planning reshaped by active citizens – runs like a motif throughout the subsequent academic literature. The Oxford Handbook of Urban Planning includes a chapter on planning

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and citizenship by Miraftab (2012), who writes from the point of view that citizenship is not a political status with formal rights but an active process of making and doing. So the question is not about what citizenship is as given by the state, but what citizenship can do when grounded in civil society. In a scholarly and broad-ranging book, Mazza (2017) distinguishes between spatial planning and governance; planning is the technical knowledge and professional know-how that properly supports broad political choices, better described as spatial governance. In Mazza’s view, citizenship is, then, a social process, project and way of life that should subsume planning because citizenship is ‘a body of practices, an experience and an activity carried out by citizens who act to reshape rights, duties and forms of belonging’ (2017: 1). This kind of citizen participation matters practically in urban industrial societies, where planning of a spatial framework typically directs the building of new housing and social infrastructure, the repurposing of the existing urban fabric and the extension of the builtup area. This is a foundational economic story because housing, utility connection and social infrastructure are basic household needs and essential to wellbeing in the infrastructure-heavy urban environment. But this is also a market capitalist story because houses, like shops and offices – and unlike many other foundational goods and services – are mostly private property. They are, then, both a commodity and an asset, which can be a source of income and wealth for those who develop, own, rent or sell property. The balance between need and asset is historically specific because the social need for decent housing is politically recognized to a variable extent in different times and different places. Thus spatial planning and housing provision are bound up with citizenship through variable social entitlement, citizen participation and planning practice in different periods. And the story of UK planning cannot now be told as a Whig history of progress towards increasing recognition of social need and participation rights. Raynsford’s (2018) Review of Planning for the Town and Country Planning Association, chaired by a former housing and planning minister, describes UK planning now as a dysfunctional ‘process-driven treadmill’, which is not working ‘to secure the health and well-being of all our communities’; moreover, it is threatening to create ‘a new generation of slums’ through unregulated conversion of offices to housing. Raynsford’s overall verdict on citizen participation is that ‘communities complain that their interests are overlooked and their interests are subordinated to other priorities’ (2018: 2).

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The story of planning in the UK since 1945 – and specifically in Greater Manchester, which is the focus of this chapter – is about how, in different ways, and in successive periods, the practice of planning has fallen short of the ideal of participation. This was never enacted in the 1950s and 1960s era of (technocratic) planning without citizenship and, as a principle, it vanished after the 1980s when private property developers acquired the leading role, so we now have citizenship without (social) planning. In other times and places, like Red Vienna in the 1920s or Bologna in the 1970s, social entitlement to housing and infrastructure was recognized, and citizen participation was taken seriously in Bologna. But Vienna and Bologna were short-lived experiments, and we have yet to realize the future that the 1940s minister proposed and radical academics envisaged. The 1947 Act empowered county and county borough councils to manage the spatial planning process under Whitehall control, and the outcome was very different from what Silkin intended. Within a topdown frame of political control and technocratic action after 1945, active citizenship and participation was unnecessary because target setting on housing new builds was centralized in Whitehall, and town halls were empowered to deliver as the financially dependent agents of the centre. In this frame, the post-1945 settlement delivered large amounts of municipal social housing within a welfare state, where ‘council housing’ increased to account for 30 per cent of national housing stock; at the same time, urban planning aimed more broadly to provide the social infrastructure for citizens’ work and leisure. Housing was never a universal basic service but the availability of a decent council house across much of Greater Manchester was consistent with Beveridge’s notion of minimum standards for all. As with much else, in post-1979 Britain this settlement did not survive under a new political regime. The role of the state was now not to build and manage but to sell off and outsource: Mrs Thatcher offered council tenants the right to buy at a discount and the New Labour governments from 1997 pressed through council house stock transfer to housing associations. Citizens were left without (social) planning because private developers acquired the leading role in developer-led regeneration after the 1980s, which offered marketbased provision of housing, offices and retail. Developers frequently sidestepped commitment to affordable housing and social infrastructure that would reduce profits. Since the late 1980s, developer-led urban regeneration has dominated in many of the world’s cities and, as we shall see, this is so in stark and heightened form in Greater Manchester’s approach to housing provision.

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Developer-led regeneration was promoted to fix the problems of deindustrialization and deliver inclusive growth through trickledown, with jobs distributing higher market incomes. Even ‘urban boosters’ now accept this has not happened: in his most recent book, Florida (2017: 4) underlines the idea that great cities are ‘engines of economic and social progress’ but recognizes they are also ‘zones of gaping inequality and class division’, so the general result is ‘the new urban crisis’. In Manchester, developer-led regeneration had unequal consequences for groups and places: buy-to-let landlords offered new flats for young professionals in the centre, while developers built no new family homes for low-income households across Greater Manchester as council houses were sold off at a discount and not replaced. Hence the importance of thinking about how – with new forms of citizen participation and different socioeconomic priorities – planning could start to shape a new civic future for Greater Manchester that breaks with developer-led regeneration and does not reinstate town hall planning. Our analytic understanding is summarized in Table  5.1, which expands on the idea of systematic difference by listing 12 heterogeneous socioeconomic drivers that vary individually and are combined differently to define successive periods. Ultimately, in our view, what is distinctive about each period is the specific forms of political mobilization that define it. By political mobilization we mean a configuration that sets development in motion with lead actors, participants, forms of expertise and supportive finance in a defined field of action with objectives, vision and measures of success. This chapter is organized in a relatively straightforward way. The first two sections describe the successive periods of town hall planning and developer-led regeneration in Greater Manchester. The third section draws some lessons from Vienna and Bologna, where social need and participation animated planning systems. On this basis, we sketch a possible civic future for Greater Manchester while recognizing that it is politically difficult to break with development-led regeneration.

Urban planning after the 1945 City of Manchester Plan The period immediately before the passing of the 1947 Act was an exceptional one of innovation and experimentation, with new forms of public presentation and participation in urban planning, although, as Cowan (2010) notes, the London-based experiments were ambiguous because they were as much about enlisting citizen support for existing plans as about empowering citizens to change plans. In the 1950s and 1960s this calcified into a centrally driven, town hall-dominated

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Table 5.1: A century of remaking Greater Manchester, 1945–2045 Urban planning (1945–86)

Developer-led regeneration (1986 onwards)

Civic future (towards 2045?)

Vision

Building the modernist city-region

Building the competitive city-region

Building the citizen’s city-region

Orientating problems

Poor living and working conditions in the industrial city

Fixing deindustrialization; search for postindustrial knowledge economy

Failure of collective provision in a rich society

Focus and purpose

Collectivize/nationalize foundational services in an industrial economy

Cultivate new, ‘business friendly’ economic identity for a post-industrial city-region

Experiments with co-producing heterogeneous services

Housing, transport and foundational services

Work towards universal provision or minimum standards via state provision in housing

Selective and prioritized provision, matching investors with private consumption demands of citizens with market income.

Rediscovering universal standards of collective provision in a heterogeneous context

Social infrastructure Top-down, generic recipe with provision according to population; need formulae

Blind spot/invisible; rely on legacy provision that Bottom-up/generative from citizen needs is increasingly run down

Relationship between national state and Greater Manchester

Centralizing, to create frameworks for local action with central grants or sanction for local borrowing

Controlling, parsimonious central state, promoting ‘competition’, constraining local action

Need for enabling central state

Governance and democratic participation

Public authorities and corporations, top-down state assumed benign and competent; policy done to and for citizens

Public–private partnerships, top-down via developer priorities facilitated by repurposed state; elite monopoly of decision with citizens ‘consulted’ after things have been decided

Civil society and intermediary institutions in co-producer role, that is, non-state can plan, deliver and own the collective; change via challenging elite governance and demonstrating alternatives (continued)

Planning with citizenship

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Driver

Table 5.1: A century of remaking Greater Manchester, 1945–2045 (continued) Urban planning (1945–86)

Developer-led regeneration (1986 onwards)

Civic future (towards 2045?)

Knowledge, expertise and participation

Professional town hall-based planning and technocratic engineering

Developer-led with financial and legal expertise bought in and mainly at the service of developers

Granular place-based knowledge of citizens informs strategy

Change-makers

Local authority, planners and engineers working to a masterplan

Growth coalition (political, business and developer elites with developers in leading role)

Wide range of place-based social interests and intermediaries working with political decisionmakers

Finance

Public, tax-funding

Multiple sources, with public funding from Private leads via bank and capital market funding of what is most profitable; state funding reinvented taxation transport infrastructure and relinquishes social claims

Geography

Infill of family housing by council estates with slum clearance in built up area and new build on edges; centre adapted to car etc

Infill of flats on brownfield ex-industrial land now overspilling an extended city centre plus new build in edge of city and priority consumption spaces such as airport and Trafford Centre

Networked and distributed provision across the city

Number of jobs created; GVA; levels of inward investment

Citizen wellbeing measures related to quantity and quality of services

Measures of success Access to foundational services; number of social houses built

The Foundational Economy and Citizenship

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system of planning without any effective citizen representation beyond the property owner’s established right to be informed with a right of appeal against development (which was often irrelevant for workingclass renters). Paradoxically, it was the recognition of urgent social need for new housing that undermined participation. The 1951 Conservative Party General Election manifesto declared ‘housing is the first social service’,1 and the incoming Conservative government geared up for delivery by setting a target of 300,000 new houses a year that directed local authority efforts. In this frame, with increasing emphasis on cost control, there was very little consultation (let alone participation) about slum clearance, no concession to tenants’ preference for new houses and not flats, and routine allocation of new units without consideration of family or community ties. In Greater Manchester,2 this new building overlaid an existing pipe and cable infrastructure of late 19th-century gas, water and sewer provision that had already networked the city to produce dramatic improvements in mortality and morbidity. From the 1890s to the 1930s, the city was capable of grand projects for material and providential provision which, by the interwar period, included mass housing: the Thirlmere reservoir from the 1890s brought clean water 90 miles from the Lake District, and Wythenshawe in the 1930s was designed as a 12 square mile garden city of council housing for the working class on an edge-of-city greenfield site at the southern side of Manchester. But the rest of Greater Manchester at the end of the 1930s was, in spatial terms, much as rapid industrialization and urbanization had left it. The shock city of the industrial revolution comprised what are now the two central boroughs of Manchester and Salford and the eight outer boroughs, all of which was spatially the un-zoned, jumbled, historical residue of mixed uses and private development of factories, retail and high-density – often poor-quality – terraced housing. Town planning in the 1940s added the vision of rebuilding a modernist city where planners’ technocratic knowledge and civic intervention by local government could together deliver a new kind of built environment where good quality housing in the narrow sense was fitted into a broader design for living including planned space and provision for work and leisure. The vision was incomplete because even at the high point in the 1950s and 1960s, there was never a comprehensive masterplan for imposing zoned order on all 10  boroughs of Greater Manchester. But the ambition and scale of planning from the 1950s to 1970s was unprecedented and represented a kind of step change.

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The 1945 City of Manchester Plan, prepared for the Manchester City Council by their Surveyor and Engineers Department, directly covered a population of 700,000 and connected with 2 million in the surrounding conurbation. Its aims were universal and the means were to be comprehensive: the 1945 Plan was ‘to enable every inhabitant of this city to enjoy real health of body and mind’ which required ‘radical improvements in our living and working conditions’ (Nicholas, 1945: 1). Subsequent plans focused on the city centre. In its 1964, 1967 and 1974 reports, Manchester City Planning Department envisioned a zoned central city with five separate districts for activities like shopping, entertainment and education, integrated by a Colin Buchanan-style ‘traffic in towns’ plan for a motorized city with cars and pedestrians separated by constructing upper-level pedestrian walkways (Brown and Dodge, 2016). The most interesting of these plans is the original in 1945, which has a well-developed technocratic vision of how essential material services (especially housing) could be supplied to communities of citizens who needed social infrastructure as well as houses in which to live. This is the postwar British new town vision applied to an existing conurbation. The 1945 City of Manchester Plan was an urban programme for planned communities to replace an unplanned high-density city. ‘Neighbourhood’ communities, each with populations of 10,000, would be grouped into larger districts, all governed by new standards including an allowance of open space per 1,000 of the population. Wholesale reconstruction was required to meet three priorities: first, quality social housing with hard infrastructural provision, including networked energy, water, waste and transport; second, transport repurposed, largely to accommodate the car; and third, social and community infrastructure including schools, libraries, churches and shops. No existing Manchester neighbourhood met these standards. The garden city at Wythenshawe was criticized as a residential estate lacking community facilities and constructed on a low-density basis so that it could take no more than 36,000 of the much larger number of Mancunians who needing rehousing. Manchester City Council (like the other boroughs) took a leading role but never had the borrowing powers and capital resources to buy from private land and property owners and rebuild on the scale required. Much of the 1945 Plan was never built, and the gap between technocratic ambition and achievement is symbolized for posterity by the city’s half-built inner ring road. The other point of weakness was the dependence of local government action on sponsorship by central government that set and reset the rules of the game.

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Compulsory purchase at existing land use value had been the basis of postwar large-scale planning, but that was ended in 1959 by the Macmillan government that then gave landowners the right to ‘hope value’ under the Local Government Act of 1961. This powerfully incentivized local government to build council housing of high density or in the wrong place (because it was cheaper); hence, system building in Manchester like the Hulme Crescents of 1972, or isolated edgeof-city developments like the Hattersley overspill estate of the 1960s. This was not what the civic planners of 1945 intended but still served to discredit the idea of town planning among those who could not distinguish between concept and execution. In Manchester, then, planning did not decline slowly but, politically, was killed off quickly after deindustrialization changed the possibilities of redevelopment by freeing up brownfield city sites. Monetarist economic policies brought a high pound and high interest rates, so that more than 20 per cent of UK manufacturing jobs were lost permanently in the first recession of the early 1980s. Deindustrialization then rolled on through the 1980s and 1990s in Greater Manchester, stripping out jobs and leaving many vacant exindustrial brownfield sites right across the city region. Hence much was invested in new possibilities of urban ‘regeneration’, to undo the damage of deindustrialization and repurpose old docklands and factory sites by building new developments that offered some locally appropriate mix of residential, retail, office and warehouse space. Politically led institutional changes disempowered technocratic planning and local government. Political resistance from the Greater London Council and others led the Thatcher government to abolish it and other (Labour-dominated) metropolitan counties. In Greater Manchester, the abolition of Greater Manchester County Council in 1986 removed the responsible city region authority and the only political frame in which coherent city region-wide urban planning could take place. Formal metropolitan government was replaced by a mix of voluntary metropolitan cooperation through the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities (AGMA) in some areas, including waste and transport, and the devolution of other responsibilities back to Greater Manchester’s boroughs. A new political order was inaugurated by the rebuilding of the 12 square km Trafford Park industrial estate as a warehouse district between 1987 and 1998; this was undertaken by a new-style Development Corporation, outside local government control, as with the London Docklands. Equally significant was the granting of planning permission for the out-of-town Trafford Centre shopping

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mall, where the dominant regional developer, Peel Holdings, fought the opposing borough councils and won on appeal by a House of Lords decision in 1996. In this political frame, resistance appeared futile because developers were now politically empowered to build, site by site, in districts where they could make money. The foundational priority of social housing was politically buried and the urban planning function atrophied. The boroughs were obliged under the ‘right to buy’ 1980 Housing Act to sell council houses at a discount to tenants without rebuilding; borough planning and architect functions decayed because there was little for them to do. The 1945 urban planning vision of neighbourhoods and districts with schools, libraries and green spaces was completely lost. The supply of foundational goods and services was taken for granted even though private developers would not want to finance collective provision, and nor was availability of and access to such services secured by rising market incomes from employment. From the beginning, developerled regeneration was logically a recipe for private affluence and public squalor.

Developer-led regeneration after the 1980s The shift from urban planning and reconstruction to developer-led regeneration meant a change of focus. Urban planning aims to relate parts to the whole: classically, as in the City of Manchester, with the concept of the masterplan to be developed in phases and with neighbourhood standards for green space and such like. This big picture ambition is lost in developer-led regeneration, which focuses on the sites that can be most profitably developed. Developers in the 1980s and 1990s focused on sites in or adjacent to the city centre in the two inner boroughs of the Cities of Manchester and Salford that offered the prospect of higher rents and easier resale. Developers largely ignored outer boroughs like Oldham and Rochdale. The measure of success in the inner boroughs was whether developers put up buildings, and the political consequence in the City of Manchester was the displacement of government by an entrepreneurial form of urban governance where local political and business elites worked together in ‘partnerships’ to promote the transformation of selected areas through regeneration. A relatively small number of developers and landowners (see Table 5.2) and their professional advisers have a close relation with Manchester City Council that sets the area development framework and, in some instances, provides loans from the Greater Manchester Housing Fund. Increasingly, under the

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Planning with citizenship Table 5.2: Developers making the ‘New Manchester’: number of apartments under development in the City of Manchester, 2016 Under Planning Total Developer construction Groundworks Approved applications active Renaker 2,320 0 600 0 2,920 Select 263 0 1,180 0 1,443 Peel Land & Property 164 0 477 0 641 Scarborough 571 0 0 0 571 XI 1,061 0 741 0 1,802 Fortis 466 0 533 0 999 Urban Splash 44 171 0 105 320 Allied London 0 0 57 534 591 Manchester Life 426 158 229 0 813 English Cities Fund 261 0 0 0 261 Total 5,576 329 3,817 639 10,361 Source: Adapted from Howe (2016)

Thatcher and Blair governments, the role of the local authority was facilitation. In effect this meant, find out what the private developers want to do and facilitate with developer-friendly zoning decisions and infrastructure, before giving planning permissions that make money for developers without requiring social returns. In Manchester and Salford, developer-led regeneration widened the existing political disconnect between officers and councillors, and ordinary citizens. In the period of urban planning, local government worked for citizens, albeit with a top-down agenda where much was done to citizens, but the two city centre councils now worked for private developers without claiming social returns for citizens. First, under Section 106 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, all local authorities can require a ‘developer contribution’ in return for planning permission: a developer can, for example, be required to make public space provision, build a doctor’s surgery or construct roads. Second, and in addition, Manchester and Salford Councils both have general rules that all developments of more than 15 houses should contain 20 per cent of ‘affordable housing’. Despite such requirements, both councils have unquestioningly accepted the ex-ante projections in developer spreadsheets showing that projects would be unviable if social contribution were made or ‘affordable housing’ were provided (Williams, 2018). In a report for Greater Manchester Housing Action, Jon Silver (2018) examined the planning consents on 79 developments for 26,000 homes in the Cities of Manchester and Salford development pipelines in 2017. Section 106

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contributions were required on just 13 developments to a total value of £5.7 million; on these same developments, Section 106 contributions by developers were dwarfed by public loans to developers, totalling £265 million. The 20 per cent rule was effectively not applied; the permissions for 26,000 homes resulted in no provision for affordable housing in Manchester and just 5 units in Salford. In broader social terms, developer-led regeneration has been a huge investment in reinforcing spatial and social inequalities across the 10 boroughs. Increasingly developers have been permitted to build up in high rise, with one- or two-bedroom flat units on brownfield sites in Manchester City Centre and adjacent Salford Quays. From 1991–2011, the number of flats in Greater Manchester as a whole increased from 156,000 to 227,000; Manchester and Salford accounted for 43,000 of that increase (Folkman et  al, 2016: 16). These flats were aimed at a particular demographic, 25- to 34-year-old whitecollar workers, who were increasingly populating the city centre and working in the office blocks also being built on brownfield sites. Using census data, the Centre for Cities shows that Manchester enjoyed a much faster rise in the number of younger people, particularly those with degree-level education, than most other large and medium-sized cities: between 2001 and 2011, most of the 20,000 new residents of Manchester City Centre were under the age of 35 and 60 per cent had a degree (Swinney, 2016). Within the Greater Manchester city region, the extent of population growth has been quite uneven, as Figure 5.1 shows: between 2001 and 2014, the population of 25- to 34-year-olds increased by 47,000 in the two boroughs of Manchester and Salford but declined in all the eight other boroughs (Folkman et al, 2016: 129). These young ‘professionals’ typically rented flats from buy-to-let landlords who were buying property as a form of long-term investment. Social infrastructure to support these developments was not immediately an issue because the tenants were young, could usually walk to work and after work could use city centre cultural amenities such as cinemas and cafes. A post-student demographic largely did not need facilities such as schools and surgeries. The transformative power of the developers is hugely magnified by the capital market: the ready availability of syndicated funds to finance development of blocks ahead of sale and then by high street lenders who provide retail mortgages for individual buy-to-let purchasers. As capitalist lenders never know when to stop, for Minskian3 reasons, the inevitable pattern is one of credit-fuelled boom and bust. The funding for flat development was cut off for three or four years after the 2008

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Planning with citizenship Figure 5.1: Net change in the 25–34 population across the Greater Manchester boroughs, 2001–14 Greater Manchester total Wigan

32,261 –3,048

Trafford

–470

Tameside

–1,735

Stockport –4,856 Salford

10,305

Rochdale

–566

Oldham

–189

Manchester

34,351

Bury

–1,322

Bolton 00

0,0

–1

–209

0

,00

–5

0

00

5,0

0

,00

10

0

,00

15

0

,00

20

0

,00

25

0

,00

30

0

,00

35

0

,00

40

Source: Nomis, Office for National Statistics

financial crisis before it resumed in huge volume. Since then, the growth in the number of residential apartments, planned and under construction in Manchester City Centre and adjacent Salford, has been spectacular. The Manchester Development Update tracks the rapidly rising number of planning applications for apartments in both areas: this has risen from around 1,000 in early 2013 in Manchester City Centre and around 600 in Central Salford to more than 6,000 in each by early 2016 (Howe, 2016). On a different measure and more recently, according to Deloitte Real Estate’s (2020) Manchester Crane Survey, 3,619 residential units were completed in 2019 and 12,357 residential units were under construction in 2019, with 8,880 anticipated to complete within the year. The new one- or two-bedroom high-rise apartments in the centre can be afforded by young professionals, recent graduates and affluent students, especially if they share. A recent report by the lettings agency Ascend Properties (undated)4 suggested that the average costs of buying and renting apartments in Manchester City Centre are as follows: an average one-bedroom apartment to buy, £185,000, and two-bedroom, £270,000; with an average one-bedroom rental, £844pcm, and two bedroom, £1,128pcm. Many citizens require more child-friendly

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two- or three-bedroom properties at lower rents more in line with the £350 per month or so that social housing landlords typically charge in Greater Manchester. The construction of social housing has basically stopped, although Greater Manchester’s waiting list for social housing reached 80,000 by the early 2000s and has stayed above that level (Foster, 2016). The implicit notion was that the development in Manchester City Centre was justified because the employment benefits of central rebuilding would spill over to form islands of prosperity in the centre, adjacent to areas of inner-city deprivation, while outer boroughs like Oldham would benefit as commuting could bring in a new workforce from the outer boroughs. A study of trickle-down to adjacent areas by Schulze Bäing and Wong (2018) has demonstrated conclusively that deprived Salford did not benefit from adjacent developments at Salford Quays. More generally, the policy hope that the outer boroughs of Greater Manchester could benefit from commuting to the centre was undermined by Treasury-mandated high fares to cover tram operating costs. Developer regeneration has produced an expanding new town in the centre whose shiny external appearance impresses London journalists on a day trip. But it offers very little to most Greater Manchester citizens beyond more choice of a city region shopping destination, a Saturday night in the centre or a holiday flight from the airport. This regeneration has done little to remedy the painful inequalities within and between Manchester boroughs, including shockingly low life expectancy in poorer neighbourhoods (Inclusive Growth Analysis Unit, 2017). Southern parts of the city region are generally relatively affluent while the former mill towns to the north like Oldham and Rochdale appear to be in managed decline and do not attract the kind of developer that puts up blocks of flats. After 30  years, developer-led regeneration had produced and continues to produce highly uneven development, focusing on limited parts of the Greater Manchester population and producing little supporting social infrastructure. This is inherent in the dominant model that is based on a search for developer profits, facilitated by local government that has been constrained by central government and has limited capacity to defend citizen interests. We are seeing the widespread and systematic remaking of Manchester City Centre and adjacent parts of Salford as a new town of private rented apartments, offices and luxury hotels. This is a city centre that is being remade, in many ways, for developer profit and the aspirational renter, with a

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gross mismatch between the wider social priorities of the majority of Greater Manchester’s population.

A vision of a foundational future The story of Greater Manchester is a dispiriting one because planning with citizenship has never been achieved and, after 30 years of developer-led regeneration, the outcome is curtailed citizenship without planning for many Mancunians. In searching for something different, it is useful to look back historically at the very different achievement of citizenship through planning in 1920s Vienna and 1970s Bologna, focusing on the political preconditions of that achievement. This allows us to return to present-day Greater Manchester, where we can sketch a different civic future and observe the many political obstacles that stand in the way of realizing that future. In 1920s Vienna, the city government constructed more than 60,000 apartments in 400 Gemeindebauten (community construction) apartment complexes. As Blau (2000) emphasizes, this was not a housing programme but an urban programme for collective living because the ‘super blocks’ combined housing with providential services and cultural institutions as part of a top-down plan to construct a new egalitarian environment for workers, and with women released from much domestic labour. The Gemeindebauten rehoused one-tenth of the city’s population with communal facilities like laundries, and provided the city with a new social welfare and cultural infrastructure of surgeries and health clinics, nurseries (kindergartens), schools, libraries and co-op stores. This demonstrates the importance of a permanent party of government which, in the Viennese case, had a clear planning and citizenship agenda with the power (political and fiscal) to deliver. Vienna was captured by the Social Democrats (Sozialdemokratische Arbeiterpartei Österreichs, SDAPÖ) in 1919, and held for the next 15  years. The 1921 compromise between the city and its rural hinterland made Vienna an independent province, giving the city government autonomy and a substantial tax base. Vienna’s Housing Construction Tax (Wohnbausteur) and other redistributive taxes then paid for the apartment complexes whose construction costs were written off so that very low rents could be set at around 4 per cent of worker wages to recover operating costs. Forty years later in Bologna, under the PCI (Partito Comunista Italiano), there was the same concern with an urban programme now combined with active citizen participation. Jäggi et al (1977)

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outline some of the planning achievements. For example, all plans for conservation or development were discussed in neighbourhood councils with right of veto (Jäggi et al, 1977: 36); the renovated old town was preserved as an area of working-class housing while edgeof-town estates were built and operated by housing cooperatives with self-management of public services; and public transport fares were low and free in rush hour as a social service (Jäggi et al, 1977: 63). Equally the political preconditions are crucial in Bologna. Long before the formal historic compromise of the 1970s with the Christian Democrats, Bologna had benefited from an understanding that, if the PCI was excluded from national government, it should have latitude to organize and deliver red bases in other parts of the state apparatus. And the importance of politics is reinforced by the way in which both municipal experiments were cut short, by violence in the case of Vienna and amidst growing confusion in Bologna. In Vienna’s case, Social Democratic rule over the city was ended by the brief civil war of 1934 when symbolically the Fascists shelled Karl Marx Hof, the grandest of the Gemeindebauten. The PCI held Bologna from 1945 but, from the mid-1970s, was increasingly disoriented by a new politics of groups with social bases outside the organized working class and ideologies not defined by position on the Soviet Union. The Bologna city government quelled protests by sending in the police who killed a student in 1977, and the increasingly factionalized national PCI finally dissolved in 1991. Vienna and Bologna show how transformational ideas about planning can be turned into reality within one city but under political conditions that cannot easily be reproduced and are often temporary. So, it is relatively easy to develop a vision of Greater Manchester’s civic future and more difficult to negotiate the political obstacles that have not been removed by recent measures of devolution to the city region. Greater Manchester needs to move away from the ideal of the competitive city region that is the economic policy corollary of developer-led regeneration. Drawing on Vienna and Bologna, the vision should be of a foundational future where housing in the narrow sense and the social infrastructure around it are integrated into broader material and providential provision to give citizens lives worth living (Foundational Economy Collective, 2018). The aim should be to build a city region for citizens, with public policy underpinning collective forms of consumption in key areas like housing, transport and utilities. The key civic problems are now are not slums or deindustrialization but increasing public squalor and degradation of the public realm, and

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a generation’s neglect of collective consumption (in favour of private, market-mode consumption). Repairing the collective means upgrading the provision of core foundational services, including housing and transport, which need to be considered from a quality of life point of view, not just as a means to ‘making the economy work’ or practically supporting the profitable development of specific sites. A broader view of development also requires a new commitment to generating forms of place-based social infrastructure – parks, high streets, community centres, sports centres, libraries, schools etc. This social infrastructure has been neglected under developer-led regeneration because it does not generate rental income or resale value. In making a new civic future, the city region needs wellbeing measures related to the quantity and quality of foundational services. The standard post-1980s metrics of Gross Value Added (GVA) growth, job creation and levels of inward investment become much less relevant. A decent house and the number of social houses built should come back into public policy discourse, but this time with, more sensitivity to what is built where. Overall, this requires a shift from prioritization of the city centre under developer regeneration and to social housing and mixed communities in and around the built-up area. This kind of civic future requires something different from either the developer knowledge and financial expertise pre-eminent in developerled regeneration, or the professional planning and engineering knowledge central to postwar planning. A different future can only be realized by bringing together the thin simplifications of formal policy knowledge with various forms of textured, granular knowledge of local circumstances and social needs. It would be crucially important to inquire into what matters to citizens in specific places. This is now practically much easier because digital technology has opened up new possibilities of low-cost citizen consultation and participation through apps and such like (Wilson et al, 2019). One obstacle is that local and national politics have not caught up with the technological possibilities. This also requires a more participatory form of politics, where the lead actors and changemakers reflect a wide range of place-based social interests working together with strategic political decision-makers at city region and national level. This is very different from the narrow growth coalition of political, business and developer interests under developer-led regeneration, which snuffed out the technocratic ambition of town hall planners and engineers from the planning era. If the aim is to

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support and coordinate multiple experiments with place-based social infrastructure and the provision of foundational services, then we need a new kind of enabling local government responsive to civil society and grassroots groups, cooperatives, platforms and other forms of funding and managing infrastructure and services. This differs from the ‘public–private partnerships’ of developer-led regeneration that have subordinated the leading role of public authorities. If the aim is co-producing place-appropriate foundational services through experimentation by public bodies and citizens’ groups, then a reinvention of public taxation is a prerequisite at local and national level; specifically, tax also has to engage with wealth – especially property, which is now grossly under-taxed. Civic achievement always requires a funding base. The town planning era was based on central grants funded out of the 1940s reinvention of taxation that introduced PAYE income tax and extended social insurance; in a very different way large-scale developer-led generation was built on bank and market finance with net returns levered up by tax avoidance. Development of civic futures also requires a fundamentally different relationship between the London-based central state and the regions, in this case the city region of Greater Manchester. This relationship would not be that of the centralizing state of the postwar period that set frames and limits on or local action and nor would it be the parsimonious central state of the developer-led regeneration era, which promotes a particular notion of regional competition while constraining local action even more narrowly. What the UK needs is an enabling central state. The idea of an enabling state has been devalued because former Prime Minister Tony Blair used it as a slogan in justifying early 2000s welfare and criminal justice reform when it was embedded in an abstract New Labour political discourse about rights and responsibilities (Blair, 2002). Matters were further complicated by the former Prime Minister David Cameron’s promotion of the ‘Big Society’ in 2010, where the state would encourage the voluntary sector and communities to take a bigger role in framing and delivering services that would conveniently cover a retreating state (Cameron, 2010). If the preceding paragraphs about a civic future are taken seriously, they set planning within a citizenship agenda for a much more active state. And the immediate central problem is that the UK is so far from having this kind of enabling state that would give Greater Manchester the autonomy to act for its citizens. In the 2010s, the London government saw the advantages of delegating responsibility for economic development and foundational

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services such as health and care to a city region like Manchester, but this was impossible when the city region had only rudimentary institutions of government. Since 2012, under various city region deals, Greater Manchester has recovered some powers and its institutional weakness has been addressed by the creation of an elected mayor who came into office in 2017. Greater Manchester has thus gained some capacity to think and plan at regional level, but the elected mayor has very limited powers and no city-wide assembly. Meanwhile, the 10 boroughs retain many powers and the inner and outer boroughs often have divergent interests and shared interest in a weak mayor, and developer-led regeneration continues unimpeded. The draft Greater Manchester Spatial Framework (GMSF) and a Greater Manchester Transport Strategy were published in 2016–17: these show that the city region has rediscovered the language of planning but without the comprehensive political reform that would be necessary to challenge and change developer priorities. Economically, citizen wellbeing is not on the agenda because there is little questioning of the relevance of the jobs and economic growth agenda formulated in the 2009 Manchester Independent Economic Review (MIER) and subsequently reinforced by the Treasurysponsored Greater Manchester City Deal in 2012 (GMCA, 2012). Politically, developer-led regeneration has calcified into a growth coalition that unites key figures in the boroughs with the property developers. Thus, the draft GMSF for city region development over the next 20 years does not reinstate planning for citizens but reinforces developer priorities because it formats the city region for their interests (Hodson et al, 2020). The draft GMSF plan proposed nearly 50,000 more homes through building on brownfield sites in the city centre, which would more or less double the size of the existing new town. This is accompanied by more than 150,000 extra new homes in greenfield, edge-of-city developments of housing estates and warehouse districts. The plan of site by site, city centre infill and edge-of-city development led to more than 25,000 responses by residents, mainly relating to proposed green belt developments. This subsequently forced some concessions on the extent of encroachment in the next version published in early 2019 (GMCA, 2019). Notwithstanding such protest-driven changes, it is not easy to get a citizen-focused housing and social infrastructure plan within the existing political framework. Or, in terms of the schema of the socioeconomic drivers shown in Table 5.1, the point is that the change drivers would have to be modified quite radically before Greater Manchester could realize a different civic future.

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A Jane Jacobs moment? There is much that needs to change politically before Greater Manchester can overturn the priorities of developer-led regeneration. Political insurgents (within and outside the dominant Labour Party) see the importance of electing radical councillors to continue the good work which has begun – for example, ensuring Section 106 assessments are disclosed to councillors and insisting on affordable housing quotas being fulfilled. Media and academics can, in different ways, support civil society pressure groups such as Greater Manchester Housing Action through scrutiny and research. Perhaps inevitably, political resistances become less strong because developer-led regeneration becomes discredited by its outcomes in the 2010s, as urban planning was in the 1960s. The idea of a Minskian moment is familiar from economic accounts of cyclicality; the extension of credit to business in a functioning model in due course undermines the stability of that model because the bankers who do the lending do not know when to stop. If we think of the 30-year cycle in forms of planning, maybe we could, by analogy, think of a Jane Jacobs moment because Jane Jacobs intervened at the point when the era of town hall planning was reaching its limit. Urban planning had lost its intellectual prestige and rationale in the 1960s, even as Greater Manchester planners produced their ever-more elaborate and unbuilt plans for zoning the city centre. In the US, Jane Jacobs (1961) published The Death and Life of Great American Cities where the town planner Robert Moses was the villain promoting urban freeways and monocultural social housing developments that undermined the rich diversity of New York. In the UK in 1969, Banham et al collaborated on a New Society special issue on ‘Non Plan’, which criticized planning as top-down and doctrinaire before asking ‘why don’t we trust the choices that would emerge if we let them?’ This body of work is of enduring importance because the intellectual assumptions and anti-planning arguments of the 1960s were, in many ways, correct. Jane Jacobs in the US and Peter Hall et al in the UK were right about the undesirability of town hall planners imposing a top-down vision without regard to citizen priorities and activities. Cut-price high modernism with system-built flats like those by Wilson and Womersley in Hulme was a brutal waste of money because families could not live there and the flats had to be knocked down within 25  years. Planning without citizen participation and deliberation becomes doing policy to citizens.

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We are perhaps now at, or near, another Jane Jacobs moment at the beginning of the 2020s, when the lead actors who do not know when to stop are the property developers (and their lenders) who back proven money-making formulae for turning plots into rentable space in Manchester. Through imitation and absence of imagination, developers’ blocks of flats or ‘mixed-use developments’ are now just as much a monoculture as a 1960s social housing development. The blocks of flats at Middlewood Locks or Pomona are designed for post-student living, not warehousing the working class, but they show the same absence of imagination about liveability and the failure to value sociability which together discredited the cut-price social housing of the 1960s. If this is a point of fundamental vulnerability, the housing market has always been cyclical and the forest of cranes on the Manchester skyline suggest that 2017–19 might represent a cyclical peak, just as 2006–08 represented an earlier peak. The impact of the COVID-19 crisis on the property market is not yet known but the question is not whether this construction cycle will turn down, but how hard that downturn is. The earlier market downturn after 2008 was relatively benign, and buy-to-let landlords have not yet been tested by a combination of falling property prices, declining rents and a market overhang of new build that takes time to clear. In this respect, as elsewhere, the financialization of housing does not inaugurate a new settlement, but brings new instabilities. Notes 1

2

3

4

A copy of this manifesto can be found at www.conservativemanifesto. com/1951/1951-conservative-manifesto.shtml Greater Manchester is a metropolitan county, formally created in 1974, and since 2011 designated a city region. It covers Bolton, Bury, Manchester, Oldham, Rochdale, Salford, Stockport, Tameside, Trafford and Wigan. Prior to 1974, some parts of Greater Manchester belonged to other counties (Cheshire, Lancashire and West Yorkshire). Hyman Minsky (1919–96), American economist of investment, financial crises and boom–bust cycles. The report (Ascend in the City by Ascend Properties) is undated but its material suggests it may have been produced sometime in late 2016 or early 2017.

References Banham, R., Barker, P., Hall, P. and Price, C. (1969) ‘Non Plan: An experiment in freedom’, New Society, 20 March, 437. Blair, T. (2002) ‘My vision for Britain’, The Guardian, 10 November, available at www.theguardian.com/politics/2002/nov/10/ queensspeech2002.tonyblair

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Blau, E. (2000) The Architecture of Red Vienna 1919–34, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Brown, R. and Dodge, M. (2016) Making Post-War Manchester: Visions of an Unmade City, Exhibition Catalogue, Manchester: Manchester Metropolitan University. Cameron, D. (2010) ‘Big Society Speech’, Transcript, 19 July, available at www.gov.uk/government/speeches/big-society-speech Cowan, S.E. (2010) ‘Democracy Technocracy and Publicity: Public Consultation and British Planning 1939–51’, Doctoral thesis, Berkeley, CA: University of California. Deloitte Real Estate (2020) Manchester Crane Survey 2020: Levelling Out, available at www2.deloitte.com/uk/en/pages/real-estate/articles/ manchester-crane-survey.html# Florida, R. (2017) The New Urban Crisis, New York: Basic Books. Folkman, P., Froud, J., Johal, S., Tomaney, J. and Williams, K. (2016) Manchester TransformedWhy We Need a Reset of City Regional Policy, CRESC Public Interest Report, November, Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change (CRESC), available at https://foundationaleconomycom.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/ manchestertransformed.pdf Foster, D. (2016) ‘Why council waiting lists are shrinking despite more people in need of homes’, The Guardian, 12 May, available at www. theguardian.com/housing-network/2016/may/12/council-waitinglists-shrinking-more-need-homes Foundational Economy Collective (2018) Foundational Economy: The Infrastructure of Everyday Life, Manchester: Manchester University Press. GMCA (Greater Manchester Combined Authority) (2012) Greater Manchester City Deal, available at https://assets.publishing.service. gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/ file/406275/Greater-Manchester-City-Deal-final_0.pdf GMCA (2019) Greater Manchester’s Plan for Home, Jobs and the Environment: Greater Manchester Spatial Framework, Revised draft, January, available at www.greatermanchester-ca.gov.uk/what-wedo/housing/greater-manchester-spatial-framework/gmsf-full-plan/ Hodson, M., McMeekin, A., Froud, J. and Moran, M. (2020) ‘State-rescaling and re-designing the material city-region: tensions of disruption and continuity in articulating the future of Greater Manchester’, Urban Studies, 57(1): 198–217. Howe, E. (2016) Manchester Development Update, August 2016, available at www.placenorthwest.co.uk/cms/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/ Ed-Howe-August-Development-Update.pdf

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Inclusive Growth Analysis Unit (2017) Patterns of Poverty in Greater Manchester’s Neighbourhoods, May, available at http://hummedia. manchester.ac.uk/institutes/mui/igau/growthmonitor/GM-MSOApoverty-briefing-note.pdf Jacobs, J. (1961) The Death and Life of Great American Cities, New York: Random House. Jäggi, M., Muller, R. and Schmid, S. (1977) Red Bologna, London: Writers and Readers. Mazza, L. (2017) Planning and Citizenship, London: Routledge. Miraftab, F. (2012) ‘Planning and Citizenship’, in R. Weber and R. Crane (eds) Oxford Handbook of Urban Planning, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1180–204. Nicholas, R. (1945) City of Manchester Plan, Norwich: Jarrold. Raynsford, N. (2018) Planning 2020 – Final Report of the Raynsford Review of Planning in England, London: Town and Country Planning Association, available at www.tcpa.org.uk/raynsford-review Schulze Bäing, A. and Wong, C. (2018) ‘The impact of brownfield regeneration on neighbourhood dynamics: The case of Salford Quays in England’, Town Planning Review, 89: 513–34. Silkin, L. (1947) House of Commons Debate on the Second Reading of the Town and Country Planning Bill, Hansard, 29  January 1947, vol  432, cols  947–1075, available at https://api.parliament. uk/historic-hansard/commons/1947/jan/29/town-and-countryplanning-bill Silver, J. (2018) From Homes to Assets: Housing Financialisation in Greater Manchester, Manchester: Greater Manchester Housing Action. Swinney, P. (2016) ‘The return of city centre living in Manchester’, Centre for Cities blog, 17 March, available at www.centreforcities. org/blog/the-return-of-city-centre-living-in-manchester/ Williams, J. (2018) ‘No affordable housing is being built in Manchester city centre  … so what’s going on?’, Manchester Evening News, 25  February, available at www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/ news/greater-manchester-news/no-affordable-housing-beingbuilt-14332101 Wilson, A., Tewdwr-Jones, M. and Comber, R. (2019) ‘Urban planning, public participation and digital technology’, Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science, 436(2): 286–302.

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Housing and the grounded city: Rent extraction and social innovations Massimo Bricocoli and Angelo Salento1

Introduction After being one of the main political issues in the nascent post-Second World War welfare states, housing has become a neglected topic, both for politics and for social sciences. Only partially included in the field of welfare – Cole and Furbey talked of the ‘amputation’ of the housing arm of the welfare state (1994: 2) – it is mostly perceived as a segment of the market. Only residual attention is currently devoted to the decline of public housing provision, and to the financialization of housing. The role of civil society in housing has changed correspondingly, so that the history of housing and the use of land for its provision can even be interpreted as a history of the transformation of citizenship, understood in a dual sense: citizenship as status, or as a set of rights and duties attributed to the members of a political community; and citizenship as a practice, as a sphere of action that citizens engage in. Like most foundational economic activities, the public provision of housing arose as part of a capitalist economy that necessarily had to grant decent living conditions for workers and citizens in large cities, also including other foundational infrastructure such as sewerage networks and pipelines and public lighting. Over time, however, housing has also become the object of political confrontation, of a politically organized class struggle that followed a periodization based on alternative events in European political history. In accordance with a vast European sociological literature on housing (see, for example, Power, 1993; Aalbers, 2008; Santos Ana et al, 2015), three epochs can be distinguished, starting from the second postwar period: an era of embedded liberalism (or the era of Fordist compromise); a neoliberal era (also referred to as post-Fordist); and a post-crisis period. One of the most important features of the first phase was the strong

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politicization of housing problems and the force of claims regarding the right to housing. Crucially, at this stage, the very use of urban land as a source of unearned income was questioned. The neoliberal era was, on the contrary, one of the depoliticization of housing, during which the use of urban land was rather a field of action for strongly legitimized financial actors rather than an object of political engagement (Flinders and Wood, 2015). Finally, in the post-crisis period, the depoliticization of housing continues – reparative welfare policies are meant to be the only source of public housing provision while the main source of change is a stream of social innovation that rarely calls into question the very basis of rent-seeking in urban space. Three ideal types of citizens emerge from this periodization: the politically engaged citizen of the Fordist era bearing a set of actively claimed social rights; the strongly individualized citizen of the neoliberal era, who interprets the house as a wealth asset and as a possible investment rather than as a basic good; and the activated citizen of the post-crisis period, who is expected to be proactive in order to deserve welfare benefits even when entitled to and in need of them. On a European scale, activation is a key feature of the development of welfare (Bifulco et al, 2008). This occurs either commercially, which characterizes citizenship as the freedom to choose and acquire services offered in the quasi-markets by several competing public and private providers, or morally, tied to responsibilization, which filters access to social goods and services to requirements regarding individual profiles and a commitment to a housing project within a neocommunitarian perspective. As we will discuss, in the current and controversial context of many social housing projects, the ‘activated citizen’ is called on to play the role of a social innovator in search of interstitial wellbeing, experimenting with new forms of housing that address the extreme individualization of urban life. The main aim of this chapter is to question the contemporary forms of civil society engagement, often interpreted as the main avenue to housing innovation. The contribution of civil society and social innovation is, of course, essential as it produces modes of action that can bring significant changes both in the private sphere and in public action. However, the concrete importance of specific initiatives of social innovation should be assessed in relation to existing problems. We argue that the basis of housing problems is not only the decline of public housing policies, but also the increasing strength of rent2 extraction on urban land, an issue that the classics have dealt with, but that has been relinquished by politics and social sciences. The idea that the (eminently social) value of urban land can be captured

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and financialized has been, so to speak, naturalized. Precisely because it is usually taken for granted, this idea needs to be questioned. As pointed out by a group of British scholars in an independent report commissioned by the Labour Party (see Monbiot, 2019), the question of the right to housing cannot be limited to the field of housing policies: it is necessary to put land – urban land in particular – at the heart of political debate and discussion. And the contributions from communities and civil society should be assessed based on their ability to ensure that the dynamics of capital accumulation do not conflict with the needs of wellbeing and social cohesion: that is, their ability to counter the extraction of unearned rents from urban land. Our question, therefore, is what experiments of social innovation tackle the essential problem, that is, the increasingly unequal distribution of the social and economic value of urban land? Many experiments tackle some symptoms or side effects of this trend. Some alleged social innovations are even an integral part of the problem. Grassroots movements often promote the recovery of urban areas that are also attractive for large investors and paradoxically become pioneers of processes of gentrification (Holm, 2013). In such a process, the municipal administration is usually the third actor, and cultural and artistic activities are often an important tool. Thus, the frontier of gentrification advances, as the frontier of new buildings in the suburbs advanced in the 1950s. Very different from purely culturalist claims of the right to the city are those movements that promote squatting, as in these cases the right to obtain a basic good is claimed, but the rules and dynamics of urban rent are rarely called into question (and the risk of ghettoization is high). However, some experiments can be considered as examples of a radical progressive vision on housing, as they switch from the idea of property to one of access, and prevent the capture of urban land value. In these cases, as we shall see, rather than claiming a generic right to the city, the action is taken on the rules neutralizing rentseeking devices. The following analysis refers to Italy. Although barely considered in comparative studies, the Italian case can, for several reasons, be considered a relevant one – Italy is where urbanism was invented. But it is also heavily affected by irresponsible uses of urban space, whose consequences are evident for environment and landscape (Settis, 2012). Moreover, Italy has not been spared the financialization of housing. Regarding housing policies, Italy has an interesting yet not glorious history: although the policies have never managed to tarnish the power of urban rent, they have sometimes limited its effects. A

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further peculiarity that makes the Italian case interesting is that the ‘ideology of homeownership’, which, in other contexts, has spread out in correspondence with the financialization of housing, has long been one of the cultural foundations of the Italian social fabric. The homeownership ideology has both driven public housing policies and provided arguments for defending urban land rent. The first part of this chapter describes the main housing trends: the decline of housing policies and the transformation of urban rent, which, in the last 20 years, has also been financialized. The second part is devoted to a critical analysis of the most recent trends in the so-called social housing and to examining some radical experiments that contrast the logic of rent-seeking and promote the social use of public heritage.

Historical characteristics and recent trends in housing policy in Italy The decline of housing policies In Italy, as in the rest of Europe, public housing policies have followed a downward trend, which coincides with the transition from a ‘Fordist’ regulatory regime to a neoliberal structure, or to financebased capitalism (Aalbers, 2008). The construction of what was then called ‘social housing’ had begun in the pre-republican era, but it was precisely with the emergence of the Fordist compromise that housing became one of the priorities of public action. The most ambitious Italian public housing programme, Piano INA-Casa, or Piano Fanfani from the name of its Christian Democrat promoter, was launched at the beginning of the 1950s, both to respond to the housing needs of postwar generations, and to promote employment in the construction sector. Funds from the Marshall Plan were used, but also a wage levy on employees. Between 1951 and 1961, public housing accounted for about 10 per cent of new buildings, and within 15 years 355,000 housing units were built. In the 1960s (with Law no 60 of 1963) the GESCAL plan was launched (the acronym stood for Case Management for Workers), a 10-year plan that financed social housing using mainly contributions from workers and companies. The last broad and systematic provision for the financing of public housing dates back to 1978 (Law no 457). It envisaged the construction of new buildings and the recovery of existing buildings. The financing ran out at the end of the 1990s. Another important law from the end of the 1970s (no 392 of 1978) defined rules for determining a ‘fair’ rent and a minimum duration of the lease. The law was repealed 20 years later.

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The role of civil society at this time was not simply that of a multitude of users of publicly provided dwellings. The importance of housing policies after the Second World War cannot be explained without considering the strength of social movements that claimed a right to housing (see Daolio, 1974). In the large industrial cities of Northern Italy, such as Milan and Turin, the housing question – together with the question of the dignity of income and working conditions – was at the centre of the demands of workers’ movements. In the large cities of Central and Southern Italy, such as Rome and Naples, where the presence of large-scale industry was much smaller, the housing issue was equally relevant, as it operated as a ‘functional equivalent’ of the industrial question. All the laws – and also many judicial decisions – on the right to housing were issued as a result of strong social demands, very often on an urban scale, between 1950 and 1980. At the end of the 1970s, a decline in housing policies on a European scale had already begun, coinciding with the rise of neoliberal governments in some countries. Forms of privatization of social housing were developed, resources for the construction of new houses were reduced, the rental market was liberalized, and there was a shift from public provision of dwellings to residual housing allowances. In Italy, the decline in housing policies largely coincided with the decentralization of competences from the state to the regions, begun in 1977, and then completed in 2001, with the so-called ‘federalist’ reform of the Constitution. The regions became the primary actor, but with scarce resources to be allocated to public housing. In the name of the ‘housing emergency’, in the 1980s, housing policy interventions took on a selective character and were addressed to very specific categories of beneficiaries. The 1990s and 2000s saw a sharp contraction in public housing assets, both because new buildings were reduced to an insignificant number and because the existing stock was largely sold off. Between 1994 and 2003 more than 71,000 housing units were sold (Corte dei Conti, 2007), and between 1984 and 2004 the construction of new housing decreased, from 34,000 to 1,900 a year (Cittalia – Fondazione Anci Ricerche, 2010). In brief, public housing has become residual. As of 2015, the public housing stock has about 742,000 apartments; about 650,000 families are on the waiting list, and this represents only a small fraction of the number of families actually in need of housing (Federcasa, 2015). Current funding barely covers maintenance and restructuring costs. In the same period, the liberalization of rents was completed, with the law on fair rent repealed in 1998. A national housing allowances fund was introduced, which was modest (Baldini and Poggio, 2012),

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and with a declining budget (from €366 million allocated for 2000 to €10 million for 2019). In 2008, a ‘Housing Plan’ was launched, funding some public housing projects, but also further public housing sales; most importantly, it introduced a system of real estate funds with public and private capital. Resources previously used for public housing were increasingly devolved to ‘complex programmes’ for urban redevelopment. In a nutshell, the essential characteristics of contemporary housing policies in Italy are the fragmentary and residual nature of the interventions, the absence of broad programming, and the strengthening of the relationship between public and private with hybrid investments. The unresolved issue of urban rent Housing policies in Italy, or the tools to face housing problems, are in a full-blown crisis. But it is even more important to consider that the underlying cause of the housing crisis has not been removed. The teaching of the classics still applies today, mutatis mutandis: ‘it is the ground-rent, and not the house, which forms the actual object of building speculation, especially where construction is carried out as an industry’ (Marx, 1991 [1894], Vol III, Part VI, Chapter 46). Housing hardship, experienced especially in large and medium-sized cities, is linked to the purchase (or rent) price of dwellings. But the purchase and rental price of dwellings are much more closely tied to the value of the land than to the value of the house itself. The value of the land (and therefore of the house) is a positional one; it depends on the city and the neighbourhood in which the building is located rather than on the material quality of the building. It is for this reason that there is an often huge discrepancy between the replacement of insurance for the purposes of the home and the actual market price it commands (Ryan-Collins et al, 2017: 6). The value of urban land lies precisely in the fact of it being urban; it has to do with the concentration of social and economic activities in the cities, which makes urban land particularly attractive, both for economic actors and residents. Within each urban agglomeration, a hierarchy of locations emerges from positional choices; some urban districts (not necessarily the central ones) are more coveted by the privileged classes so that symbolic and economic value of locations tends to converge based on what Bourdieu would call ‘structural homology’. It follows that the price of houses is dramatically different, from city to city and from neighbourhood to neighbourhood. For example, in 2014, the

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average price of new apartments in Palermo was €1,266m2 (€967m2 in the suburbs, €2,163m2 in the more prestigious areas), and in Milan €3,114m2 (€2,061m2 in the suburbs, €6,437m2 in the more prestigious areas) (Nomisma, 2014: 244, Table 7). The lack of attention to the question of rent leads to the difficult availability of data on the price of land unlike the data on the price of buildings. In the UK, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has only recently published data on the value of land in the last two decades,3 showing that since 1995 the value of land underlying dwellings has increased by almost six times. In Italy, there is no evidence from official statistics. However, some empirical research (Rosato, 2014) has reconstructed the data from different sources, showing that: the trend in the value of the buildings is consistent with the trend in the value of the building areas; during the phases of expansion of the real estate market, most of the value was captured by the rent of the land; the increase observed in the 2000s is greater than that observed in the past; in periods of expansion of demand, the increase in value in central areas is higher than that linked to marginal rent, that is, to urban expansion towards peripheral areas; and the conditions that affect the value of building areas differ according to their location with respect to the urban centre. On an international scale, recent research on 14 advanced economies found that, between 1950 and 2012, only 19 per cent of house price increases were due to rising construction costs, while 81 per cent could be explained by rising land prices (Knoll et al, 2017). Although this is – with few exceptions – routinely neglected by economists and policy-makers, it is therefore evident that understanding and solving housing problems implies dealing with land rent, understanding how the (socially produced) value of land is appropriated, and how such value could be preserved for the benefit of the many. In Italy, the extraction of unearned rent from urban land has, for many decades, taken on eminently pathological forms. The spread of building speculation practices, which rely on the capture of land value, between the 1950s and 1970s, was the subject of a strong political critique and was also represented in cinema and in the literature.4 Above all the ‘traditional’ form of speculation prevailed. This is the capture of the so-called marginal rent, which is produced precisely at the edge of the city: by acquiring land not destined for construction, an extraordinary gain is obtained when the area is converted into a buildable one. The dynamics of urban land rent have never been hindered by the law. Over time, a real sociopolitical coalition has been formed in Italy

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– some have called it ‘the building block’ (Parlato, 1970) – which has always resisted any attempt to limit rent-seeking. It is an inter-class coalition, which includes the most powerful players in the construction market, directly interested in rent extraction; but it also includes small apartment owners, always worried that legal regulation could reduce the value of their modest assets. The formation of this coalition is also due to the early spread in Italy of an ideology of homeownership, which more recently, during the so-called ‘post-Fordist’ era, has spread on a European scale, supported by mass access to mortgage loans (Ronald, 2008; Rolnik, 2013). The idea that homeownership is the normal form of housing tenure became a refrain of Catholic political forces (‘Rather all owners than all proletarians’ was the slogan of Christian Democrats on housing in the 1950s, which combined Keynesianism, Christian solidarity and the search for a broad consensus in the working class), and the main foundation of housing policies, which have always favoured the sale of housing to tenants. The only attempt to draw a radical regulation of urban land rent has turned into one of the most ferocious political clashes of the republican era: in 1962, the Christian Democratic minister Fiorentino Sullo tried to get a law on urban rent approved by the Parliament, to resolve the root problem of speculation. According to Sullo’s draft law, municipal authorities should expropriate urban expansion areas, grant owners fair compensation (equal to the value of the land for agricultural use), complete civil works (roads, water and electricity networks, etc), and finally, resell the sole right to the building lease5 maintaining ownership of the land in public hands (thus keeping control over urban planning) (Campos Venuti, 1972). This would ensure local authorities retained the necessary resources not only to build infrastructure and other investments but also public housing at affordable costs. Sullo’s bill was never approved, and the minister himself was accused by his colleagues of opposing homeownership. Since that time, there has been no attempt in Italy to put a barrier to the formation of urban rent at a national level. The housing issue was tackled by housing policies, but not by a regulation of private property. The question of urban land rent has, indeed, been progressively marginalized from public debate, and the management of the field has been depoliticized. Since the 1980s, that is, when the real estate market had completed its long expansive 20th-century cycle, a more sophisticated modality has been added to the marginal rent extraction, which can be defined as differential rent (Tocci, 2009). Rather than seize on the transformation of agricultural land into urban housing such speculation is based

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on the change of designation of pre-existing buildings (or entire neighbourhoods). Urban centres, together with areas and buildings that had once been designated for production, are the setting for the settlement of financial activities, prestigious residences, commercial activities destined for elite consumption or tourist cultural activities. Such a trend mainly concerns large cities, where the presence of the financial elite is stronger (and the presence of star architects is more evident). But even smaller cities are affected by these transformations, often in the form of ‘wealthification’ and gentrification of historical centres (Gentili et al, 2018). Redefining the function and aspect of significant portions of the urban fabric is a much more complex task than traditional speculation: it entails activating a profound transformation of the urban context, involving economic, financial, political and cultural actors, often on a national or international scale. Such operations do not necessarily take place in urban centres. Investments in football stadiums (Tosi, 2018) are an example of how the transformative power of urban land rent can be exercised on any real estate that can be reframed and repurposed. Since the 1980s the spread of the so-called ‘negotiated’ urban planning has facilitated such operations: rather than applying general planning rules, urban transformation is defined through a negotiation between the public regulator and private stakeholders. In exchange for building rights, public bodies can require developers to offer ancillary works. What happens is that negotiations are usually activated on the initiative of private actors, and the bargaining agenda is therefore defined by the private sector; public bodies contract under conditions of weakness, especially since their economic circumstances were aggravated by the public debt crisis. Since bargaining is discretionary, it is difficult to recognize any collusion between private actors and public negotiators; very often, the interest of private individuals is concentrated on areas or buildings that hold a high symbolic value that should be considered part of the commons. The pressure of rentseekers induces administrators to keep concession and urbanization costs low, according to the deep-rooted belief that administrations must be business-friendly and encourage building development. Moreover, under austerity conditions, the resources collected are often used for overheads rather than fuelling the foundational economy of the city. The financialization of housing According to Istat census data, between 1981 and 2011 the number of dwellings not occupied by residents rose from around 4.4 million

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to around 7.1 million (20% to 23%). Against this apparent surplus of supply, between 1981 and 2007, according to data reconstructed by Muzzicato et al (2008), the average price of housing in Italy has multiplied by 5.5 times, thus showing that the demand for dwellings is largely independent of housing need. As Aalbers has argued (2016), such a disconnect is related to the increasingly close relationship between real estate activities and purely financial activities: house prices are not driven primarily by the relationship between housing supply and demand but by the demand and supply of financial products for both housing consumers (mortgage loans) and producers (a wide range of financial instruments for real estate developers, construction firms and landlords). In Italy, as in the rest of Western Europe, over three decades the volume of private financing, both to construction companies and to households, has grown dramatically in line with a market-driven European integration process (with a prominent role for financial markets and an increasing weight given to the role of banks). The changes in the regulation of the banking system have been a turning point for the new dynamics of the real estate market. The first phase of this transformation occurred between 1977 and 1983, with the opening of the banking system to the large foreign banks, in conjunction with a reduction in the restrictions on banking (Cotula and Rossi, 1989). The process continued in the context of the construction of the single European market and the Economic and Monetary Union, deliberated in the Single European Act of 1986, with the complete liberalization of the movement of capital. In 1993 the Italian banking sector was entirely reformed with the Banking Act. This resulted in a complete transformation of the banking system, with large banking groups operating ‘universal’ activities (that is, authorized to carry out financial intermediation). The penetration of foreign banks increased competition in the field of household loans and average interest rates fell in conjunction with an increase in the ratio between loans granted and guarantees provided. The outcome of this liberalization was the resounding increase in consumer credit and mortgage loans, also boosted by the banks’ ability to securitize mortgage loans (Hardt and Manning, 2000; Aalbers, 2008). The role of banks on the supplyside of the market was equally relevant: between 1998 and 2011 the number of loans to the construction sector increased from around €54 to around €163 million a year. A further aspect of the financialization of housing is the establishment of real estate investment funds, which, in Italy, began in 1994 (Act no 86) and have increased rapidly since the end of the 1990s. Retail

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funds have been joined since 2000 by funds reserved for institutional investors and, since 2005, by hedge funds. The expansion phase of the building cycle, the favourable tax regime, the sale of properties by banks, insurance companies, industrial companies and the securitization of public real estate assets led to the rapid development of real estate funds. Between 2001 and 2015 the number of real estate funds active in Italy rose from 7 to 402, and the total net asset value went from around €2.5 to around €48 billion. The growth of real estate funds is the ultimate stage of urban rentseeking. Buildings become the object of purely financial accumulation, as the value of the funds’ real estate becomes independent from housing supply and demand, and is connected to trends in the financialized markets. The result of the neoliberal regulation of housing and rent is the most intense building cycle of the last half-century, second only to that of postwar reconstruction. In the decade 1997–2006, residential building production grew by around 40 per cent; annual sales doubled; real estate values increased by 63 per cent in the national average and almost doubled in Milan and Rome; and the growth of investment in construction (13.6%) was twice that of GDP. But the two cycles are different phenomena. After the Second World War, real estate production grew along with social wealth, and housing was the main use value for families. In the new century, the production of real estate is growing along with the financialization of the economy, fostering wealth accumulation, and houses are widely viewed as an investment tool: exacerbating instead of reducing inequalities, boosting financial accumulation and making indebtedness grow out of proportion. Far from being a purely economic issue, the financialization of housing can be explained as a transformation of citizenship and political relations. Without ever using the word ‘financialization’ – which at that time was almost unknown in the social sciences of continental Europe – the famous Pierre Bourdieu’s research on the single-family housing market in France (Bourdieu, 2000) clearly showed that the intervention of the state – through regulations and incentives – is decisive in the construction of a real estate market based on credit, and that families, caught in an opaque relationship with real estate companies, banks and the state, are dragged towards a condition of permanent debt. The creditor–debtor relationship is perhaps the fundamental social relationship of our societies and, at the same time, a technique of government (Lazzarato, 2013). Certainly, only a naive vision of economic life could explain the growth of massive mortgage debt as the effect of purely individual choices. Not

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only it is a social fact, but its consequences are also one of the most dramatic phenomena in contemporary Western societies (Desmond, 2016), urging a non-reformist change in the use of urban land.

New social housing and the irresistible attraction of unearned rent Housing policy in Italy faces a growing weakness, especially with reference to the most vulnerable groups (Tosi, 2018). Within the financialized environment of the housing market, the extraction of value from real estate gains has found new pathways. Many of the housing programmes promoted in recent years have been targeted at lower- to middle-income groups (Cucca and Gaeta, 2016; Cognetti and Delera, 2017; Bricocoli and Sabatinelli, 2019). Most of the initiatives are promoted by market-driven social housing programmes promoted by non-profit organizations and funded by actors from the banking system (Fregolent and Torri, 2018). The target of these programmes consists of a public that is more financially secure: that is, an impoverished lower middle class that is economically weak but still can face the rent costs, and university students, a category that expresses a pressing demand for housing and has a good spending capacity, given the support provided by families and universities. This orientation results in the further relegation of the poorer portion of those in need into shrinking public housing stock. This has resulted in the creation of a quasi-market that has developed in recent years, in which investors (and specifically, the system of real estate funds) finance housing projects that are directly or indirectly supported by the public purse and that address social groups that are incapable of bearing the market costs of housing but still offer guarantees of solvency. While local planning policies are keeping real estate prices high, in order to both guarantee and protect the large exposure faced by the banking system, the system of funds and the bank foundations are active in supporting the development of social housing and in prescribing and detailing the overall conditions (to start with in terms of economic-financial sustainability) to public actors that are in a subordinated or highly dependent position. The new housing projects feature some interesting innovations, but they tend to capture the increase of value, rather than counteracting it. The positions expressed by a major non-profit social housing organization backed by a bank foundation is emblematic: ‘if real estate prices rise in the city, we are very happy, as it means that our properties also gain value’.6

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These new projects are grounded on a new, very wide, definition of social housing. As defined by the 22/2008 National Law, under the category of ‘social dwelling’, a large variety of solutions and tenures (such as rent-to-buy options and ownership) are included. Most of this stock is not catering for the weakest and most disadvantaged groups. It includes rental housing benefiting from public funding, housing that is sold in ownership and within mortgage schemes to specific categories, and other types of housing for which the price of rents or selling is set based on local negotiations. Ultimately, most of these housing programmes remain within a logic that is dominated by urban land rent, and as the costs of housing continue to increase, social needs become more and more of an emergency. Typically, new social housing programmes rely on the perspective of increasing values of the properties and so are therefore mainly developed in urban cities where real estate values have resisted the crisis or where development perspectives are promising. Most of the new projects are concentrated in the Northern regions, in particular in Lombardy and Piedmont, where the two most important banking foundations are active (Fondazione Cariplo in Lombardy and Compagnia di San Paolo) (Torri, 2018). Economic and financial sustainability has been the main driver for projects, it has been pervasive and is the key feature of all phases of the process: from the choice of the areas and plots to the selection of tenants according to the compliance of their profiles with regards to the requirements and expectations of the developer (collaborative attitude, will of investing in a participative management of the housing project intended as a community, financial guarantees and solvency) (Bricocoli and Cucca, 2016). Housing services may be provided either directly by the public actor or by private licensed actors. This is an idea of housing that develops directly against the traditional framework of public housing policies in which lifelong rent contracts and limited turnover were considered as the legacy of a distorted and inefficient welfare system. The notion of citizen at play here is no longer that of someone who is entitled to have rights as in the stereotyped position of the welfare passive recipient. The new social housing tenant is a citizen who is expected to be proactive and to be actively involved in the processes that concern him/herself. In this respect, this philosophy of new social housing programmes is coherent with so-called ‘welfare to work policies’, although these aim to enable individuals to face a structurally precarious job market, with low and discontinuous wages (Castel, 1995). While the demand for housing is widespread, complex and highly diversified, the offer is rigid. Moreover, social housing projects are

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developed according to a format that is highly discretionary and driven by self-selected social investors, who are leading the process along all stages of the development process: including the initial investment, the building production process and the management (Boldo, 2016). The philosophy and legitimation of this new phase of housing policy are grounded on the claim that previous public housing schemes have failed. As in other fields of welfare policy (Belotti and Caselli, 2016), the new generation of housing programmes acts selectively: what matters is not a definition of priorities and profiles concerning social needs but the economicfinancial sustainability of the projects. The new policy framework tends to exclude projects that, in spite of their urgent need, would not be profitable. The public housing stock itself is highly exposed to right-to-buy schemes and to an overall risk of dismissal by the regional housing companies that are entitled to their ownership and management and yet are facing financial problems. Besides several cases of mismanagement, the lack of ordinary public funding schemes and the low revenues provided by subsidized rental contracts for publicly owned social housing providers means that the companies lie in a structurally unsustainable financial situation. Moreover, in the last 10 years, the regulatory discourse on social housing in Italy has adopted an interpretation of housing as a ‘service’. The dwelling, under certain conditions and for particular social groups, is regarded as one of the services that can support processes of social integration, reducing the risks of impoverishment and allowing decent living conditions (Bricocoli and Sabatinelli, 2019). The dwelling is intended as a ‘housing service’ (the formal definition introduced by the Region of Lombardy under a new regional law in 2016) benefiting individuals or families facing temporary economic distress, within a perspective of relocating in the medium term to other free market housing options. While this definition may sound like a formula that favours an emphasis on the use-value of housing and places a constraint on capital value and rent effects, from a normative point of view, the implications are indeed quite controversial. From an urban planning perspective, conceiving social housing as a service implies rating it among the basic standards of public facilities that are to be granted by urban planning (such as schools, recreation grounds and libraries). From the perspective of urban planning regulations, classifying social housing as a service has a very important implication: stating that social housing is part of the minimum standards that have to be provided by

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urban planning allows the granting of building social housing in areas (either privately or publicly owned) that were, until now, supposed to have been reserved for other standards. This is a very crucial aspect: it is based on this possibility that new social housing projects can deviate and turn to search for extracting urban land rent. The incorporation of social housing as a service and therefore as a standard was introduced in Lombardy. The regional law was developed from a pilot experiment developed in Milan in 2004. The Abitare Milano I programme provided the development of four public housing projects in areas owned by the city of Milan that had been reserved for public facilities but were not yet implemented. The four projects, developed after an architectural competition, consist of an overall number of 522 dwellings, out of which 75 per cent are rented at social rates, 8 per cent at a moderate rent, 14 per cent at controlled rent and 2 per cent for other uses. While this is, in fact, the last significant public housing scheme directly provided by a public actor, it also pioneered the orientation to release building plots that were previously reserved for public facilities. The original experiment in Milan actively profited from the city granting entitlements using urban planning tools to make full public use of those publicly owned areas. Developing public housing in highly valuable plots plays a fundamental role in capturing the effects of differential urban land rent produced by planning regulation. However, the evolution of this experiment has led to a very different outcome. Following the example of Lombardy, the 244/2007 National Law has paved the way for similar projects throughout the country. But plots that were zoned as public facilities have been rezoned as building sites, along with a very broad definition of social housing. While the developer and main actors involved may be private, a large variety of tenures are possible, including private ownership. There have been no extensive and independent evaluations done on the projects that have been implemented in recent years. The decision-making process, the allocation of the plots to the developers as well as the selection process of the inhabitants/tenants and the definition of the rents are rather opaque. A public debate on the outcomes is missing. Somehow, we assist in the naturalization of the idea that declaring the social relevance of housing projects is sufficient and obviates the need for an independent, accurate examination and evaluation of the collective costs as well as of the final recipients of the projects. In several cases, the expectation of remuneration of the investments has led to final prices for the tenants that are not competitive in comparison to market ones. Many dwellings have remained vacant, and this occurs

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not only in cities in which the rental market is weak and affordable but also in much more attractive cities. The issue of the admitted tenures is particularly controversial. In its initial version, the scheme allowed the development of plots that were originally zoned for public facilities, instead of catering for dwellings to be permanently allocated for rent. Afterwards, other forms of tenures have been included and allowed. In the case of Lombardy (by far the context in which the production of new social housing has been higher) out of 1,892 dwellings constructed in areas previously zoned for public facilities, 83 per cent are registered as ‘social housing’ but only 43 per cent are let to rent (and only 5% are let at the socalled ‘social rent’) (Fontana and Lareno Faccini, 2018). The remaining are rented to buy or directly sold. While in some urban areas it is undeniably relevant to also have affordable housing in the individual property market, it is highly questionable that the development of public rent zoned for collective facilities ends up producing an urban land rent that is captured, in both the medium and long term, by private actors. New regulations introduced in the city of Milan aim to capture the increase in the value of private sector property through inclusionary planning, by making a proportion of social housing mandatory in all projects over 10,000m2 (Ferri et al, 2018). But while the developer can still decide to opt to pay for the corresponding value and so avoid the housing mix, the real issue is the vague definition of what social housing and affordable housing are. Letting for rent on a permanent basis and the definition of transparent processes in the allocation of building areas as well as in the allocation of dwellings are relevant conditions for a more adequate policy in dealing with the social distribution of available resources.

Individual ownership and undivided property: two different conceptions of collective housing Since the beginning of the 2000s, a plethora of collective social housing projects has developed with a strong focus on ‘constructing communities’ and ‘collaborative practices’ (Ferri et al, 2018). Shared living is celebrated as a virtue (Guidarini, 2018), although some observe that what is featured is mainly a biased selection of similar people (Bricocoli and de Leonardis, 2015). The projects are often developed by bank foundations or by other non-profit actors. In some cases, forms of co-housing are developed by private individuals in a voluntary and bottom-up way.

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Even when these projects benefit from public support, perhaps by the release of public areas made available for development, the whole issue of costs and specifically, of the final prices for the recipients, is never made explicit. Sharing and collaborative practices are assumed as objectives and conditions that pertain to an ideological dimension. The explicit objective in many projects is to develop a ‘sustainable community’ that can share and manage the collective spaces and to activate services and activities for socialization and leisure purposes. Through their operational sub-organizations the investment funds themselves provide accurate profiling and selection of the tenant candidates and then directly deal with the so-called ‘social management’ that will administer and manage the buildings through the active involvement of the inhabitants. The pioneering co-housing examples developed in Denmark in the 1960s after the first experiments of Jan Gødmand Høyer are fully incorporated into a financial model. In that case, the driver for new housing solutions came from ecological activism and had a significant social matrix; nowadays the model is essentially top-down and subordinated to a financial scheme. The kind of community ties that are at stake is rather controversial. The kinds of new housing communities that develop along lines of profiling recall the fortress communities described by Zygmunt Bauman (2000) as a self-segregation of the elites in an unequal world: they create more borders than the ones they overcome. Some analysis (Bricocoli and Cucca, 2016) has revealed how in reality inhabitants are usually selected based on their suitability and potential in contributing to a collaborative dimension, to creating a sense of community and to mutuality among tenants. Moreover, interviews and further analysis revealed that these orientations promoted by the developer are all relevant factors for guaranteeing the return of a profit to the financial investor, selecting and controlling the inhabitants and their will and capacity of being good tenants regularly paying their rents. While social innovation practices are emphasized and over-represented in the public discourse and tend, in fact, to service the invested capital, the final costs of housing (rents and running costs) for the tenants are constantly omitted from the discourse and not clarified. It is worth reflecting on the evolution of collective housing projects in the context of cooperative initiatives and on the different ways in which the tenure is defined. In the 20th century, the production of dwellings in cooperative forms has been increasingly orientated to individual ownership solutions. Each member of the cooperative becomes an owner with the right to sell the property.

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This form of undivided ownership, which allowed large sections of the working class to access decent housing and to profit from urban qualities, has become increasingly residual. There are, indeed, two major reasons to discuss the importance of this outdated indivisible property model, and we can do it with reference to a relevant case. The Società Edificatrice Abitazioni Operaie, founded in 1879, is the oldest of the 25  indivisible property housing cooperatives in Milan.7 The administrative offices are located in a very central neighbourhood, are quite attractive and are well served by public transport. The members of the board of directors are all cooperators volunteering in the management of the housing buildings owned by the cooperative. The 400  dwellings are spread across the city and were built over 140 years. The stories collected during recent research provide a detailed description of the relations between homes, people and life perspectives. Many stories deal with ageing, as the average age is increasing and thus represents the main challenge for the future of the organization. In a system in which dwellings are allocated with a permanent rental agreement that is, in fact, a lifelong contract, the turnover is thus very low. As a member of the board of directors says: ‘Yes, people in our homes enjoy a long life. A member who died last month was 107 years old, another 98. We have a good life here. Many would think we are from a higher social class than the one we belong to. And you know why? Because we are lighthearted! Our rents are low and what we save in housing costs is released for other options that become affordable. And we can eat fillet and live better and longer!’8 It is quite a remarkable description of how affordable housing can play a role in people’s lives. Discussing housing as a fundamental infrastructure for social life means discussing the different conditions that allow a dwelling to be a necessary context within which a worthy life can develop. The image expressed by the member of the board of directors implies a relevant shift in terms of concepts and values. Housing is put at the centre of people’s lives but remains in the background in terms of the economic resources involved. Lower housing costs can release economic resources that can increase material wellbeing and individual flourishing, allowing capabilities to be realized. It is a clear explanation of what could be achieved by affordable housing and of the conditions that can make affordability feasible in the long term. It is important to consider that this foundational infrastructure is located in a very attractive neighbourhood featuring very high real estate values. The cooperative housing building denies, by its existence, the idea that wellbeing is the result of high incomes and rents. Its value, in terms of

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wellbeing, is not produced through the commodification of housing as an economic asset. Instead, what guarantees the relation between the building and wellbeing is the undivided property cooperative, a long-term institutional, organizational and management entity, that protects it from the dynamics of urban land rent. Nowadays, the Società Edificatrice Abitazioni Operaie is dealing with the challenges of renewing its organization, setting objectives that are more responsive to current and future housing demand. After 140 years, the commitment to foundational principles appears very impressive and resilient to the very diverse situation (that is, the precarious and individualized condition of labour nowadays) as well as the vitality of an organization that intends to develop on its longstanding history and tradition. Based on a robust balance sheet and strong capital position, the organization is willing to explore perspectives of change that challenge the mainstream trends of current social housing policies.

Permanent rent and public housing stock: an overlooked option The experience of property cooperatives can offer important insights into the economic sustainability of permanent rent as a viable tenure. The cooperative we have examined is 140 years old. Its building stock is even more dated than that of the public one, but the maintenance and management conditions are excellent. Maintenance and management problems, together with low rates of rents, are systematically brought to the foreground to argue that public housing is unsustainable and to call for the selling off of the public housing stock. Some regional policies, such as in Lombardy, have developed a more promising orientation: the so-called ‘alternative valorization to selling out’ (Bricocoli et al, 2019). In the face of scant public resources, public housing estates that are in a state of decay and require renovation may be temporarily allocated out of the public system. An agreement may be signed between the public bodies and nonprofit organizations that can benefit from funding from different sources and provide the restructuring and consequent management of the housing blocks for several years (25, that is, in a case we are researching in Milan). Dwellings may be rented out at a moderate rent (slightly higher than the social rent), allowing for the repayment of the capital invested in the renovation. After the agreement has expired, in case of no further agreement, the cooperative will release the dwellings. The dwellings and properties may be reincorporated

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into the public housing stock and allocated according to the specific rules of public housing. Among the most interesting cases is that of the Stadera housing estate in Milan, which is still a pioneering example, even 20 years since its redevelopment. Stadera is a public housing estate built in the 1920s and located in a valuable, semi-central location. In 1999 a renewal plan included the overall renovation of the estate, with relevant interventions inside the dwellings and in the collective spaces. In spite of a large amount of funding available, the implementation of the renewal plan faced several critical issues and bottlenecks. There was a lack of coordination within the programme as well as mismanagement due to some corruption. The overall outcome was very controversial as some buildings have been renovated and yet lie empty, and some open spaces have been economically exploited by building underground garages for sale and yet they, too, are still vacant after several years. In this context, four buildings in which the dwellings were made smaller than the minimum legal standard required were released and partly restructured, and formed part of an agreement between the Region of Lombardy, the regional housing company owning the properties and two different housing cooperatives, La Famiglia and Dar=Casa. The agreement provided for the temporary transfer (for 25 years) of the management of two buildings to the two cooperatives that would complete the renovation work, thanks, in part, to their ability to access some funding and a bank loan. The two cooperatives have allocated the flats and the direct management of the buildings, with ‘controlled’ rents just slightly above the social rate. Several dwellings have been allocated to inhabitants already living in the public housing estate who were interested and were attracted by the good quality of the renovation and by the improved management qualities of the project. Since the cooperatives act as a non-profit and intermediary actor between the public company owning the dwellings and the individual tenants, it was also possible to overcome some restrictive rules and thus provide the allocation of dwellings to a number of migrant families in great housing distress, while at that time they had not yet been entitled to access ordinary public housing. This resulted in a ‘multicultural’ character that has been very much emphasized as a major feature of the project. Above all, however, the Stadera case is an outstanding example of an alternative to the economic valorization of public housing properties. As in the case of shared and collaborative housing, the emphasis on ‘social innovation’ risks hiding a more substantial and relevant issue: a

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radical institutional configuration on the grounds of contrasting urban land rent that is the indispensable innovation required to grant the regeneration and availability of infrastructure for daily life. A first evaluation (Bricocoli et al, 2019) allows recognition of the outcomes of the experiment. The overall urban context has changed dramatically – on the one hand, due to the dynamics of valorization and the increase in housing costs in the city, and on the other hand, because the estate is located in a very attractive urban area. Many of the families are ready to bear a slightly higher rent than that found in the public housing stock, and so register for access to a flat in the project. While in the public housing estate rental arrears are a heavy burden for the housing company and account for up to 38 per cent of the rents, in the buildings managed by the cooperatives, this rate is down to 6 per cent. This is also because, besides the excellent maintenance and management of the buildings, the cooperatives offer support to families facing temporary problems with regards to budgeting or workrelated issues. As a paradox, the most critical issue of this experience is that it has remained an isolated case, not best practice to be replicated and eventually generalized. And this is because many public housing estates are facing decay and have vacant dwellings, as public funding is insufficient for recovery strategies. The alternative valorization to the sale of this stock is among the priorities of the regional government, but the Stadera case had very limited public resonance. In spite of its innovative and frontline features, the programme has never been officially evaluated, even scarcely as an object for academic research. In terms of citizenship, analysis of the housing pathways of several tenants shows the potentials of targeting other dimensions of social and economic vulnerability beyond the housing question. The housing cooperatives have been able to satisfy the housing needs of people with low and moderate incomes: families with only one income, individuals with precarious earnings, families with the economic requirements to access public housing but still on the waiting list. These are the typical inhabitants of the Quattro Corti, where many of the tenants are migrants. Among the tenants of the Quattro Corti, some were previously living in a public dwelling with their original family. In the interviews, they stressed the difference in staying in the Quattro Corti, where the cooperatives are present and intervene efficiently and promptly. The housing cooperatives allowed them independence from their original family and to leave a situation of cohabitation, giving them the opportunity to live in an independent dwelling. After the many difficulties faced, moving to the Quattro

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Corti represented, for many, the end of housing precariousness and for some of the migrants, the opportunity to start the bureaucratic procedures for the process of family reunification. As one member of the cooperative said: ‘For me, this apartment means independence[…]. Finally I will find my autonomy, since until now I have lived with my mum, who is 80 years old, and my daughter’ (quoted in Bricocoli et al, 2019).

Concluding remarks In the transition from democratic to neoliberal capitalism, the question of housing and the issue of urban rent have undergone a process of depoliticization (Foster et al, 2014); in no way have they lost their intrinsic political value, but they have ceased to be treated as major political issues. The idea of the right to housing, which had been the basis of many claims between the 1950s and the 1970s, has left room for the idea of the housing market, where a house was increasingly perceived as an individual asset. The behaviour of financial institutions, such as real estate investment funds and banks providing loans to families and construction companies, has increasingly influenced the performance of the housing market, of rent-seeking, and therefore access to housing. On a local scale, municipal administrations, which in principle play an essential role in urban land management, fail to exercise control on urban rent. Under conditions of austerity, the uses of land are increasingly left to bargaining between public and private actors rather than discussed in municipal councils, as the value of land, that should be the main long-term resource for cities, is perceived as an ultimate source of liquidity in the short term. The history of housing over the last century can also be regarded in terms of citizenship transformations. The Marshallian idea of the evolutionary transformation of citizenship, in which the spread of social rights is meant to follow from the exercise of political rights, is questioned. Rather than the active political citizen claiming the right to housing through political mobilization, the protagonist of contemporary housing is the indebted citizen-consumer. Furthermore, a third figure of the citizen emerges in the ‘innovation’ processes: that of the activated citizen, who is asked to be ‘protagonist’, in a pragmatic way, of new forms of living, hardly questioning the appropriation of the social value of urban land. Most of the initiatives meant to be ‘innovative’ emphasize the quest for a collective dimension of living. Although they sometimes create niche access to housing within high

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exclusion rate contexts, most of the time they enable the reproduction of unearned rent. The social conflict centred on a structural condition, linked to social class and housing conditions, has given way to the search for arrangements based on identity, culture and habits. The spreading malaise of precarity and low incomes is addressed through the search for liveability in interstitial quasi-communities. The social coalitions emerging from these experiments are horizontal networks, which are nonetheless incapable of defusing the rules and values on which their subordination is grounded. Still, and crucially, this is not the only show in town. Some more radical experiments mix experimentalism with the (ground-breaking yet old-fashioned) idea that urban land is not necessarily a ‘field of miracles’ aimed at wealth creation, but can be the basis for sustainable wellbeing. These experiences are often neglected, because, over the years, attention – including academic research – has been distracted towards new policy actors. Such experiments – which engage even important competencies embedded within public administrations – deserve greater consideration, because, as housing deprivation is affecting an increasing part of the urban population, it becomes paramount to study the conditions under which urban space and public heritage can be available to all, and not just to a few. They demonstrate how the extensive logic of rent-seeking and its continuing financial drift can be structurally opposed, through political action as well as by regulation and urban planning. The grounded city – the city that ‘would replace the fixation on technical innovation for productivity gain with social innovation to meet basic needs’ (Engelen et al, 2017: 420) – requires citizens to accept the idea of undivided property, and to discard rent-seeking as an ordinary source of income. But it also entails finding a collective political force, able to preserve the social value of urban land by regulation. Civil society can take the initiative for radical innovations tackling the extraction of unearned rent from an intrinsically social asset such as land. But, strictly political action is unavoidable. On the one hand, it is necessary to restore a robust public provision of housing, and this will not happen without a strong political mobilization. On the other hand – since the future of housing cannot be imagined just as replacing a top-down approach with a bottom-up one – the innovations emerging from civil society should be transformed into a radical, non-reformist reform of the use of land. This would entail dealing with a substantial lack of competencies, because the continuous bargaining on urban land with private actors has corroded the capacity for regulation and planning. But this is also part of a political

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enterprise, whose stake is a new constitution of the foundational economy (Foundational Economy Collective, 2018). Notes 1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

This chapter came about from joint discussions and writing. We would like to thank the referees for their insightful remarks and suggestions. Here and hereinafter, as well as in the title of this chapter, the word rent is used in its meaning of unearned income deriving from control on land as a scarce resource. See www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/freedomofinformation foi/aggregatelandvalues1995to2016 See Francesco Rosi’s movie Le  Mani sulla Città, and Italo Calvino’s novel La Speculazione Edilizia, both from 1963. The auction base for the sale of the right to leasehold of any buildings was to be obtained by adding the expropriation allowances, the interest, the cost of urbanization works and public services, and a premium for overheads. Interview with the head of a major social housing non-profit organization, February 2019. The indivisible property cooperatives in Milan correspond to a stock of 7,967 dwellings. There are 76,490 public housing dwellings in the city (Quinzii and Terna, 2013). The name of the cooperative means ‘Building Society for Workers’ Dwellings’. Interview with a member of the board of directors of the Società Edificatrice Abitazioni Operaie housing cooperative, April 2019.

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Bricocoli, M. and Cucca, R. (2016) ‘Social mix and housing policy: Local effects of a misleading rhetoric. The case of Milan’, Urban Studies, 53(1): 77–91. Bricocoli, M. and de Leonardis, O. (2015) ‘Les protections sociales spatialisées: Rêves et cauchemars’, in C. Bianchetti (ed) Territoires partagés: Une nouvelle ville, Geneva: MetisPresse, 161–83. Bricocoli, M. and Sabatinelli, S. (2019) ‘La casa come servizio, la casa come standard?’, Territorio, 88. Bricocoli, M., Peverini, M. and Tagliaferri, A. (2019) ‘Quattro Corti a Stadera: Regeneration and Values of Public Housing Estates: A Pioneering Case Study in Milan’, Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the European Network for Housing Research, Athens, 27–31 August. Campos Venuti, G. (1972) Amministrare l’Urbanistica, Turin: Einaudi. Castel, R. (1995) Les métamorphoses de la question sociale: Une chronique du salariat, Paris: Fayard. Cittalia – Fondazione Anci Ricerche (2010) I Comuni e la Questione Abitativa: Lenuove Domande Sociali, gli Attori e gli Strumenti Operativi, Rome, available at https://ita.calameo.com/ read/00011796592f168ab496f Cognetti, F. and Delera, A. (2017) For rent: Politiche e Progetti per la Casa Accessibile a Milano, Milan: Mimesis Edizioni. Cole, I. and Furbey, R. (1994) The Eclipse of Council Housing, London: Routledge. Corte dei Conti (Court of Auditors) (2007) Relazione sulla Gestione dell’Edilizia Residenziale Pubblica, Deliberazione no 10/2007. Cotula, F. and Rossi, S. (1989) ‘Il Controllo Amministrativo dei Flussi Finanziari in Italia’, in F. Cotula (ed) La Politica Monetaria in Italia 2, Bologna: Il Mulino, 351–77. Cucca, R. and Gaeta, L. (2016) ‘Ritornare all’affitto: Evidenze analitiche e politiche pubbliche’, Paper presented at For Rent Seminar, Politecnico di Milano, May. Daolio, A. (ed) (1974) Le  Lotte per la Casa in Italia: Milano, Torino, Roma, Napoli, Milan: Feltrinelli. Desmond, M. (2016) Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, New York: Crown. Engelen, E., Froud, J., Johal, S., Salento, A. and Williams, K. (2017) ‘The grounded city: From competitivity to the foundational economy’, Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, 10(3): 407–23. Federcasa (2015) L’Edilizia Residenziale Pubblica: Elemento Centrale della Risposta al Abitativo e all’Abitazione Sociale, Rome: Federcasa.

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Ferri, G., Pogliani, L. and Rizzica, C. (2018) ‘Towards a Collaborative Way of Living: Innovative Social and Affordable Housing in Italy’, in G. van Bortel, V. Gruis, J. Nieuwenhuijzen and B. Pluijmers (eds) Affordable Housing Governance and Finance, Oxford: Routledge, 60–88. Flinders, M. and Wood, M. (2015) ‘When politics fails: Hyperdemocracy and hyper-depoliticisation’, New Political Science, 37(3): 363–81. Fontana, C. and Lareno Faccini, J. (2018) ‘Il sistema integrato di fondi immobiliari e il processo di finanziarizzazione della casa sociale’, Archivio di Studi urbani e regionali, XLVIII (118): 163–72. Foster E.A., Kerr P. and Byrne C. (2014) ‘Rolling back to roll forward: Depoliticisation and the extension of government’, Policy&Politics, 42(2): 225–41. Foundational Economy Collective (2018) Foundational Economy: The Infrastructure of Everyday Life, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Fregolent, L. and Torri, R. (2018) L’Italia Senza Casa: Bisogni Emergenti e Politiche per l’Abitare, Milan: FrancoAngeli. Gentili, A., Tassinari, F. and Zoboli, A. (2018) Indagine sul Mercato degli Alloggi in Locazione nel Comune di Bologna, Bologna: Istituto Cattaneo, available at www.cattaneo.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/ Indagine-sul-mercato-degli-alloggi-in-locazione-Bo.pdf Guidarini, S. (2018) New Urban Housing: L’Abitare Condiviso in Europa, Milan: Skira. Hardt, J. and Manning, D. (2000) European Mortgage Markets: Structure, Funding and Future Development, Brussels: European Mortgage Federation. Holm, A. (2013) ‘Berlin’s Gentrification Mainstream’, in A. Holm, B. Grell and M. Bernt (eds) The Berlin Reader: A Compendium on Urban Change and Activism, Bielefeld: Transcript, 171–87. Knoll, K., Schularick, M. and Steger, T. (2017) ‘No price like home: global house prices, 1870–2012’, The American Economic Review, 107: 331–53. Lazzarato, M. (2013) Il Governo dell’Uomo Indebitato [Governing by Debt], Roma: DeriveApprodi [English translation published by The MIT Press, Cambridge MA, 2015]. Marx, K. (1991 [1894]) Capital, Volume III, London: Penguin Books. Monbiot, G. (ed) (2019) Land for the Many: Changing the Way Our Fundamental Asset Is Used, Owned and Governed, A report for the Labour Party, June, available at https://landforthemany.uk/

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Muzzicato, S., Sabbatini, R. and Zollino, F. (2008) Prices of Residential Property in Italy: Constructing a New Indicator, QEF No 17, Occasional Papers, Rome: Bank of Italy. Nomisma (2014) Rapporto Sulla Finanza Immobiliare, Bologna: Nomisma. Parlato, V. (1970) ‘Il blocco edilizio’, Il Manifesto, 3–4. Power, A. (1993) Hovels to High Rise: State Housing in Europe since 1850, London: Routledge. Quinzii, C. and Terna, D. (2013) Ritorno all’Abitare: Una Cooperativa in Città, Syracuse: Lettera Ventidue. Rolnik, R. (2013) ‘Late neoliberalism: The financialisation of homeownership and housing rights’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 37(3): 1058–66. Ronald, R. (2008) The Ideology of Home Ownership: Homeowner Societies and the Role of Housing, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Rosato, P. (2014) ‘Il valore dei suoli edificabili in Italia’, Territorio Italia, 2: 13–22. Ryan-Collins, J., Lloyd, T. and Macfarlane, L. with the New Economics Foundation (2017) Rethinking the Economics of Land and Housing, London: Zed Books. Santos Ana, C., Serra, N. and Teles, N. (2015) Finance and Housing Provision in Portugal, FESSUD Programme (Financialisation, Economy, Society and Sustainable Development), Working Paper No 79. Settis, S. (2012) Paesaggio, Costituzione, Cemento: La Battaglia per l’Ambiente contro il Degrado Civile, Turin: Einaudi. Tocci, W. (2009) ‘L’insostenibile ascesa della rendita urbana’, Democrazia e Diritto, 1, Milan: Franco Angeli. Torri, R. (2018) ‘Il Ruolo delle Politiche Pubbliche nella Costruzione del Problema Casa’, in L. Fregolent and R. Torri (eds) L’Italia Senza Casa: Bisogni Emergenti e Politiche per l’Abitare, Milan: FrancoAngeli. Tosi, S. (2018) Cultural Stadi: Calcio, Città, Consumi e Politiche, Milan: Ledizioni.

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PART III

Water and waste

7

Waste management and value extraction in Italy: Where is the citizen? Waste to worth Dario Minervini

Introduction The discourse about waste as a resource has become widespread among public opinion since the 2000s. Nowadays this rhetoric seems to be part of common sense, drifting into the public realm from institutional declarations that inspired policies about waste management. For instance, in 2014 the European Environment Agency (EEA) published an article that stressed how the shift from considering waste as a problem to waste as a resource was urgent and mandatory (EEA, 2014). In order to address the ‘economic loss’ and to rationalize the ‘management costs’ of waste, a ‘roadmap to a resource-efficient Europe’ was being developed. Likewise in Italy, the current discussion about the development of the circular economy is deeply rooted in this idea of exploiting waste according to the repeatability of the nexus between raw materials, production, use (that is consumption) and recycling.1 In 2017 the Ministry for the Environment, Land Protection and Sea and the Ministry of Economic Development released a report outlining the Italian strategy after the United Nations (UN) Paris Agreement and other international meetings on climate change. The strategy had a clearly stated aim, to ‘rethink our means of production and consumption, develop new models of business and transform waste in high added value resources; we need technologies, processes, services and creative models of entrepreneurship to shape our economy and society’ (MATTM and MISE, 2017: 5; translated from Italian). There is an ambiguity in this general argument about waste as a resource because this word is often understood basically in economic terms (economic loss, in the above-mentioned case). How this ambiguity has become well established is also evident if we consider the efforts in research and theoretical speculations concerning the

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interplay between money flow and waste, both at local and global levels. Referring to the works of Urry (2002) and Gereffi (1994), Fagan (2002: 5) described his project of a sociology of waste flow, stating that ‘The environmental/waste issue, while it can be seen to be subject to commodity chains is perhaps best conceptualized as a “global fluid” […]. Money is one such flow but so also is waste: the first is visible, productive and well researched; the latter is usually invisible (mostly hidden), deemed unproductive and certainly not well researched.’ The economic value ‘extracted’ from waste calls to mind different images and scenarios. European Union (EU) policies (as for most of the Global North-West) prefigure advanced technological environments where ecological modernization has taken place. In the case of developing countries, the value of what is discarded is often recovered from the informal labour of people scavenging, that is, extracting materials from landfill. This second scenario is often not so clean, appealing and enjoyable as the accounts of the circular economy revolution might suggest. In these cases, waste has become an ‘urban common’ for poor people who recover materials and obtain an income from this activity (Zapata and Zapata Campos, 2015), improving the urban welfare providing household waste collection (Zapata Campos and Zapata, 2013). In any case, the ‘extraction’ of value from waste is something that needs to be understood in itself; it is not self-evident as the institutional rhetoric sometimes seems to suggest. Discussing taken-for-granted ideas is part of the foundational economy project that is meant to retrace how neoliberal policies foster the idea that ‘the economy would prosper if markets were allowed to work properly’ (Law and Williams, 2014: 2). Public services and goods, related to the material dimensions of urban welfare, correspond with a wide and sheltered field of economic activity where companies and corporations are supposed to pursue ‘common values’ and social returns (public health, environmental protection, and so on …). In order to shed light on what is considered to be taken for granted about the mundane service2 of waste recycling – which seems to be a valuable option for all the actors involved – this chapter seeks to explore how, more than why, this option is accounted for and performed. By means of a pragmatic approach we address how the value of waste is displayed through national official accounting of its value. In particular, the chapter focuses on the role of citizens, and how this role is framed in the official reports. We focus on the interplay between soft values (that is, environmental sustainability, shared responsibility and citizens’ involvement) and hard values (that is, costs, compensation fee, profits).

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But the hypothesis advanced here is that the ‘objectivity’ of the winwin game of waste recycling, accounted for by the official national reports, neutralizes the political overlapping of the neoliberal logic of waste commodification with the one of public utility and urban welfare. In so doing, the dynamics of value enactment within this field of the foundational economy are translated into a coherent and strong (objective) narrative, based on a largely behavioural approach that narrows the role of the citizen to the one of individuals (or households) performing their conduct in consumption and waste production.3 This shift from the complex multidimensionality of citizenship to the streamlined consumer profile is one of the most debated features of the so-called New Public Management (Aberbach and Christensen, 2005). In general terms, the neoliberal reshaping of the bureaucracies as well as the liberalization affecting public administration in the late 1980s was inspired (Bognetti and Obermann, 2008) by a marketoriented approach in order to improve competition, performance and productivity. The argument of the chapter develops as follows: first, the Italian policy framework is sketched out to outline the institutional scenario and the Italian way to modernize and valorize urban waste. Then the role of citizens in waste management and value extraction is addressed. This is followed by a document-based analysis of official reporting released by three of the most important actors performing the Italian governance of waste management and recycling. The findings of the analysis are discussed in depth, and we conclude by showing how different logics adopted in the institutional accounting strategy contribute to enact a particular identity and agency of citizens in the process of waste valorization.

The Italian road to ecological modernization The Italian institutional framework for waste management highlights the importance of public interest as well as of public actors in performing the governance of this sector. Municipalities, for example, are still pivotal institutions in the multilevel design of formal tasks and responsibilities towards local communities. However, especially after the 1990s, the eco-efficiency EU discourse was transferred to Italy. This led to a reshaping of governance with the interconnection of administrative boundaries and hierarchical levels, effectively hybridizing the public logic of action with the private one, and the welfare of clean and healthy cities with the economic effectiveness of service provision (Buclet and Godard, 2001). The European

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Waste Hierarchy (since called the Parliament and Council Directive 94/62/EC of 20 December 1994 on packaging and packaging waste) promoted this ecological modernization approach informing strategies to manage waste among European countries (Berger et  al, 2001). During 2012 in Europe the average amount of urban waste processed for reuse and recycling was reported at around 42 per cent; Germany achieved the best performance with a percentage exceeding the EU target (65% by 2030), while Italy was just under the EU-28 member state average line, likewise France (EPRS, 2017: 37). Environmental costs were internalized within the chain connecting production and consumption, and responsibilities were shared among the actors, from institutions to companies and customers/citizens. At the same time, the complexity of the technological chain of waste processing increased in tandem with the growing practice of the separate collection of discarded materials in urban areas. Nowadays, the mixing of public and private in the field is the common way to arrange waste management, with a plurality of contracting-out schemes coexisting with in-house provision of services. This situation has arisen in the wake of a long period of adopting the New Public Management approach in Italy, transforming the organizational model of bureaucracies through the corporatization of public agencies. The current scenario has a range of models including private companies that apply to public tenders to provide services or to manage waste processing plants, municipalities that establish in-house companies to remunicipalize the control of previous externalized services, and hybrid companies that arise from the cooperation between public agencies and private equity. This scenario brings contradictions to the surface in terms of how the public/private balance of interests is performed (D’Amato, 2008). A distinction can be traced between the regulatory action, which is in charge of the public sphere, and management and operating activities that relate to waste collection, transport and processing that are shared by public and private actors. Both public and private actors can address the technological and industrial segment of the chain, targeting the high value-added and capital-intensive area of this sector of the foundational economy (Citroni and Lippi, 2009: 86), but the public agencies are often burdened by budget constraints, financial limitations and organizational rigidity (Pierobon, 2012). At the same time, processes of vertical integration and concentration are fostered by those corporations that are configured as multi-utilities and that operate in large areas providing services in different regions (Antonioli and Massarutto, 2012; Hall and Nguyen, 2012). As a consequence, the market logic appears more pervasive than others

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(including the urban welfare one), and the state is often considered as one stakeholder, even if a special one, among others (Citroni and Lippi, 2009). An eco-modernist philosophy that promotes the internalization of waste externalities through capital-intensive industrial strategies leads to the semantic overlapping mentioned at the beginning of the chapter. Indeed, recycling emerges ‘as an economic policy that is legitimated as an environmental policy’ (Schnaiberg, 1992: 1). In the recycling rhetoric, waste becomes a resource that is a valuable commodity because use-value and exchange-value of discarded materials can be re-enacted within the techno-institutional arrangement of recycling (Minervini, 2012, 2013). Market boundaries are extended through a reflexive and performative process that internalizes the material and symbolic spheres (Gregson et al, 2013). Recycling, therefore, represents a significant portion of the wider urban waste management on which our focus is addressed. Here we suggest that economic effectiveness and standardized (hard) value, as well as social and environmental benefits and (soft) values, are deeply intertwined. At the same time, public regimes and private markets are entangled in the enactment of the flows of waste recycling (and valuation) in terms of governance arrangements. In particular, the Italian case is notable for the pivotal role played by the National Packaging Consortium, a group of packaging companies that have to contribute with a fee to the financing of the national governance of recycling. This system covers each stream of material released in the market and then recovered (paper, plastics, aluminium, steel, wood and glass). A (private) consortium of (private) companies established by (public) law is entitled to take responsibility for the (public) general interest, in fostering effective (in economic terms) and environmentally friendly flows of packaging recycling processes. This process is undertaken by (private) companies of material processing (that is, those producing second-row materials) within a complex field in which (public) municipalities have relevant responsibilities related to the urban organization of waste collection. This is just an oversimplified sketch of the hybrid arrangement that ‘enacts’ value from waste, combining discourses of public sustainability with ones of economic revenue. Indeed, the value of waste is enacted within a large sociomaterial assemblage that connect laws, institutions, policies, rhetoric, statistical accounts, plants and technologies, physicchemical and mechanical processes, manual labour, lifestyles, and cultural and ideological frames. Moreover, the value enacted will not last forever; it needs maintenance to be consistent with the ecogreen neoliberal policies. In order to ensure this maintenance, experts,

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devices and accounting techniques are enrolled in the assemblage to translate and fix the model in practice (Bowman et al, 2014). Here the issue of public accounting of the waste value is pursued with reference to the practice of an urban-sorted collection in which the National Packaging Consortium plays a relevant role. In general terms, neoliberal narratives get their social and institutional legitimation because of the official reporting that is considered ‘objective’ and ‘neutral’. It has been argued that the performative mechanism of the self-legitimation of neoliberal policies is one of the reasons that prevents policy-makers from recognizing, and understanding, the failure of this approach in the fields of public services and utilities (Law and Williams, 2014: 9). We attempt to problematize this objectivity and neutrality that covers the ideological overlap between economic effectiveness and ecological concerns. One way to open up these legitimization narratives of creating value from waste is to trace how citizen and public interests are conceptualized and operationalized by actors performing the national waste system. What emerges from this document analysis on public records (Bowen, 2009) is that the ‘shared responsibility’ informing the policy of recycling waste materials is narrated in a very specific way. In particular, the way the agency of citizens is accounted for internalizes their contribution into the more general economic valuation of waste without a comprehensive acknowledgment of their role in the process itself. To date, this point is consistent with the logic of the municipal tax on disposal of solid waste. Indeed, the fee is calculated on the square metres of the house of the taxpayer and on the basis of the number of resident households, according to a supposed redistributive logic. Most recently a ministerial decree 20/04/2017 established that municipalities have to implement the punctual measurement of waste production for each service user, and that this innovation has to be financed by the users themselves. In 2016 the Italian municipalities adopting this methodology (the ‘Pay As You Throw’ scheme) to calculate local taxes amounted to only 7.5 per cent, according to an estimation of the Italian Institute for Environmental Protection and Research (Istituto Superiore per la Protezione e la Ricerca Ambientale, Ispra). A strong and pervasive rhetoric about the relevance of the agency of citizens, that means what they actually do in producing and ‘preparing’ waste, in sustaining the economic value creation from waste is institutionally promoted. However, formal recognition of this crucial role is still mostly quite presumptive because it is supposed that a big house produces more waste than a smaller one. Citizens have to separate materials correctly in order to valorize waste, and they have

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to pay a fee (based on the square metres of the house) to finance these services of the foundational economy, while the public actors engaged in the chain (basically, in-house providers) are focused on the intensive and low added-value labour activities. How is this scenario formally justified or accounted for in terms of a win-win game, both for public/ private interests and of market/environment logics? The next section presents a document-based analysis conducted on the official annual reports4 of three institutional actors that deliver the governance of waste management and recycling. The analytical focus was to retrace those narratives, figures, statistics and numbers addressing the agency of people who participate in the valuation of waste in the governance of the urban-sorted collection. Our approach is underpinned by the view that official formalization in the reporting of public records is constituted by a commensurate approach to the issues addressed, and this is more than a simply technical affair; it is a ‘fundamental feature of social life’ (Espeland and Stevens, 1998: 315). Indeed, the way indicators and their visualization are organized is closely related with their constitutive effect on social life (DahlerLarsen, 2014), supporting a certain point of view, shaping and at the same time, being shaped by policies. The performativity of the accounting was discussed, among others, by MacKenzie (2009), highlighting how calculation and framing contributed to commodify greenhouse emissions and making carbon markets. From this point of view, accounting indicators, methods and tools are deeply implicated in a sociomaterial assemblage where devices, actors, value and values, institutions and standards co-create the world that they display (Callon, 2009, 2010). In this chapter we cannot explore the complex sociomaterial network that performs waste management and exploitation, but we adopt the same pragmatic sensitivity of those scholars who try to understand social life as an ‘unfolding’ of social phenomena. In this case the aim is to open the black box of the official/ normative argument about eco-efficiency in waste management. ‘Unfolding’ (Latour, 2005) here basically means explaining through the reconstruction of connections and translations that ‘enact’ and ‘perform’ the social world. In turn, enactment and performativity are concepts addressing the ontological process of co-construction of identities, objects, devices, actors, organizations, official discourses as well as policies (Law and Singleton, 2005). So what follows is a qualitative analysis of the quantitative reports accounting for the issue of waste value, in order to detect the intertwinement between the formalized calculation and the normative and moral attitude toward what is calculated (Cochoy, 2002). As other scholars have shown, waste

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accountability can be understood in terms of how people manage the distance (material and symbolic) to their waste, and how the economy and environment issues are interlaced both with political arguments and individual conduct (Corvellec et al, 2018).5

How much are citizens worth (and accounted for) in waste valorization? Let us start from the main institutional actor that governs the waste issue within the broader frame of national environmental policies: the Italian Institute for Environmental Protection and Research (Ispra), which is under the responsibility of the Ministry of the Environment, Land and Sea. In one of the most important official publications about environmental accounting, it stated: […] an industrial system for the recycling of the sorted materials collected is growing and it manages 34.4% of the urban waste. Policies […] of involvement and direction of individual efforts towards a green and low carbon model of economic growth are needed to combat the environmental deterioration[…]. An objective and rigorous information […] is the precondition for the citizens’ enactment and to establish a trust connection between citizens and institutions.[…] the Annual report shows its effectiveness in enabling a governance system based on participation. (Ispra, 2014a: VIII; translation from Italian) Citizens are acknowledged here as people who need ‘objective’ and reliable information in order to have the awareness to behave in the right way in connection with institutions and in everyday life. Actually, it is the people who are the target of institutional communication first of all. Another way to address the agency of people in this national accounting narrative is found in the statistical quantification of ‘per capita expenditure’ (Ispra, 2014b: 201) that can be apportioned to the sorted and unsorted waste management and municipal cleaning service. In this case, people are framed as taxpayers who directly contribute to financing the costs of the services. What clearly emerges is that the sorted collection of waste is more expensive than the traditional system of the past, and that costs were constantly rising in the trend considered.6 In a way, the more ecological modernization is fostered, the higher the costs to face the sociotechnical complexity of

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this system. From an economic point of view, the valuation of waste needs more public money (taxes) to be pursued. It was interesting to note that after the financial crisis of 2008 this trend decreased, but essentially because of the downturn of households’ consumption (and waste production) per capita costs (for sorted and unsorted waste management and the municipal cleaning service) (Ispra, 2014d: 188). The most recent issue of the Urban Waste Report (2018) expands the use of the per capita indicators, which are basically a linear division by the population aimed at statistical normalization in a wider spectrum of figures with reference to disposal costs, urban waste production, urban waste separate collection and urban waste recycling. People pay taxes as well as paying for the products they purchase, packaging included. A proxy for people as consumers is accounted for within the statistics related to packaging released for consumption. The agency of those producing waste packaging through daily activities is formatted within the broader market trends that appear to be correlated with the contraction of production and consumption after the financial crisis: In 2013 the data about packaging “for sale”, according to the “CONAI General Program of waste packaging prevention and management 2013” […] shows a reduction of 0.4%, in line with the national market trends in terms of household expenditure, industrial activity, and commercial exchange. The “for sale” data are derived from the production of packaging added to imported packaging[…]. It is assumed that the annual production of packaging is equivalent to the packaging consumption in the same period. (Ispra, 2014c: 152) People are simultaneously counted as taxpayers, consumers and, of course, recyclers. The last way to frame the contribution of people in waste valuation is, like the previous one, the link to the production of the packaging released for consumption. The emphasis here is on the point that the decline in the consumption of packaging after 2007/08 was more intense than the reduction of recycling. This decoupled trend is completely different from the one of waste disposal that has constantly decreased since 2000 (Ispra, 2014d: 148). Gross domestic product (GDP) is the indicator usually adopted to deal with the strength of the national economy. Urban waste production and household expenditure trends are compared with GDP, which is viewed as the economic indicator ‘par excellence’. Again, the financial crisis seems to have affected all the trends considered here, but since 2010 urban waste

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production has registered a very pronounced reduction. People are framed as families in the middle of an economic crisis that, in a way, contributed to reducing one of the unwanted consequences of mass consumption (that is, waste). Data from the last few years depict an improvement in the scenario; indeed, waste production has decreased differently from the trends of consumption and GDP (Ispra, 2018: 36). GDP is used here in harmony with the OECD Environment Programme that adopts this indicator to measure the disconnection (decoupling) between the growth rate of environmental pressures and the economic one. People are also counted as those living in ‘public areas’. In this way, the Ispra official report accounts for the amount of waste collected from those housing urban areas that are distinct from those where industrial and commercial activities are located. Here, the statistical number is based on the databases provided for by CONAI, the national consortium of private companies that co-enact the recovery of the different material streams after the sorted collection of urban waste. This specific narrative is based on statistics that are provided for municipalities and collected by the recycling consortia that manage the stream of the sorted collection of wasted packaging. The last update of the statistics about the ‘public areas’ shows that there is an increasing rate of recycled materials, up more than 3.7 per cent from 2016 to 2017 (Ispra, 2018: 188). It is quite uncontroversial that the local level represents, also in material terms, the place where the production of those data that account for the recycling trends take shape. At this level of governance, a relevant role is played by the National Association of Italian Municipalities (ANCI). This actor, through its dedicated company Ancitel, supports the municipalities to develop strategies of e-government in different policy fields, including urban waste management. The production of data, information and reliable communication is considered a pivotal issue for this actor, underlining how this is crucial to support municipalities (and their residents) in waste management: We want to enhance both qualitatively and quantitatively the sorted collection of waste material managed by municipalities […] with the creation of an updated database about the sorted collection and the quality of the services provided. (Ancitel, 2012: 8) More specifically, the annual Ancitel official report displays the contribution of citizens by linking the data on sorted collections to the size of the resident population in municipalities (that is, per capita

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indicators or CONAI contribution in terms of €/inhabitants). In this case, the connection with CONAI is also needed in order to share the sources of the statistics. These reports clearly convey the usual North–South divide, with better performances for the population of the Northern municipalities. The data of sorted collection per capita (kg/person/year) accounted for in the sixth edition of the report show a slight improvement in performance for some Southern regions (Ancitel, 2016: 57–8). The Ancitel publications display one of the most effective indicators to address the argument of waste valuation by citizens. Indeed, data refer not only to the quantity of sorted collection of materials but also to the quality of the material itself. Table 7.1 is from the fourth edition of the report (2014). Here people are accounted for as responsible for the so-called ‘external fraction’ that compromises the value of the sorted collection. The share of impurities detected in samples after the urban collection is how they classify the value of the materials before the processing phase. The Consortium’s financial system, transferring money from the producers of packaging to the municipalities to support the sorted collection, is essentially based on this method. If the collection is contaminated above a certain degree, municipalities are excluded from the compensation fee and the Consortium can refuse to take back and pay for the sorted materials. This statistic frames the issue of responsibility for valuation in a very explicit way: the effectiveness of the urban collection provided for by municipalities and enacted by a proper conduct of the people who consume the packaging has to be guaranteed in the name of the economic loop of mutual convenience between the public and private actors/interests engaged in the sociotechnical assemblage of waste recycling. How the work of citizens and municipalities contributes to the win-win game performed by the national governance of the sorted collection is clearly represented in the CONAI reports. The ‘scissor graph’ (see Figure  7.1) illustrates the inverse relationship between the amount of packaging wasted in landfill and the amount recovered Table 7.1: Quality-range fees (plastic packaging waste collection)

External fractions Up to 5% From 5% to 16%

2009 276.41 194.74

2010 276.41 194.74

Source: Adapted from: Ancitel (2014: 46)

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€/ton 2011 276.41 194.74

2012 285.9 201.43

2013 291.62 205.46

The Foundational Economy and Citizenship Figure 7.1: Management modes of packaging waste (landfill disposal/recycling and energy recovery) Recycling

Landfill disposal

% 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10

12 20

11

10

20

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08

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07

06

20

20

05

04

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03

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02

01

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00

99

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19

98

0

Source: Adapted from CONAI (2014: 32)

(which also means waste incineration). Since 2001 the positive waste valuation trend was constantly increasing, and people were part of this path of enhancing economic value, reducing the environmental impact of landfill. This graph, published in 2014, was updated in the following editions of the CONAI reports, with longer and longer scissor blades.7 How the people are involved in this win-win game narrative can be understood if we look at the statistics that account at the same time for the trend of GDP, the amount of packaging for sale, and packaging (kg) to GDP (€) ratio. This particular frame highlights that the financial crisis of 2008 was crucial in the reduction of waste, because of the substantial reduction in consumption, but at the same time the GDP trend has decreased less than the one for the packaging released for consumption. In this case, this decoupling is also interpreted as the effectiveness of the CONAI strategies, while people are framed as consumers that at one point started to suffer from the financial crisis. This narrative emphasizes the bright side of the story of the waste management of packaging in Italy. The main argument that economic valuation is the way to reconcile the externalities of mass consumption to a more sustainable way to manage the flows

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of materials is based on the assumed objectivity of data and facts. Indeed, the reliability of the CONAI official reporting is assured by the adoption of international standards. In doing so, the objectivity and transparency of the accountability will enhance a relationship of confidence between all the actors involved in the socioeconomic and institutional assemblage of waste recycling. Here people became, for the CONAI as for previous organizations, a strategic target of institutional communication: CONAI started to construct a structured accounting strategy oriented to stakeholders, institutions, and citizens. The aim is to describe in a transparent way the results, advances and perspective of growth of the sector. For this aim, the Sustainability Report was designed in coherence with the most established international standards. In particular […] that one developed within the Global Reporting Initiative. (CONAI, 2014: 6; translated from Italian) In the last edition of the CONAI Sustainability Report (2018), economic benefits (both direct and indirect) are summarized in terms of the value of the second raw production from recycling, value of energy from waste to value of economic income (wages of employees in recycling). The total value of these economic benefits from 2005 to 2017 was estimated as €9.8 billion ‘benefiting the entire country’ (CONAI, 2018: 23). Numbers and graphs show the objective actuality of the economic valuation of waste. People need to be informed in order to understand and follow the right approach in the everyday separation of materials, but is this agency directly referred to in the valuation process (and accounted for in these terms)? In the first part of the chapter we described the urban waste management taxation system, and in the current scenario, few experiences are accounting for the direct estimation of the qualitative and quantitative contribution of citizens to the overall valuation of materials. The accounting strategy and its narrative miss the point of people’s involvement in the ‘economic’ valuation of waste. On the one hand, the rhetoric of the valuation follows a narrative that emphasizes the relevance of ordinary people and their everyday conduct; on the other hand, the same people are poorly acknowledged in terms of what their work is worth. If we return to the 2014 Urban Waste Report released by the first institutional actor considered in this empirical analysis, Ispra, we can see that this issue was explained as a very challenging methodological problem. In a few words, people definitely

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count, but their agency is difficult to include in the formalization of valuation: The 2008/98/CE […] indicates specific targets related to preparing for re-use, treatment and recycling of waste materials from households and other origins similar to households[…]. Methods to verify the achievement of targets is provided by the 2011/753/UE [EU] decision.[…] there are four methodologies; […] 1: % of recycling of domestic waste […]; 2: % of recycling of domestic waste and similar […]; 3: % of recycling of the domestic waste in general; 4: % of recycling of urban waste. 1 and 3 are explicitly referred to as domestic waste. These formulas are difficult to apply at the national level […] because of the different ways of collection usually adopted in Italy. (Ispra, 2014d: 66)

Concluding remarks Urban waste management is a crucial sector of the foundational economy. If we look at the Italian governance of packaging waste, a complex arrangement connects different actors, logics of action and interests. Ordinary people and their ordinary lives are the essential ingredient in this arrangement; they literally make this process of exploitation of waste value work. They are enrolled in the enhancement of quality and quantity of the sorted collection of wasted materials. Scholars have shown how waste management can be developed following different governmental rationalities (Bulkeley et al, 2007), from traditional landfill to the more advanced eco-efficiency performed by plants and advanced technologies. Here we have tried to retrace the way citizens are accounted for within the official narratives produced by the institutional actors. These actors are part of a process of commodification of waste that has unfolded within a sheltered area of economic activity. Indeed, waste economies are regulated and supported by public finance because of their fundamental relevance, both in terms of urban welfare and environmental protection. This means that economic logic has to serve the common interests of citizens. The current scenario is made up of citizens paying the price for the consumption of packaging (which obviously incorporates the fee aimed at financing the Consortium system), paying taxes that subsidize municipal waste management, and doing the everyday work of separating the materials in their own homes to improve the ‘quality’ and ‘value’ of collection. The

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official accounting scrutinized here seems ineffective in recognizing this mundane, taken-for-granted, but crucial collective agency. What emerges from the qualitative analysis of the reports is a very coherent narration accounting for people as consumers, above all else. The green economy discourse is the main script of this official and institutional storytelling, and the market is the privileged scenario where people (and/or families) act and participate in the valuation process. People’s action is framed within specific coordinates, from GDP to household expenditure and consumption, to the production of ‘packaging for sale’. The narratives are underpinned by statistical formalization (quantification) and the presentation of aggregate trend data in figures and graphs. Because of this, people are considered mainly as a population, or more precisely, residents in public areas, in order to account for the household’s agency. Analysis of the documentation also reveals the cultural discourse with which people are framed as the target of communication and educational strategies. Here ordinary conduct is viewed as something to be governed and guided so as to strengthen the process of economic exploitation. Another logic informing this social accounting strategy is one based on the institutional/public discourse. In this case, people are basically treated as taxpayers that, in the name of the shared responsibility principle, pay and directly contribute to financing the overall system of recycling. In general terms, a behavioural approach drives the discourse surrounding waste valuation and citizens. The agency is essentially considered in terms of individual choices achieved in the market of mass consumption as well as in terms of the ‘right’ recycling conduct. To sum up, it seems that citizens are framed more as good and proactive consumers following the paths of a green and sustainable economy than as citizens making use of a public utility. If this ‘market frame’ leads to the optimization of (mundane) social action as a desired individual performance, at the same time this perspective neglects the collective dimension of the issue. Soft values (environmental, social) are tied together with hard numbers about (economic) value, but at the same time this accounting strategy based on the economic calculus, through its vocabulary, neutralizes and depoliticizes the issue of everyday consumption in itself. What we see in the statistics addressing people and their agency is just the end of the storyline, when criticalities about waste (over)production are shifted downstream of the process (management, disposal, recycling). The foundational economy goes beyond a field of individual decisions people make or do not make, to optimize their conduct. In this particular case, it deals with urban welfare, environmental protection,

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and broadly speaking, with a good life. To fully recognize the agency of citizens within this field of the foundational economy a new frame is needed. To this purpose, the first step is to reopen this evidencebased narration that, in turn, accounts for the ‘value’ of people in the exploitation of waste. This could enable us to unlock the ‘black box’ of official reporting and its taken-for-granted epistemology, to problematize its legitimation in terms of neutral objectivity, and to explicate the morality of a market-oriented approach in organizing and accounting for urban waste management. Awareness about waste prevention is quite common, but the absence of a holistic approach (Corvellec and Zapata, 2018) leads to a scenario in which waste still remains a troubling issue to deal with. At the same time, a foundational economy approach needs an acknowledgment of the social demand of public utility, as well as new calculative devices and methodologies of accounting developed in line with a holistic approach including social practices of everyday life. This goal, that addresses both the valuation and the values of the waste issue, can be achieved through a co-productive relation between science, expertise and all the actors of the network (from institutional agencies to citizens themselves and civil society actors). Such co-constructed social-material accountability is not aimed simply at recognizing the value of citizens’ work in enacting the value of waste (which seems to be one of the priorities of the eco-modernist approach), but also takes into account how the social organization of production, consumption and disposal affect the common interests of citizens. In this way the poor track record in recycling of consumers and families of the Southern regions can be reframed in collective terms, looking at the contextual criticalities that contribute to enacting territorial inequalities. Within this approach, communication, information and education are relevant issues, but in a broader sense than the one that addresses the individual framing of the correct pattern of waste-related practices. The institutional communication of waste in a foundational economy approach should speak on the one hand to the language of the holistic interconnection shaping that issue (from the criticalities incorporated in the production phases, through the consumption patterns up to the waste dominion). On the other hand, it has to deal with a context-based grammar of the very local possibilities to address waste prevention. In so doing the narration will display reuse practices, quantitative reduction and qualitative differentiation of consumption and its relation with waste production, lifestyles and pluralization of orders of worth more than simply the adherence to a more or less ‘green’ market-efficient conduct.

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This point leads to the debate about how to value both the market and non-market dimensions of ecosystems and ecosystem services that lead to sustainability, health, security and wellbeing. The assessment, as said, is not a neutral challenge. It is perfomative in the sense that it contributes to create the same reality that it pretends to objectively evaluate. These are aggregative methods, that separate the economic value from the whole picture, enacting a certain assemblage of facts, object, accounting devices and environmental value. This utilitarian approach to the value of the environment is quite different from the holistic and participative one that pluralizes the logics of judgement, taking into account different sectors of policies and the point of view of those affected by the policies (Norton, 2012). Of course this change of paradigm is a challenge not only in methodological terms, but most of all, from the point of view of the policy-makers, it presents the challenge of delivering a (new) programme of wellbeing and equal opportunities for all the citizens provided for by the infrastructure of everyday life. This is the main foundational economy argument, and this chapter, as for the book on the whole, aims to contribute towards this ambitious goal. Notes 1

2

3

4

5

6

The value of the turnover of the sorted collection of wasted materials in Italy was estimated up to 2017 at €5 billion, with 64,000 people working in this field (Montalbetti, 2018). Urban waste management can be easily associated with the broader field of the foundational economy. Indeed, this public policy sector shares with the foundational economy the following feature: ‘large, mostly unglamorous, rather heterogeneous, and […] distributed across the country. It is an economy that meets every day needs by providing taken-for-granted services and goods such as care, telecommunications or food’ (Bentham et al, 2013: 3). Indeed, it was noticed that recycling, unlike reuse, is intertwined with the logic of property: the materials are valuable if someone has the right to purchase, possess and sell them (Alexander and Reno, 2012). The qualitative analysis of official documents has been intended to retrace the social meanings of the accountability rhetoric (Tonkiss, 2000) as well as the ideological assumptions (Fairclough, 2003: 58). The research was carried out in 2016 (Minervini, 2016) and comprised a systematic analysis of the empirical materials that were collected and sampled from the latest published annual report released by Ispra, Ancitel and CONAI. Here, some new issues added in the most recent reports currently published are also discussed in order to update the findings of the previous research. The 2018 Ispra Urban Waste Report confirms the rising trend of the per capita cost of waste management because of the adoption of the sorted collection and recycling system (€14.33/inhabitant in 2002, €50.89/inhabitant in 2017).

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The text accompanying the scissors graph updated to 2016 underlines the role of people in the achievement of this success: ‘The citizens had played and continue to play a fundamental role, demonstrating that when adequately informed and prepared, it can become the painstaking key element in waste valorisation. The recovery and recycling targets have been reached within the forecast times, at costs far below the rest of Europe’ (CONAI, 2017: 12).

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Bowman, A., Froud, J., Johal, S., Law, J., Leaver, A., Moran, M. and Williams, K. (eds) (2014) The End of the Experiment? From Competition to the Foundational Economy, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Buclet, N. and Godard, O. (2001) ‘The evolution of municipal waste management in Europe: How different are national regimes?’, Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning, 3: 303–17. Bulkeley, H., Watson, M. and Hudson, R. (2007) ‘Modes of governing municipal waste’, Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 39(11): 2733–53, available at https://doi.org/10.1068/a38269. Callon, M. (2009) ‘Civilizing markets: Carbon trading between in vitro and in vivo experiments’, Accounting, Organizations and Society, 34(3–4): 535–48. Callon, M. (2010) ‘Performativity, misfires and politics’, Journal of Cultural Economy, 3(2): 163–9. Citroni, G. and Lippi, A. (2009) ‘Pubblico e privato nella governance dei rifiuti in Italia’, Rivista Italiana di Politiche Pubbliche, 1: 71–108. Cochoy, F. (2002) Une sociologie du packaging ou l’aê ne de Buridan face au marche [A sociology of packaging, or Buridan’s ass in the face of the market], Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. CONAI (2014) Contenuti e Contenitori – Rapporto di Sostenibilità CONAI 2013, available at www.cial.it/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/ RAPPORTO-DI-SOSTENIBILITA-SISTEMA-CONAI-2013.pdf CONAI (2017) ‘Packaging Recovery in Italy: The CONAI System’, available at www.CONAI.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/TheCONAI-System_-2017.pdf CONAI (2018) ‘Insight Materia Rinnovabile’, Supplemento al no 23– 24 di Materia Rinnovabile (CONAI_Report_Sostenibilità_2018), available at www.CONAI.org/wp-content/uploads/dlm_ uploads/2018/11/CONAI_Report_Sostenibilit%C3%A0_2018.pdf Corvellec, H. and Zapata, P. (2018) ‘Synen på avfall måste förändras för att få bukt med sopberget [Perspektiv]. Dagens Samhälle’, 15  November, 40(10) (English translation available at www. researchgate.net/publication/332797408_Reframe_Waste_as_a_ Moral_Issue_English_translation_of_Corvellec_Herve_Zapata_ Patrik_2016_Synen_pa_avfall_maste_forandras_for_att_fa_bukt_ med_sopberget_Perspektiv_Dagens_Samhalle_15_november_nr40_ s10?fbclid=IwAR3S-27WcMcNO5TFGGnGnbrPffdqT3dNBucFr DUfGihlfk50T-mW2Of7gCM). Corvellec, H., Ek, R., Zapata, P. and Zapata Campos, M.J. (2018) ‘Acting on distances: A topology of accounting inscriptions’, Accounting, Organizations and Society, 67: 56–65.

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Dahler-Larsen, P. (2014) ‘Constitutive effects of performance indicators: Getting beyond unintended consequences’, Public Management Review, 16 (7): 969–86. D’Amato, A. (2008) ‘Rifiuti, mercati del riciclo ed efficienza economica’, Economia dei servizi, 3: 425. EEA (European Environment Agency) (2014) ‘Waste: A problem or a resource?’, available at www.eea.europa.eu/signals/signals-2014/ articles/waste-a-problem-or-a-resource EPRS (European Parliamentary Research Service) (2017) ‘Towards a circular economy – Waste management in the EU’, available at www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2017/581913/ EPRS_STU%282017%29581913_EN.pdf Espeland, W.N. and Stevens, M.L. (1998) ‘Commensuration as a social process’, Annual Review of Sociology, 24: 313–43. Fagan, H. (2002) Grounding Waste: Towards a Sociology of Waste Networks, Working Paper Series, No 18, National Institute for Regional and Spatial Analysis, December, available at http://mural. maynoothuniversity.ie/470/1/WPS18.pdf Fairclough, N. (2003) Analyzing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research, London: Routledge. Gereffi, G. (1994) ‘The Organisation of Buyer-Driven Global Commodity Chains: How US Retailers Shape Overseas Production’, in G. Gereffi and M. Korzeniewicz (eds) Commodity Chains and Global Capitalism, Westport, CT: Praeger, 95–122. Gregson, N., Watkins, H. and Calestani, M. (2013) ‘Political markets: Recycling, economization and marketization’, Economy and Society, 42(1): 1–25. Hall, D. and Nguyen, T.A. (2012) Waste Management in Europe: Companies, Structure and Employment, Public Services International Research Unit (PSIRU), available at www.epsu.org/IMG/pdf/2012_ Waste_mngt_EWC.pdf Ispra (Istituto Superiore per la Protezione e la Ricerca Ambientale) (2014a) ‘Annuario dati ambientali’, available at www.isprambiente.gov. it/files/pubblicazioni/statoambiente/tematiche2013/ParteGenerale. pdf Ispra (2014b) ‘Valutazione dei costi di gestione dei servizi di igiene urbana in Italia – Elaborazioni delle dichiarazioni MUD’, Rome, 201, available at www.isprambiente.gov.it/files/pubblicazioni/rapporti/ rapporto-rifiuti-2014/Capitolo_6.pdf Ispra (2014c) Rapporto rifiuti 2014, 207/2014 Capitolo 4, Imballaggi e Rifiuti di Imballaggio, available at www.isprambiente.gov.it/files/ pubblicazioni/rapporti/rapporto-rifiuti-2014/Capitolo_4.pdf

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Ispra (2014d) Rapporto Rifiuti Urbani, Edizione 2014 (202/2014), Dati di sintesi, available at www.isprambiente.gov.it/files/pubblicazioni/ rapporti/RapportoRifiutiUrbani2014_web.pdf Ispra (2018) Rapporto Rifiuti Urbani, Edizione 2018 (297/2018), available at www.isprambiente.gov.it/files2018/pubblicazioni/ rapporti/RapportoRif297.pdf Latour, B. (2005) Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to ActorNetwork-Theory, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Law, J. and Singleton, V. (2005) ‘Object lessons’, Organization, 12(3): 331–55. Law, J. and Williams, K. (2014) A State of Unlearning? Government as Experiment, CRESC Working Paper 134, Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change, available at http://hummedia.manchester. ac.uk/institutes/cresc/workingpapers/wp134.pdf MATTM (Ministero dell’Ambiente e della Tutela del Territorio e del Mare) and MISE (Ministero dello Sviluppo Economico) (2017) ‘Verso un modello di economia circolare per l’Italia’, available at http:// consultazione-economiacircolare.minambiente.it/sites/default/files/ verso-un-nuovo-modello-di-economia-circolare_HR.pdf MacKenzie, D. (2009) ‘Making things the same: Gases, emission rights and the politics of carbon markets’, Accounting, Organizations and Society, 34(3–4): 440–55. Minervini, D. (2012) ‘Waste valuation performed by socio-technical connections’, Sociologica, 3, available at www.rivisteweb.it/download/ article/10.2383/72703 Minervini, D. (2013) ‘Governance in a Bottle’, in M.J. Zapata and M. Hall (eds) Organising Waste in the City: International Perspectives on Narratives and Practices, Bristol: Policy Press, 99–120. Minervini, D. (2016) ‘La Gestione dei Rifiuti Urbani Differenziati’, in F. Barbera, J. Dagnes, A. Salento and F. Spina (eds) Il Capitale Quotidiano: Analisi e Regolazione dell’Economia Fondamentale, Rome: Donzelli, 133–46. Montalbetti, C. (2018) ‘Il Bilancio dell’Economia Circolare in Italia’, in D. Bianchi (ed) Economia Circolare in Italia, Milano: Edizioni Ambiente. Norton, B.G. (2012) ‘Valuing ecosystems’, Nature Education Knowledge, 3(10): 2. Pierobon, A. (2012) ‘Recenti tendenze dei servizi pubblici locali in materia ambientale’, Comuni d’Italia, 49(2): 26–32. Schnaiberg, A. (1992) Recycling vs Remanufacturing: Redistributive Realities, Working Paper 92-115, Spring, Evanston, IL: Center for Urban Affairs & Policy Research, Northwestern University.

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Tonkiss, F. (2000) ‘Analysing Discourse’, in C. Seale (ed) Researching Society and Culture, London: Sage, 246–60. Urry, J. (2002) ‘Time, Complexity and the Global’, in G. Crow and S. Heath (eds) Social Conceptions of Time: Structure and Process in Work and Everyday Life, London: Palgrave, 11–23. Zapata, P. and Zapata Campos, M.J. (2015) ‘Producing, Appropriating, and Recreating the Myth of the Urban Commons’, in C. Borch and M. Kornberger (eds) Urban Commons: Rethinking the City, Abingdon: Routledge, 92–108. Zapata Campos, M.J. and Zapata, P. (2013) ‘Switching Managua on! Connecting informal settlements to the formal city through household waste collection’, Environment and Urbanization, 25(1): 225–42.

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Civil society and the movement for public water: Water management and its transformation in the UK1 and Italy Sergio Marotta and Ferdinando Spina

Introduction We start this chapter with a passage from a story by Italo Calvino: I move my arm towards the shower, place my hand on the knob, turn it slowly, rotating to the left. I’ve just woken up, my eyes are still full of sleep, but I am perfectly aware that this gesture I’m performing to start my day is a decisive and solemn act[…]. And I know that in order for this miracle to be renewed every day a series of complex conditions have to be met, so that turning on a tap can never be a distracted, automatic gesture, but requires concentration, mental participation. (Calvino, 1995: 206) In referring to the taken for granted nature of everyday things, Calvino’s work seems a particularly apt literary citation for a study of the management of water supply services within the framework of the foundational economy. Urban water supply and sanitation are the result of a complex process involving public institutions and agencies, private companies and agencies and civil society. The management of the water sector has significant economic and political – but also social, environmental and technological – implications (Lobina, 2013). The ‘miracle’ of a drinkable water supply is a fundamental and indispensable part of the infrastructure of civilized life (Foundational Economy Collective, 2018). Indeed, it is both a product and a service necessary to everyday life, it is consumed daily by all citizens regardless of income, and it is distributed via an infrastructure of pipelines and networks.

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However, and this is a serious issue in our view, the availability of something so valuable as drinking water is too often taken for granted, and its importance today is underestimated by the citizens of developed countries. This is not the case for the private companies and investors who have for some time now been aware of the significant potential of water supply services for the extraction of profits and dividends. Therefore, any attempt to better regulate water services in order to obtain social and ecological justice will require moral participation by authorities and companies. In addition, a general shift in citizens’ attitudes, from being passive users to active players, is essential, both in water consumption and in governance. This chapter considers water supply within the general framework of the foundational economy, seeking to highlight the complex and often problematic relationship in the governance of the sector between the public sector, the market and civil society. Specifically, the chapter will look, on the one hand, at the serious implications of the new financialized economy and the point value approach for universal access to drinking water and the quality of the service and, on the other hand, at some efforts of repair by active citizens and responsive institutions in strengthening social justice and sustainability in the water supply. This chapter is organized as follows. First, we report on the evolution of the legal and regulatory framework for water supply in the UK and Italy. Second, we consider certain aspects of water governance, particularly extraction and exploitation in the sector. And third, we illustrate the struggle for the remunicipalization of water services with specific reference to the current situation in Italy.

Water management in the UK and Italy from a historical and legal perspective The UK One constant aspect of the UK’s complicated policy on the governance of water services over the last two centuries is that it has tended to favour the economic interests of companies and private citizens while neglecting environmental protection and in some cases the social issues that arise from this (Hassan, 1998). As is well known, in the 19th century the role of water services in achieving a general improvement in the standard of living and health of all citizens – and with it the full modernization of society – began to be recognized (Goubert, 1989). Government policies thus sought to

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protect this sector from the application of the laws of the market. The second half of the 19th century saw the establishment of the ‘municipal hydraulic paradigm’ of water management, which would constitute the conventional approach to managing water supply systems in most countries around the world for much of the subsequent century (Bakker, 2004, 2010). In the UK, following the rapid processes of industrialization and urbanization, but also in response to the severe problems of public hygiene and epidemics, including outbreaks of cholera in the 1830s and 1840s, water supply and sanitation services were developed in the large cities. These were mainly managed via public municipal companies rather than private firms (Hassan, 1985; Millward, 1989). From the beginning of the 20th century until 1974, when the sector was nationalized, around 80 per cent of the water and sewerage systems in the UK were publicly owned and managed on a local level, with the exception of a few non-municipalized private water companies (‘statutory water companies’), which were, however, heavily regulated (Hassan, 1998; Bakker, 2004). This regulatory framework was based on the idea of water supply as a basic strategic resource for the industrial and civil development of the nation. Public water supply was a necessary element of the Fordist social contract between state, citizen and capital (Graham and Marvin, 1994; Bakker, 2001). From this notion derived a series of legal principles and managerial models designed to safeguard social equity and universal provision, ensure public ownership of infrastructure and provide subsidies to the water supply system. An example is that charges for water were not determined on the basis of the cost-recovery principle. Yet, by the mid-20th century, the financial costs of water supply had become increasingly burdensome. There was a growing need to adopt a more centralized and efficient approach to management, on a bigger scale. The Water Act 1973 represented a major reform aimed at ensuring the integrated management of water via the centralization and improvement of all water services while at the same time reducing costs and demands for funding from central government. However, the reform produced few benefits and had a series of negative consequences. The impossibility of reconciling increased investment with a lowering of government subsidies and price controls led to a considerable deterioration of services and mounting public criticism concerning the activities of the Regional Water Authorities. Water quality continued to decline, earning the UK the media label ‘the dirty man of Europe’ (Rose, 1990). According to Hassan (1998: 156), ‘the obsession with driving down costs and meeting performance targets, often based on quite simplistic criteria,

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ignored how the environmental and other long-term objectives set in 1973 could be achieved.’ This unsatisfactory situation justified the shift towards privatization (Saunders and Harris, 1994), a complex process that unfolded in a number of phases. For example, in 1985, the White Paper, Privatization of the Water Authorities in England and Wales, provided ‘an impressive list of the potential benefits of privatization’ (Parker, 2013: 178), including authorities being free from government intervention and protected from political pressure; access to private capital markets to cut costs and improve services; a clearer strategic framework for the protection of the water environment; and many others besides. The Water Act 1989 implemented the process of privatization of a number of ‘water only companies’ and of the 10 regional ‘water and sewerage companies’. Autonomous authorities were set up, including Ofwat, which was responsible for monitoring the economic management, investment and prices operated by private firms. Ofwat applied the price cap regulation, which determines the extent to which prices can be adjusted on a yearly basis to inflation, financial requirements and past performance against operational targets. With this Act, ‘every effort was made to ensure that the privatization was a success’ (Bayliss, 2014: 17). In essence, the results of privatization were the transfer of ownership from publicly owned monopolies to private companies listed on the London Stock Exchange, market-based regulation instead of direct public management, and the pre-eminence in water pricing policies of efficiency and cost-effectiveness over social equity (Bakker, 2004). However, there was also an improvement in the quality of the service and the environment. In fact, the first few years of privatization saw a rise in the level of infrastructure renewal and quality-driven investment (Helm and Rajah, 1994). The debate over privatization thus highlights the technical and economic efficiency of water services, which had not been considered a priority under public management. To summarize, since the 1990s, as Bakker points out (Bakker, 2001: 143) ‘the business of domestic water supply, like other utilities, has been gradually evolving from the supply of a service to citizens at subsidized rates, towards the sale of a commodity to consumers on a full costrecovery basis.’ The UK has therefore seen a transition from a ‘state hydraulic’ to a ‘market environmentalist’ paradigm (Bakker, 2004). In terms of impact, this process seems to be unparalleled anywhere else in the world, and yet it has become a model of reference for many other countries (Bakker, 2010; Lobina, 2019), including Italy, as we shall see shortly. However, over the years, this model of regulation of water services has produced severe distortions, which have sparked

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numerous controversies and widespread demands for change, not only in other countries, but also where it all began. Italy In Italy at the beginning of the 20th century, the government, headed by the liberal Giovanni Giolitti, allowed local administrations to directly provide gas, water and other services by means of municipal companies. This helped to improve the quality of urban life by ensuring the supply of those essential services that the free market did not find it economically expedient to provide. This system lasted for about a century, until, at the end of the 20th century, a series of new norms governing local public services eliminated the system of management by means of municipal companies in favour of joint stock companies. A key moment for this sector was the ‘Galli’ Law (no 36/94), which created an integrated service combining the processes of water extraction and distribution, sewers and sewage treatment (Citroni et al, 2008; Marotta, 2014). To facilitate understanding of the legal, economic and social processes that have unfolded in Italy since the passing of the ‘Galli’ Law, we shall divide the period into three distinct phases. In the first phase, which lasted until 2001, the objective of the reforms was the reorganization of the water firms. This entailed promoting their transformation into joint stock companies in order to achieve economies of scale by merging the myriad of existing companies into a small number of big providers. In the second phase, which began with the state budget of 2002 and concluded with the referendum of 2011, the main objective was to create the conditions for the full liberalization of the water sector via the generalized application of competition rules. This was supposed to ensure the transformation of a sector functioning as a natural monopoly into an open market, enabling the progressive entrance into the sector of private companies, both Italian and foreign. The period after the 2002 saw the creation, above all on a local level, of numerous movements and civic committees for the defence of water that were staunchly opposed to whatsoever form of privatization of the sector. These movements and committees set up the Forum Italiano dei Movimenti per l’Acqua (Italian Forum of Water Movements), which met for the first time in Rome in March 2006. From the point of view of the opponents of privatization, the most important steps were the popular legislative initiative, in 2007, for the return of water supply to public management and the referendum in 2011

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for the abrogation of the Ronchi Decree of 2009 (no 135/2009), a law that had strengthened the liberalization and privatization of the sector. The text of the popular legislative initiative was discussed and modified in the 17th Legislature (2013–18), but it was never passed by Parliament. The bill was presented again, in its original form, in the current legislature (see below). The referendum of 2011 marked a turning point in the struggle against privatization. Indeed, it marked the start of the third phase, in which the government sought to complete the liberalization of the water sector. This mainly involved attributing responsibility for the regulation of the sector to what is today called the Arera (Autorità di Regolazione per Energia, Reti e Ambiente, the Italian Regulatory Authority for Energy, Networks and the Environment) (Caporale, 2017). The result of the complex processes summarily described here is the broad fulfilment in Italy of the depublicization of water supply services (Marotta, 2011), which has led, on the one hand, to the transformation of the suppliers into joint stock companies, and, on the other hand, to the configuration of the water sector as a regulated market populated by a combination of companies that are entirely publicly owned or controlled by public bodies, together with private companies of various sizes up to large multinationals. All this is based on the general assumption by the Italian ruling classes that the private company model would ensure greater efficiency and savings, even in the water sector. To summarize, it can be argued that this ‘reform’ process involved a sort of emptying out of the state, consisting of three tendencies: the privatization and limitation of public intervention; the transfer of local and central government functions to other agencies; and the limitation of the discretionary powers of public sector officials via New Public Management, with its emphasis on managerial accountability (Barbera et al, 2016).

Mechanics of extraction and exploitation in the water supply: evidence from the UK and Italy The process of privatization, or depublicization, of water that has unfolded in the UK and Italy has been replicated in many other countries, partly because it has been strongly supported by powerful private companies and even by the World Bank (Lobina and Hall, 2009). It can be argued that the privatization of water has been and still is a potent symbol: ‘proponents of privatization portrayed water as a

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final frontier: water privatization symbolized the unprecedented degree to which private companies and markets had penetrated the public domain’ (Bakker, 2010: viii). Clearly, for regulatory agencies such as Ofwat and Arera, and for its numerous supporters, the success of the privatization of water services should be measured first and foremost in economic terms, considering the increase in investment and efficiency compared to public management. These two factors should in theory guarantee an improvement in the quality of the service, greater environmental sustainability and increased employment. However, this reasoning simply replicates the basic syllogism of neoliberal culture: that the liberalization of a sector produces competition, and in this way stimulates efficiency (Foundational Economy Collective, 2018). This syllogism should never be taken for granted but should always be demonstrated with realism and responsibility, and this is especially true in the case of water services, given that water is a fundamental right of every human being and its distribution represents a natural monopoly. The complexity of the ‘hydrologic’ cycle (Linton, 2010) confirms what we see as a crucial point: the complex relations between the economic, managerial, social and environmental spheres should not be neglected. For example, in his analysis of the state of water services in England, Lobina (2019) accurately summarizes the dimensions that need to be considered, all of which are linked to the different levels of water sustainability: financial, economic, technical, social, environmental and political. Moreover, he shows that for each of these dimensions, in the post-privatization UK context, there are more questions than answers. We need to ask, therefore, as many citizens, associations and researchers have already done, what is the real state of water services in the UK and Italy after the processes of privatization and outsourcing? Have the promises that justified these processes, in terms of greater competition, efficiency and quality of the service, been fulfilled? Or, on the contrary, do we find ourselves dealing with critical situations that threaten access to fundamental water services and their sustainability? In line with the foundational economy approach, in this section we propose a ‘follow-the-money analysis’ based on publicly available sources regarding the everyday operating systems of financialized capitalism. It should immediately be pointed out that obtaining data on tariffs, leaks, investments and governance of water services and then performing a comparison between two or more countries is a highly difficult task. Indeed, the official statistics and databases and the empirical literature are usually extremely specific and pertain to short time scales. In addition, the parameters and investigative methods employed are often not the same, producing results that are not fully

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comparable. Lastly, many of the data produced are instrumentally oriented to demonstrate or refute – from an ideological standpoint – the various arguments, models of governance and conflicting interests. We will focus here on the topics of charges and profits. As can be seen in Figure  8.1, water in England currently costs on average more than twice what it costs in Italy. The low level of the Italian tariffs, also seen with respect to the European average, has prompted economists and industry groups to predict further and constant increases. In practice, if there has been one incontestable effect of the privatization of water services in both countries it has been precisely the increase in tariffs. According to the National Audit Office (NAO) (2015: 23), in England and Wales the average household bill rose by 40 per cent above inflation from 1989, the year of privatization, to 2014. In Italy the increase has been even greater. According to the Italian National Institute of Statistics (Istituto Nazionale di Statistica, Istat) (2015: 12) there was an increase of 74 per cent in average household expenditure on water supply between 2008 and 2013, while analysis by Cittadinanzattiva (2018: 4) shows that between 2007 and 2017 the cost to families rose by 75.1 per cent. The pressure on families resulting from the increase in water tariffs should also be considered in relation to the increase in the cost of other foundational goods and services. According to CGIA Mestre (2019), in Italy between 2008 and 2018, with general inflation at 12.5 per cent,

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Major cities in England and Wales and Italy Note: The figures refer to the total charge in 2017 for 200m³ of water (€/200m³). Source: Authors’ calculations using data from IWA’s international statistics for water services (2018) (http://waterstatistics.iwa-network.org/graph/6)

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water tariffs grew by 88.6 per cent, a considerable increase that can be added to those of the postal services (+49.4%), road tolls and parking charges (+38.3%), waste management (+36.%), local public transport (+35.9%), trains (+35.2%), electricity (+17.3%) and gas (+5.6%). Why have the tariffs for water services increased? Since the 2000s, a number of structural factors, common to many European countries, have led to increased costs. These include the general reduction in cross-subsidization of water services through general taxation and the raising of environmental standards with a resulting rise in investment needs (Aqua Publica Europea, 2016). Under the current model of regulation in the UK and Italy the tariff must cover all investment and running costs (a full cost recovery model); it must be determined with reference to the quality of the service provided and the return on capital invested; and it can be modified on the basis of improvements in productivity, the quality of the service and the planned rate of inflation, via a price cap or revenue cap mechanism. In short, the sector’s revenue is now entirely financed by bills paid by customers. A serious social consequence of this increase in prices is the risk for poorer families of limited access to drinking water due to affordability issues. Indeed, water supply is both essential and monopolistic, and thus consumers either pay the bills or the service is cut off. In order to assess affordability, the cost of water should be compared with household incomes. In England and Wales, as Bayliss demonstrates (2014: 83), between 2003 and 2013 bills increased faster than both overall prices and household incomes. Real wages in 2013 were slightly below their level in 2003, despite household water bills increasing from £286 to £340 over the same period. But the cost of a fundamental service such as water supply does not weigh on all families in the same way. According to the NAO report from 2015, in 2013, water bills represented 2.3 per cent of average household expenditure, ranging from 5.3 per cent for the 10 per cent of households with the lowest incomes to 1.1 per cent for the 10 per cent of households with the highest incomes. In both England and Italy, regulatory authorities and water companies provide assistance for customers experiencing difficulties with paying their water bills, including financial support, debt advice and social tariffs for poorer groups. However, the primary orientation of the current governance model of the water sector effectively perpetuates affordability risk for low-income families. Indeed, at the European level, the European Commission has confirmed the principle that ‘in [a] situation of unsustainable water use, social concerns should not be the main objective of water pricing policies, although they

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need to be taken into account while designing new pricing policies’ (COM/2000/0477 Final, 26 July 2000). To summarize, water tariffs must cover the costs of both the service and the environmental externalities, while the social externalities must be considered only secondarily. It is also important to note that payment of environmental improvements by means of water charges impacts low-income households most heavily, unlike what might happen in the case of more fiscally progressive taxation (Bakker, 2001). The question of water tariffs is thus extremely complex, since it needs to satisfy the three imperatives of environmental sustainability, cost recovery and affordability. However, there is another aspect that needs to be considered. The increase in tariffs is also due to the unacceptable extraction of profits obtained via a system of price regulation that is opaque and basically designed to attract private investors and meet their objectives. An example of a way in which this is achieved is the practice known as ‘gaming’ adopted by British water companies, which entails overestimating the investment required in the price review period in such a way as to induce Ofwat to allow the companies to charge higher prices (Hall and Lobina, 2008; Lobina, 2018). By means of this practice, over the years the water companies have succeeded in making a considerable profit, which has been transformed into dividends, since the real expenditure for investment later turns out to be lower than what was envisaged, while the higher tariffs remain. It has been calculated that the private companies’ capital underspend from 1995–96 to 2005–06 has fuelled dividends to the value of £4.3 billion (Hall and Lobina, 2008: 14). Even the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee has criticized this behaviour (Lobina, 2019: 168). In Italy, too, there has been much criticism of the method used for setting tariffs devised by the regulatory authority Arera: according to the Forum Italiano dei Movimenti per l’Acqua (2019b), after removing the virtual costs covered by the tariff, incorrectly quantified costs and profits, Italian tariffs would be 25–30 per cent lower. Families are expected to shoulder the burden not only of the growing operating costs and investment to ensure a better quality service for all citizens and greater sustainability in the use of water resources; they also fund, rather generously, the profits of the water companies, both fully private and run by public–private partnerships. According to Bayliss (2014: 82), in England nearly 27 per cent of the customer’s water bill corresponds to ‘return on capital’; that is, it is used to pay for the financing and not for any physical cost or investment. In England, between 2007 and 2017, water and sewerage companies paid over

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£1.8 billion per year in dividends, which equates to about £75 per household per year (Bayliss and Hall, 2017). Realistically, it needs to be acknowledged that in order to tackle the problem of the high investment required in the water sector, given the constraints on public spending, the ability to attract private investment is an important factor. In this sense, it can be said that the British and Italian regulatory systems have had excellent results. In England, ‘The regulatory capital value of water companies has increased by £49  billion since privatization, from £16  billion in March 1991 to £64.7  billion in March 2015’ (NAO, 2015: 37). However, this growth has largely been financed by debt rather than by investment of the companies’ own capital. Indeed, according to analysis by Bayliss and Hall (2017), since 1989 companies have allocated most of the profit to dividends, financing the cost of maintaining and improving the infrastructure by borrowing: ‘the companies which were debt-free at privatization in 1989 have now accumulated over £40 billion in debt, which now finances over threequarters of the companies’ assets’ (2017: 4). The growth of the debt has enabled the shareholders to extract impressive dividends. Between 2007 and 2016, almost all of the post-tax profit of £18.8  billion has been paid out in dividends (£18.1 billion): ‘Arguably these are funds that could have been used to finance physical investment or to reduce company debt (and thereby lower debt interest payments)’ (Bayliss and Hall, 2017: 3). In other words, the sector has become increasingly financialized, with the result that high return business models, highly leveraged positions and opportunistic financial engineering (Bowman et  al, 2015: 77–93), including securitization and subsidiaries based in offshore tax havens like the Cayman Islands, threaten the system’s longterm economic and financial sustainability (Lobina, 2019: 166–7), working to the advantage of shareholders and financial intermediaries, but producing little benefit for customer households (Allen and Pryke, 2013; Loftus et al, 2019). Similar processes have also been seen in Italy. Nowadays, there are four big ‘sisters’ in the water sector in Italy: Hera, A2A, Iren and Acea, which supply 15 million people. They are all public–private joint ventures and are the highest-earning semi-public companies in Italy (Ricerche e Studi Mediobanca, 2018). From 2010 to 2016, these companies made profits of €3.25  billion, of which almost €3 billion (more than 90%) has been paid out to its public and private shareholders in the form of dividends. These data show how profitable the water sector is in Italy too.

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Towards the remunicipalization of water supply: suggestions from Italy Protest movements against the privatization of water Water remunicipalization, that is, the passage of water services from privatization in any of its various forms to full public ownership, management and democratic control, has emerged as a global trend in the last 15 years (Kishimoto et al, 2015; Lobina, 2016). Faced with a clearly unsatisfactory situation, recently even in the UK there has been mounting criticism against water privatization. Michael Gove, former Environment Secretary, denounced excessive executive pay and offshore financial arrangements within water companies (Gove, 2018; Pickard and Plimmer, 2018). Jonson Cox, Chair of Ofwat, replied setting out the Authority’s proposals to address these financial behaviours, and declaring: ‘We want water companies – who benefit from captive customers and regulated returns – to put customers and their interests at the heart of what they do’ (Ofwat, 2018: 2). In addition, the GMB Union’s General Secretary said the pay awarded to chief executives of England’s nine water and sewerage companies was a ‘national scandal’ (Neate, 2018), while Labour promised to take the privatized water companies back under state control, favouring basing shareholder compensation for the renationalization on book value. Of course, calculating compensation for shareholders is a very controversial topic (Inman, 2017; Plimmer, 2019). In Italy, the struggle for the remunicipalization of the water supply has been a long and complex process. We will briefly consider the strengths but also the potential limitations of the most significant phases of this process: the broad protest movement against water privatization; the institutional experiment of the Neapolitan company for water supply; and the current debate on the bill for the renationalization of water supply services. The protest movements against the privatization of water have had a significant influence on the course of events in recent years, successfully obstructing the reform policies adopted in the water supply sector. Indeed, they have prevented the management of goods and services such as water (traditionally considered for their value to the users rather than their financial exchange value) from falling under the total control of market forces. This has been possible precisely thanks to the birth of numerous civic committees and regional movements of varying cultural and ideological backgrounds, which, together with associations and individual citizens, have campaigned against the privatization

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of the management of water. The creation of the Forum Italiano dei Movimenti per l’Acqua (Italian Forum of Water Movements) in 2006, which has brought together in a single organization hundreds of different groups including associations, movements and committees from every region of Italy, was a turning point in the struggle for the public and participatory management of water. Unquestionably, the Forum played a decisive role in the collection of the signatures required for both the popular legislative initiative of 2007 and the referendum of 2011. In this case, more than 1.4 million certified signatures were collected against the half million required for the referendum to take place. The signature collection process ‘proved to be an incredible sign of the vitality of the commons movement, which mobilized tens of thousands of volunteers collecting signatures nationwide, even in the most remote corners of the country’ (Mattei, 2013: 370). Another significant element in the Italian context is the link between the movement for the public management of water and the movement for the defence of the commons (Bailey and Mattei, 2013; Mattei, 2013; Spina et al, 2016). Indeed, the struggle against the privatization of water has been the most striking case of civil society putting forward an alternative to the policies followed by the centre-right and centreleft governments in the 25 years since the passing of the ‘Galli’ Law (1994). The approach to the management of water supply services advocated by these movements differs from the model proposed by mainstream economists, based on market forces and competition. It is no coincidence that of the two referendum questions of 2011, while the first concerned the abrogation of the law that allowed private companies to take over the management of water supply services, the second sought to eliminate the principle of an adequate return on capital invested, which, at least in the intentions of its proponents, meant making it impossible to make a financial profit from the management of the water. The victory in the referendum of 2011, even in the absence in the Italian constitutional system of a referendum that initiates new laws rather than abrogating existing ones, removed the legitimacy of the policies adopted until that time, and gave a clear political indication that the water sector needed to focus on the safeguarding and sustainability of resources that affect the quality of everyday life. The struggle for remunicipalization has emphasized constitutional legality: the protest movements have argued that they are campaigning for the implementation of the people’s wishes expressed in the referendum of 2011 and for the respect of the fundamental rights guaranteed by the Italian Constitution. In this regard,

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remunicipalization constitutes an example of rights established from below via the defence of common interests. Indeed, some have argued that ‘It must be acknowledged that today the majority of our rights are established “from below”, by means of demands that are presented in the courts and are (theoretically) translatable into rights which, despite not being set down in written laws, can be derived from an interpretation of the constitution, of which they constitute the “substance”, and as such must be guaranteed’ (Pennisi et al, 2018: 29). To summarize, the activities of the Forum Italiano dei Movimenti per l’Acqua, culminating in victory in the 2011 referendum, can be considered as an effective example of ‘effervescent rituals’ by activist citizens in defence of the commons (Barbera et al, 2018). In the following sections, we analyse to what extent this effort of civil repair has contributed to producing adjustments in the institutional arrangements for water management. An institutional experiment: ABC (Acqua Bene Comune, Water Common Good) in Naples The new public company for water services in Naples represents an interesting but controversial attempt in the direction of public management of the water supply that emphasizes social equity (Marotta, 2014; Landriani et al, 2019). Following the ethos of the 2011 referendum, Naples City Council laid down general guidelines to transform the former wholly publicly owned joint stock company, ARIN, into a special company. The council added the following paragraph to Article 3 of the company’s statute: ‘In order to safeguard future generations, Naples City Council pledges the full recognition of the commons as belonging to the fundamental rights of the individual in his/her ecological contest.’ Water, the common good par excellence, got special treatment. The referendum results created the conditions for local government to provide public services by means of special companies. Even though the Italian civil code allows for the transformation of special companies into joint stock companies but not the reverse, the juridical obstacles were overcome, and in 2013 Naples City Council finally approved the new statute of ABC (Acqua Bene Comune, Water Common Good). The new statute envisaged a board of directors composed of five members appointed by the mayor, two of whom were activists from environmental movements. There was also a 21-member supervisory committee, composed of five city councillors, five company employees, five user delegates and five movement delegates. This innovative regulation was conceived to

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incorporate stakeholders and customers directly in the business model of the company. In 2012 the mayor of Naples appointed Ugo Mattei, a private law professor, as leader of the commons movement, and one of the writers of the 2011 referendum questions as the president of ABC. However, Mattei was dismissed in 2014 because of a dispute with the city council, which decided to include the company’s profits in the council budget, long affected by deficit. The following years saw the succession of two others presidents and a commissioner as well as several executive directors and board of directors members. The rapid management turnover over a short number of years, along with the uncertainty of financial resources, probably contributed to the company’s instability. Moreover, in the last few years, there has been a significant increase in prices, mainly due to the fact that the cost of the sewerage service, which had previously been paid by Naples City Council, was recently added to the bill. Finally, central government maintained its basically hostile view of the public management of water supply by ‘special companies’. In the last few years, Naples has become a symbol for the public remunicipalization of the water supply (after Paris and Berlin). The ABC water utility focuses on social equity, with low tariffs for disadvantaged customers and better conditions for employees (Landriani et  al, 2019). But ABC remains an isolated case among the big Italian cities, and it is hard to say whether its example will be followed by other cities or whether it will be reversed by national and regional laws and regulations. The debate on the bill for the restoration of water supply services to public ownership The intense campaigning on the part of popular movements and committees, together with the natural inertia of the Italian bureaucratic and administrative apparatus, has delayed the complete implementation of the privatization of local public services since the 2010s. This has had the effect of bringing the Italian situation into line with the international debate, which, for some years now, has been raising serious doubts about the effective need to privatize the management of water supply services as well as other public service sectors (Ramesh et al, 2010; Kishimoto et al, 2015; Kishimoto and Petitjean, 2017). In 2017, two large Italian cities, Turin and Rome, began the complex technical procedure towards the remunicipalization of their respective water supply services in order to manage them outside the

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rules of the market. However, as emerged from the study of the work of technical committees for the remunicipalization, these processes have been affected by a number of obstacles: the strict controls on public accounting, which do not allow the acquisition of private shares and the payment of compensation to private shareholders by municipalities; the ambivalent political will of the local council, which, by going ahead with remunicipalization, risks losing a considerable source of profits; and the complexity of the financial and technical management of the companies providing water supply services. Facing these issues, citizens’ organizations demanded a new national law for a public and participatory governance of water supply services, in order to allocate public funds for the modernization of the water supply infrastructure and to set up an ad hoc fund for the renationalization of water supply management. The bill to bring services back into public ownership currently being examined by the Italian Parliament is known as ‘Disposizioni in materia di gestione pubblica e partecipativa del ciclo integrale delle acque’ (‘Regulation of public and participatory management of the integrated water cycle’, presented to Parliament in AC no  52, on 23  March 2018). It broadly corresponds to the popular legislative initiative presented in 2007 by the Forum Italiano dei Movimenti per l’Acqua. The main points of the bill are: (1) the management of integrated water services must be direct and entirely public, by means of public law bodies; (2) the regulation of the water cycle as well as the setting of prices are entrusted exclusively to the Ministry of the Environment and no longer to the regulatory authority; (3) in-house public management is to be transformed into direct management by means of special companies, while the public authorities would buy back both the shares of the public–private companies and the shares held by private investors in the case of listed companies; and (4) the state would also cover the cost of the minimum guaranteed supply of 50 litres of water per person per day, recommended by the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) . Three main arguments against the restoration to public ownership as intended by the bill’s advocates have been debated in public. The first is that it would entail huge public expense: the independent research institute Laboratorio ref ricereche suggested a cost of €16 billion oneoff to compensate shareholders plus about €7 billion a year for the provisions envisaged (Laboratorio ref ricereche, 2018). Second, public ownership would not guarantee the ability to make the necessary investment in the ordinary and extraordinary maintenance of the country’s ageing water supply networks, which today lose in the region

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of 41.4 per cent of the water they draw on at national level (Istat, 2018: 8). The third argument, used above all by the trade unions, concerns the potential loss of jobs in the sector. However, these arguments are contested. The Italian Forum of Water Movements (Forum Italiano dei Movimenti per l’Acqua, 2019a, b) responded to them with a series of considerations. First, they calculated the sum necessary to repurchase the shares and stock currently in private hands to be no more than €2 billion. Second, investment for infrastructure would be better guaranteed with public management given that the latter would be supported by the state budget together with income from the bills paid by the users. Greater cost-effectiveness would be guaranteed by the elimination of the need to pay dividends to shareholders and high salaries and bonuses to the managers and board members. And last, the point about job losses was argued to be groundless, given the passage from a private firm to a public special company entails merely the modification of its legal form, with the complete conservation of all other active and passive relationships with the workers.

Concluding remarks The pressure for the renationalization of water-related services in the UK and Italy represents a clear sign of the change of course with respect to the policies of liberalization and privatization implemented since the 1990s, and places the two countries close to the heart of the international debate on this theme. Indeed, the issues tackled here are precisely those examined in the public debate and in the scientific literature in France, Germany, the UK, Spain and the US in recent years. The Italian process to counter the privatization of water has developed through several phases, which can be considered as the stages of a concrete attempt at civil repair initiated by associations and social movements and then crystallized, to a certain extent, in institutional forms. The Italian case clearly shows that the agent of change in the defence of civic infrastructure is represented mainly by active citizens and associations and, in some measure, intellectuals and academics. Even politicians and political forces can take part in this process, although for both ideological and instrumental purposes. However, the ABC story and the controversial debate on the bill for public water demonstrates how arduous the civil repair project is in developing from the statu nascenti phase of a civic movement into a firmly established institutional model for the management of civic infrastructure. It must be admitted that the Italian water movement against privatization, based firmly on the ‘commons-as-a-political-

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order’ framework, has proved to be feeble in the task of translating, to quote Barbera et al (2018: 378; original emphasis), ‘the political grammar for the defence of local commons into a detailed institutional syntax for their management.’ One of the reasons for such an impasse is related to the ‘Manichean view of social conflict, which takes place always between commoners, on the one hand, and State-market, on the other’ (Barbera et al, 2018: 377). Conversely, as the civil sphere theory demonstrates (Alexander, 2006; Kivisto and Sciortino, 2015), for civil repair to be achieved, universalizing discourses, recognized by the larger public, must be available in the communicative and regulative institutions of civil society. Common narratives of a ‘fair society’ may actually affect the cultural codes controlling, respectively, the market and the state. From this perspective, the pragmatic and non-ideological approach of the foundational economy can help to overcome some of the potential risks and limitations of the present civil repair efforts. Returning to the water governance issue, there is a need for new conceptual tools and new institutional experiments that seek to move away from the rigid choice between state ownership and the free market. Is public management the best guarantee for safeguarding a common resource whose reproducibility must be suitably protected for future generations? In our opinion, the state-owned corporation should not be seen as the exclusive solution for delivering foundational services (Foundational Economy Collective, 2018). In foundational thinking, the principle for identifying what is private or public is function, not ownership. We have to avoid oversimplified arguments in favour of government or private provision, and look ‘beyond privatization’: to unsettle the entrenched, stale positions so often evident in the ‘public versus private’ debate (Bakker, 2010). A better path would be to implement social licence tools that involve monitoring, responsiveness and enforcement with regard to the providers of water supply services. Effective measures should include a reduction in dividends and gearing, more severe price controls, a proper recognition of citizen-customer and employee interests and sustainability imperatives, a larger citizen-customer representation on boards, and improved transparency in dividend policies and financial structures. In order to put forward such governance and regulatory arrangements, more transparent behaviour by autonomous authorities, as Ofwat’s Chair recently assured (Ofwat, 2018), is required. Moreover, legislation must introduce consistent changes to water company licences in the above-mentioned direction. To this end, the appropriation of the procedure for writing new laws by the Italian protest movement

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could create conditions favourable to experimenting with new types of regulation that reflect the actual needs of users and the logic of resource conservation. In view of the heightened public sensitivity with regard to water supply, this sector represents an opportunity for the wider public to be made aware of alternatives to extractive market forces that could form the basis for positive popular initiatives putting the focus on the real needs of human beings. This may finally spread the conviction that the currently dominant economic system needs to be reformed before it is taken to extremes (de Grauwe, 2017), in the awareness that ‘when capitalism started, nature was abundant and capital was scarce; it thus made sense to reward capital above all else. Today we’re awash in capital and literally running out of nature. We’re also losing many social arrangements that bind us together as communities and enrich our lives in nonmonetary ways’ (Barnes, 2006: 5). Note 1

For the purpose of comparing, we mainly refer here to the England case. The delivery of water services is organized differently in the UK’s 10 regional water authorities, while Scotland’s water system is under different jurisdictions. The Water Act 1973 resulted in regional diversification of regulation. Indeed, England and Wales saw the shift from a large number of municipal providers to just remained on a municipal basis (until unification in 2002 into a single state-owned water company, Scottish Water), as did Northern Ireland (which, since 2007, has had its own state-owned company, Northern Ireland Water). In 2001, the water company Welsh Water (Dwr Cymru), that provides water for most of Wales and parts of western England, was changed into a ‘mutual’ non-profit company limited by guarantee and as such with no shareholders. Unique in the water and sewerage sector, Dwr Cymru uses all financial surpluses for the benefit of its customers.

References Alexander, J.C. (2006) The Civil Sphere, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Allen, J. and Pryke, M. (2013) ‘Financialising household water: Thames Water, MEIF, and “ring-fenced’ politics”’, Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, 6(3): 419–39. Aqua Publica Europea (2016) Water Affordability: Public Operators’ Views and Approaches on Tackling Water Poverty, available at www.aquapublica. eu/sites/default/files/document/file/ape_water_affordability_ final_0.pdf Bailey, S. and Mattei, U. (2013) ‘Social movements as constituent power: the Italian struggle for the commons’, Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies, 20(2): 965–1013.

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Bakker, K.J. (2001) ‘Paying for water: Water pricing and equity in England and Wales’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 26(2): 143–64. Bakker, K.J. (2004) An Uncooperative Commodity: Privatizing Water in England and Wales, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bakker, K.J. (2010) Privatizing Water: Governance Failure and the World’s Urban Water Crisis, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Barbera, F., Negri, N. and Salento, A. (2018) ‘From individual choice to collective voice: Foundational economy, local commons and citizenship’, Rassegna Italiana di Sociologia, LIX(2): 371–98. Barbera, F., Dagnes, J., Salento, A. and Spina, F. (eds) (2016) Il Capitale Quotidiano: Un Manifesto per l’Economia Fondamentale, Rome: Donzelli. Barnes, P. (2006) Capitalism 3.0: A Guide to Reclaiming the Commons, San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler. Bayliss, K. (2014) The Financialisation of Water in England and Wales, FESSUD Working Paper Series, No 52. Bayliss, K. and Hall, D. (2017) Bringing Water into Public Ownership: Costs and Benefits, PSIRU Reports, Public Services International Research Unit (PSIRU), May, available at https://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/ eprint/17277/3/17277%20HALL_Bringing_Water_into_Public_ Ownership_2017.pdf Bowman, A., Erturk, I., Folkman, P., Froud, J. et al (2015) What a Waste: Outsourcing and How It Goes Wrong, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Calvino, I. (1995) Numbers in the Dark, Toronto, ON: Alfred A. Knopf Canada. Caporale, F. (2017) I Servizi Idrici: Dimensione Economica e Rilevanza Sociale, Milan: Franco Angeli. CGIA Mestre (2019) ‘Tariffe: Nell’ultimo anno forte aumento di gas (+5,7%), luce (+4,5%) e acqua (+4,3%)’, 23 February, available at www.cgiamestre.com/tariffe-in-forte-aumento-quelle-del-gas-luceed-acqua/ Citroni, G., Giannelli, N. and Lippi, A. (2008) Chi Governa l’Acqua? Studio sulla Governance Locale, Soveria Mannelli, CZ: Rubbettino. Cittadinanzattiva (2018) Il Servizio Idrico Integrato: 13°  Indagine a Cura dell’Osservatorio Prezzi e Tariffe di Cittadinanzattiva, March, available at www.cittadinanzattiva.it/files/notizie/consumatori/ Dossier_acqua_2018.pdf de Grauwe, P. (2017) The Limits of the Market: The Pendulum Between Government and Market, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Forum Italiano dei Movimenti per l’Acqua (2019a) Il Costo della Ri-Pubblicizzazione del Servizio Idrico Integrato, available at www. acquabenecomune.org/attachments/article/3842/Dossier_costi_ ripubblicizzazione_acqua_def.pdf Forum Italiano dei Movimenti per l’Acqua (2019b) ‘Memoria per l’audizione presso la Commissione Ambiente, territorio e lavori pubblici della Camera dei Deputati’, 9  January, available at www. camera.it/application/xmanager/projects/leg18/attachments/ upload_file_doc_acquisiti/pdfs/000/000/613/Memoria_Forum_ Acqua.pdf Foundational Economy Collective (2018) Foundational Economy: The Infrastructure of Everyday Life, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Goubert, J.-P. (1989) The Conquest of Water: The Advent of Health in the Industrial Age, Cambridge: Polity Press. Gove, M. (2018) ‘Letter to Jonson Cox, Chairman, Ofwat’, 31 January, available at https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/ uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/678320/watercompanies-letter-SoS-to-Ofwat-180131.pdf Graham, S. and Marvin, S. (1994) ‘More than Ducts and Wires: PostFordism, Cities and Utility Networks’, in P. Healey, S. Cameron, S. Davoudi, S. Graham and A. Madani-Pour (eds) Managing Cities: The New Urban Context, London: Wiley, 169–89. Hall, D. and Lobina, E. (2008) From a Private Past to a Public Future? The Problems of Water in England and Wales, PSIRU Reports, Commissioned by the GMB Union, Public Services International Research Unit (PSIRU), November. Hassan, J. (1985) ‘The growth and impact of the British water industry in the nineteenth century’, Economic History Review, 38(4): 531–47. Hassan, J. (1998) A History of Water in Modern England and Wales, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Helm, D. and Rajah, N. (1994) ‘Water regulation: The periodic review’, Fiscal Studies, 15(2): 74–94. Inman, P. (2017) ‘How workable – and how expensive – might Labour’s renationalisations be?’, The Guardian, 20  May, available at www. theguardian.com/politics/2017/may/20/labour-renationalisationrail-water-energy-cost-benefits Istat (2015) ‘Le Statistiche dell’Istat’, Giornata Mondiale dell’Acqua, 20  March, available at www.istat.it/it/files//2015/03/Statistichesullacqua.pdf

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Istat (2018) ‘Le Statistiche dell’Istat’, Giornata Mondiale dell’Acqua, 22  March, available at www4.istat.it/it/files/2018/03/Focusacque-2018.pdf?title=Le+statistiche+dell%E2%80%99Istat+sull%E 2%80%99acqua+-+22%2Fmar%2F2018+-+Testo+integrale+e+no ta+metodologica.pdf Kivisto, P. and Sciortino, G. (eds) (2015) Solidarity, Justice, and Incorporation: Thinking Through the Civil Sphere, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kishimoto, S. and Petitjean, O. (eds) (2017) Reclaiming Public Services: How Cities and Citizens Are Turning Back Privatisation, Amsterdam: Transnational Institute. Kishimoto, S., Lobina, E. and Petitjean, O. (eds) (2015) Our Public Water Future: The Global Experience with Remunicipalisation, Amsterdam: Transnational Institute. Laboratorio ref ricereche (2018) ‘Pdl daga. Costo 20 miliardi: Debito o tasse?’, November, No 108, available at www.astrid-online.it/static/ upload/labo/laboratorio_contributo_n108.pdf Landriani, L., Lepore, L., D’Amore, G., Pozzoli, S. and Alvino, F. (2019) ‘Decorporatization of a municipal water utility: A case study from Italy’, Utilities Policy, 57: 43–7. Linton, J. (2010) What is Water? The History of a Modern Abstraction, Vancouver, BC: UBC Press. Lobina, E. (2013) ‘Remediable institutional alignment and water service reform: Beyond rational choice’, International Journal of Water Governance, 1(1–2): 109–32. Lobina, E. (2016) Water Remunicipalisation as a Global Trend: Calling for Progressive Policies, PSIRU Reports, Public Services International Research Unit (PSIRU), November. Lobina, E. (2018) Commentary on the European Commission’s ‘Study on Water Services in Selected Member States’, PSIRU Reports, Public Services International Research Unit (PSIRU), February. Lobina, E. (2019) ‘UK: Strong and Weak Lock-In of Water Governance Outcomes in England’, in S Porcher and S. Saussier (eds) Facing the Challenges of Water Governance, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 155–88. Lobina, E. and Hall, D. (2009) Thinking Inside the Box: Why the World Bank Is Not Learning, PSIRU Reports, Public Services International Research Unit (PSIRU), 10 March. Loftus, A., March, H. and Purcell, T.F. (2019) ‘The political economy of water infrastructure: An introduction to financialization’, Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Water, 6(1): 1–7.

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Marotta, S. (2011) ‘La depubblicizzazione dei servizi idrici: Dalla municipalizzazione all’obbligo di esternalizzazione’, Munus, 1: 177–98. Marotta, S. (2014) ‘On the critical relationship between citizenship and governance: The case of water management in Italy’, Urbanities, 4(2): 39–50. Mattei, U. (2013) ‘Protecting the commons: Water, culture, and nature: The Commons Movement in the Italian struggle against neoliberal governance’, South Atlantic Quarterly, 112(2): 366–76. Millward, R. (1989) ‘Privatisation in Historical Perspective: The UK Water Industry’, in D. Cobham, R. Harrington, and G. Zis (eds) Money, Trade and Payments: Essays in Honour of D.J. Coppock, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 188–209. NAO (National Audit Office) (2015) ‘The economic regulation of the water sector’, HC 487 Session 2015–2016, available at www.nao. org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/The-economic-regulationof-the-water-sector.pdf Neate, R. (2018) ‘Water bosses’ £58m pay over last five years a “national scandal”’, The Guardian, 4 June, available at www.theguardian.com/ business/2018/jun/05/water-companies-pay-national-scandal-gmbunion-says Ofwat (2018) ‘J. Cox, letter to Rt Hon Michael Gove MP, Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs’, 9 April, available at www.ofwat.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Letter-fromJonson-Cox-to-Secretary-of-State.pdf Parker, D. (2013) The Official History of Privatisation, Volume II: Popular Capitalism, 1987–97, London: Routledge. Pennisi, C., Prina, F., Quiroz, M.A. and Raiteri, M. (eds) (2018) Amministrazione, Cultura Giuridica e Ricerca Empirica, Santarcangelo di Romagna, RN: Maggioli. Pickard, J. and Plimmer, G. (2018) ‘Gove attacks water industry over high pay and dividends’, Financial Times, 1 March, available at www. ft.com/content/fb6e49ba-1d58-11e8-aaca-4574d7dabfb6 Plimmer, G. (2019) ‘Water renationalisation to cost as little as £14.5bn’, Financial Times, 26 April, available at www.ft.com/content/8ee5d48a6103-11e9-a27a-fdd51850994c Ramesh, M., Araral, E. and Wu, X. (eds) (2010) Reasserting the Public in Public Services: New Public Management Reforms, London: Routledge. Ricerche e Studi Mediobanca (2018) ‘Economia e finanza delle principali società partecipate dai maggiori Enti locali (2012–2016)’, July.

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Rose, C. (1990) The Dirty Man of Europe: The Great British Pollution Scandal, London: Simon & Schuster. Saunders, P. and Harris, C. (1994) Privatization and Popular Capitalism, Buckingham: Open University Press. Spina, F., Quarta, A. and Sinagra Brisca, L. (2016) ‘Il Movimento per i Beni Comuni’, in F. Barbera, J. Dagnes, A. Salento and F. Spina (eds) Il Capitale Quotidiano: Un Manifesto per l’Economia Fondamentale, Rome: Donzelli, 166–78.

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PART IV

Food

9

Changing food supply chains: The role of citizens and civil society organizations in working towards a social economy Fabio Mostaccio

Introduction In recent decades, the penetration of the financial economy into the dynamics of everyday life has involved a significant ‘value extraction’ process, extraction that is more evident in those sectors dealing with the creation and distribution of goods and services consumed by the whole population that are basic for individuals and families. These processes concern not only private enterprises, whose focus is to chase financial accumulation strategies, to the detriment of wages (Salento and Tafuro, 2018), but also public authorities providing health services, childcare and care for the elderly, education, food supply and distribution, water, gas, electricity, phone networks and sewers. All these elements are the main essentials of material life (Braudel, 1981) and deal with an area recently defined as the foundational economy (Bentham et al, 2013; Barbera et al, 2016; Froud et al, 2018, 2019). The privatization of essential sectors such as these facilitated what is called the ‘financialization of welfare’ (Caselli and Dagnes, 2018). In some specific settings such as old age or health, this has caused new forms of inequalities among families or individuals (Dagnes, 2018). The consequences of this economic model also concern agriculture and the food distribution networks connected to them. In this environment – especially in peripheral areas – the contradictions implicit in the neoliberal dynamic are revealed: rural farming becomes gradually marginalized and industrialized agricultural jobs increasingly unstable, edging ever closer towards exploitation. This is what van der Ploeg called a ‘squeeze on agriculture’, and he described its consequences as follows:

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A dramatic strengthening of the already existing squeeze on agriculture is one of the most visible consequences: although we see temporary upheavals, off-farm prices are, on the whole, nearly everywhere under pressure. This introduces strong trends towards marginalization and new patterns of dependency, which, in turn, trigger considerable repeasantization – whether in the developing world or in industrialized countries. Repeasantization is, in essence, a modern expression of the fight for autonomy and survival in a context of deprivation and dependency. The peasant condition is definitively not static. It represents a flow through time, with upward as well as downward movements. Just as corporate farming is continuously evolving (expanding and simultaneously changing in a qualitative sense – that is, through a further industrialization of the processes of production and labour), so peasant farming is also changing. And one of the many changes is repeasantization. (van der Ploeg, 2008: 6–7; emphasis added) We can include in this repeasantization process all those positions that are on the edge between the economic and political field. Among these experiences, we can also find interesting examples of productive self-organization that change both the traditional consumption models and food production and distribution networks. In this chapter we will look closely at one of these phenomena called ‘alternative food networks’ (AFNs) that include ‘direct sales on-farm and door-to-door, for example through the introduction of food box schemes; the direct sale off-farm, at local markets and farmers’ markets; and forms of farming and/or collective distribution, as in the case of community gardens or ‘Solidarity Purchasing Groups’ (SPGs) (Barbera et al, 2016). These kinds of supply chain are necessary, not only for consumers to purchase higher-quality food, but also to provide an alternative to the dominant economic model considered by some to be economically, socially and politically weak (Corsi et al, 2018a). Although the politics of ‘localism’ are not necessarily benign, the moral dimension of this ‘foodscape’ can be essential for the foundational economy. According to Morgan (2015: 295), ‘A foundational economy of public food provisioning could build on concepts and models that are already beginning to emerge in response to the economic and ecological crises in our societies.’ After illustrating these two forms of AFNs, we will analyse an interesting case that illustrates the potential contribution of SPGs to the development of the foundational economy.

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Farmers’ markets Because of their rapid diffusion, farmers’ markets are one of the most examined cases within direct food distribution models. Part of a growing trend, in 2014 there were more than 4,300 in the US, while in the UK there were more than 500, attracting around 15 million consumers per year and in Germany there were more than 5,000 (Fiorillo, 2015). In Italy, in the agri-foodstuffs market, there is a long-standing presence of ‘short food supply chains’ that had limited activities linked to specific self-organized events, but since 2010 they have seen a rapid expansion due to their being given legal recognition. The specific Law (no 296 of 2006) regulating this type of activity includes the ‘direct sales of farmers’ markets’ and specifies uniform criteria so that the producers can be directly involved in the sale according to a price transparency principle (article 1 L 296/2006). The initial policy aim behind this was to create 100 farmers’ markets across Italy, with a target set in 2010 that they were to grow to a maximum of 400–500 units involving about 6,000–8,000 agricultural enterprises. By 2013 there were already 1,364, a growth of 44 per cent compared to 2010 (Marino, 2016), with involvement from 28,000 producers farming around 280,000 acres of land. The Italian experience of farmers’ markets also includes cultural, educational and demonstrative activities linked to agriculture, tradition and craft products directly from rural areas. These also arise from synergies and trade with other certified markets and contribute to the enhancement of the quality and sense of authenticity. In this way, Fa’ la cosa giusta!, for instance, is the most popular Italian event to promote conscious consumption and sustainable lifestyles: ‘Since its launch in 2004, Fa’ la cosa giusta! has aimed at matching demand and supply, and today it is widely recognized as the national benchmark for conscious consumption and sustainable lifestyles’ (www.falacosagiusta.org). In Italy, as worldwide (Galisai et al, 2009), the success of this specific form of AFN can be interpreted as the result of an increased climate of mistrust that consumers have towards the standardized production of consumer goods (Goodman, 2002; Sage, 2006; Goodman et al, 2012; Marino and Cicatiello, 2012). In this regard, Goodman and Dupuis (2002: 11–12) explain that: ‘episodic “food scares” and heightened consumer health and food safety concerns in Europe have stimulated a “turn” to quality in food provisioning and reinforced support for less intensive, multifunctional agriculture.’ AFNs therefore appear to act as a form of guarantee of high added value for the producers (Renting et al, 2003) through the creation of a new link with the consumer,

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who is able, in turn, to get a high-quality product (Goodman, 2002; Sage, 2006). The shortening of the supply chain produces some positive outcomes: it offers a local self-propelled development model, where in addition to the quality of the food (following the model of Slow Food1 which has achieved positive media coverage) it becomes an important means for the diffusion and promotion of local cultures. Consumption practices within farmers’ markets are also said to have positive externalities. For example, they not only involve a reduction in packaging; in economic terms, they also contribute solutions to the problematic value extraction produced by long supply chains: low turnover, instability of market demand, poor control and agreement over pricing (Marino and Cicatiello, 2012). In Italy, too, a growing consumer need to have a direct relationship with the producers has come to light: in 2016, 81  per cent of Italian consumers thought that agricultural food directly bought at farmers’ markets was safer than food bought at big retailers (see www.campania.coldiretti.it). Studies in different settings appear to emphasize how trust can be an essential feature of the short supply chain. For example, studies carried out by Moore (2006) about Irish farmers’ markets underline how consumers seem to be more interested in recovering a direct relationship with the producers/sellers, who are perceived as the only ones who can guarantee a high level of trust: ‘personal reassurance was more important than technical organic certification’ (Moore, 2006: 425). According to this research, consumers describe farmers’ markets as the ideal place where they can buy affordable fresh and/or organic fruit and vegetables and also improve their social relationships. Overall, the dynamics of farmers’ markets are slow and characterized by a high level of conviviality. Regarding economic viability, in the Italian case, too, the intrinsic features of the short supply chain allow farmers to curb price volatility, helping consumers to buy high-quality products at a lower cost compared to the capitalistic circuit. According to Coldiretti,2 in 2013, in clear contradiction to the negative evolution of food consumption (down 4%), 15  million Italian consumers bought food from farmers’ markets, delivering a 25 per cent increase in just one year. This development also concerns the average values of purchases. In the same year, it is estimated that total turnover was around €1.5 billion. The growing turnover and increased enthusiasm of local populations paves the way for this phenomenon becoming increasingly established practice, which is necessary for the future development of the foundational economy. In effect, behind the farmers’ markets’ rejection of industrial production

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and standardization there is an alternative view of citizenship: the short supply chain represents a reconnection between agriculture and consumers, forming a new interrelation among social, economic and environmental spheres, ‘where agricultural resources are managed with a view of obtaining profits and maintaining public goods, respectively’ (Mastronardi et al, 2015: 111). The outcome is that since the 2000s, European Union (EU) public policies concerning the agricultural sector have supported a new model based on multifunctional and diversified activities: for instance, farms that over-produce have to develop ecological, social and cultural services: ‘This situation is symptomatic of the new European approach towards rural development policies, where planned initiatives are to be extended to all ruralbased players, including those not linked directly to agriculture, with a view to establishing an integrated approach throughout the territory’ (Mastronardi et al, 2015: 111).

Solidarity Purchasing Groups In the context of short supply chains we can find a variety of selforganized groups. Among them, in Italy, Solidarity Purchasing Groups (SPGs) seem to be one of the most important forms of local action whose aim is to monitor the non-economic effects of economic actions (Barbera et al, 2016). These are consumer groups whose members consciously choose a lifestyle based on the principle of solidarity towards the producers, the environment, developing countries and all those suffering inequality under the current growth model (Valera, 2005; Carrera, 2009). The SPGs mostly arise as informal groups formed by consumers and producers that organize food supply purchasing in a collective way. To achieve this goal, each SPG sets general criteria for the choice of products. A general rule is to favour products from small companies that don’t invest their profits in financial markets, which fosters a trusted relationship based on direct knowledge of the actors (Grasseni, 2014). As suggested by Saroldi (2003), the SPGs, as with other collective experiences, become ‘building sites’ where new forms of economy are generated. The purpose is to create a new ‘relational economy’, where the social exchange is as equally important as the economic exchange. A recent study shows that the basic principles of reciprocity among all involved actors and above all, transparency, are central to their shared values (Rebughini, 2008, 2011). We are dealing with a steadily increasing phenomenon: since 1994 (the year of the first SPG in Fidenza) the national network registers to date

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994 groups and 18 Solidarity Economy Districts, with a dozen more under construction. Because of the informality of these groups, it is impossible to establish their exact number. However, according to most recent estimates, there is at least twice the amount of those currently registered (Forno and Graziano, 2016; Corsi et al, 2018b). It has been calculated that about 7 million consumers have purchased, at least once, products from SPGs, and more than 400,000 of them have been activists inside these groups, creating a turnover of approximately €40 million (Barbarossa, 2014). After a short time, the SPGs merge with other organizations to create different types of experiences, so they redevelop their aims and become real political players. In this way, within these groups, many initiatives with a strong political issue emerge: they act to protect, promote and defend local territories as well as encouraging social engagement and connecting with other types of entities. This leads, for example, to links between Liberaterra and Addiopizzo, two associations that have always played an important role in combating the mafia (Forno, 2011), as well as the referendum campaign for public water. In this way we are looking at groups that create and interact with networks that transform the economic sphere in a real ‘political arena’ in which they can promote a new way to perceive politics and economy. The foundation of these short supply chains is nothing new on the international stage: there are similar groups, each of them with their own specificity, in many advanced capitalist countries. For example, unlike the SPGs, where people must play an organizational and powerful active role, those who joined the French association AMAP (Associations pour le maintien d’une agricultire paysann) or community-supported agriculture (CSA) in the US, are not involved in every kind of collective activity (Forno et al, 2013; Moruzzi and Sirieix, 2015). CSAs – at least in the first moment – were focused on increasing the farmers’ financial security and protecting them from production risks; the organizational aims of the AMAP are to support both producers and consumers in the decision-making process in relation to the type of production, price of food and sustainability policies (Miralles et al, 2017). Although AMAP is less engaged than SPGs in political organization activities, it supports information campaigns or lobbying launched by other organizations. For AMAP and CSA, political consumption should be the core of any project. The members of these groups are determined ‘to build up their members’ awareness as citizens, based on direct involvement in forms of consumption that enable them both to

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put their political commitment into practice and to be able to engage in collective forms of action’ (Dubuisson-Quellier et al, 2011: 314). Following a comparative approach, the most interesting case is the Japanese one of Teikei, a source of inspiration for many organizations. When AMAP members declare their membership to the Japanese system of Teikei, even when two organizations do not have direct connections, AMAP uses the Teikei structure of agreement, charter and solidarity-based principles (Lagane, 2014). Japanese Teikei was developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s as a reaction to the acceleration of modernization processes and the large-scale expansion in the industrialization of agriculture in the country. Since then, however, this movement has experienced several setbacks: after Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, for example, the Teikei was in a profound economic crisis linked to this big environmental disaster and to its effects on all local agricultural production. This presented a situation that was difficult to recover from (Kondoh, 2015). In organizational terms, the Teikei follow a set of principles that include: mutual support between producers and consumers; the need to extend, as much as possible, the range of products available; agreement on the value of the products (according to which the consumers should purchase everything offered by farmers); price negotiation that takes account of real production cost and respect for the cost of labour; the principle of self-distribution (according to which the groups need to organize themselves without relying on any shipping company); and to work towards the cultural growth of all concerned while being mindful of the size and extent of their growth (Minamida, 1997; Hill and Kubota, 2007; Hatano, 2008; Kondoh, 2015). This enables all actors to keep close and friendly relations and democratic management of each other. To this end, every time group membership becomes too large, the creation of a second group in the same territory takes place. Even though culturally and physically distant, the SPGs and Teikei are very similar (Mostaccio and 今井迪代, 2014). The most important and significant difference between them is in relation to the different role the SPGs have played over the years in creating a new kind of individual and collective understanding among their members by sharing information and opinions about the role that these consumption practices have gained over time (Mora, 2007; Brunori et al, 2012; Cembalo et al, 2013; Grasseni, 2014; Martino et  al, 2016). They have also strengthened the understanding and function of groups that use the political field as a place to promote and address issues of national and local interest. Actually, AMPA, CSA, Teikei, SPGs and other similar groups can be considered as

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new collective forms of political participation. As they are traditional social movement organizations, their activities are based on lobbying, primarily local public authorities. Interestingly, they appear to be a new type of a hybrid organization that may help to bring back a focus on citizenship issues (Graziano and Forno, 2012; Migliore et al, 2013; Sacchi, 2018). The transformative potential of this new practice enables SPGs to challenge local institutions to develop new forms of local food governance and institutionalization (Fonte, 2013). In this way, the case study that is presented in the next section explores an unconventional interpretation of citizenship for SPGs.

Immigrant workers’ exploitation in agriculture: the Rosarno case Case study and methodology The aim of this chapter is to explore the role of citizens and civil society organizations and their capabilities to change food supply chains. In previous sections I described two specific types of AFNs, farmers’ markets and SPGs, and their role within society. Now, through analysing one specific case study, it will become evident how the AFNs are able to affect the political as well as the economic sphere. The study intends to analyse, through a qualitative approach, the political and economic dynamics that emerged after an immigrant workers’ rebellion in the small rural village of Rosarno. The research, carried out between 2012 and 2016, was structured in two phases: the first focused on content analysis (printed documents such as newspapers, magazines, governmental reports, voluntary organizations reports, as well as other sources such as radio broadcasts, television programming and documentaries). It was necessary to study the ‘public discourse construction’ that journalists referred to as ‘Rosarno facts’. The second phase was based on 30 in-depth interviews with local farmers and other stakeholders. In this way, there was the chance to analyse not just citrus production, transformation and distribution and its connection with the immigrant workers’ exploitation, but also the civil society organizations’ reaction to finding new solutions to sort out these abuses. The Rosarno insurrection In Italy, as in other EU countries, the exploitation of immigrant workers in the agriculture sector is a means of reducing production costs and

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increasing profit margins. In Italy, this is particularly concentrated in the Southern regions. In fact, in the South, following a huge period of economic crisis and the consequent reduction of profit margins, job instability and low wages have became the norm for workers (Pugliese, 2003). Moreover, in many cases, the immigrant workers’ salaries are significantly lower than those received by local people. It is against this background that the research project was developed. It refers to the Gioia Tauro plain, a large geographical area composed of more than 30 municipalities, containing one of the most important collectives of national citrus production. The concentration of many small producers constitutes a fragile economic framework for the whole territory that had already been affected by significant organizational and structural problems such as high levels of inactivity, unemployment, illegal work, low production capacity and the presence of strong social control by organized crime (Padoan, 2011). This type of environment results in a powerful form of value extraction that has dramatic consequences, not only for immigrant workers and small local producers, but also for the citizens and the whole territory. In this context, in January 2010, in Rosarno, an important town in the Gioia Tauro plain, and in the midst of these repressive and unequal working conditions, two immigrant workers were injured. Within a few hours tempers flared and a conflict began. Looking to all intents and purposes like urban warfare, this resulted in around 100 immigrants protesting. Initial reports suggested 37 injured people in need of hospitalization, around 100 cars destroyed and rubbish bins set on fire. The case quickly turned into a matter of public disorder and authorities began to evacuate the area. In three days 1,128 immigrants were forced to leave the Gioia Tauro plain, and after a few weeks the emergency was declared to be over; in the following months everything seemed to return to as it was before. Every year, from November to February, seasonal workers arrive in Rosarno for the harvesting of oranges, and so the local population quadruples. This is a phenomenon that is well known to local and national authorities, but despite this, they do not provide the basic necessary infrastructure for the migrants. This leads to inhumane working conditions, insufficient or no housing, which leads to the workers having to take shelter where they can find it, and a lack of lavatories, electricity, gas and potable water. The Rosarno insurrection has created political debate, but this discourse focuses solely on the effects of the unrest rather than its causes. The ‘Rosarno facts’ have been reduced to sporadic racist

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incidents or related to organized crime: in this way, the complex economic dynamics have been underestimated or even excluded, even though it is surely obvious that this is the exact ‘field’ from which all the consequences derive. By analysing this phenomenon more closely it becomes clear that the process, from production to orange consumption, explicitly represents an exploitation supply chain. As a result of their lack of influence in terms of salary and working conditions, the migrant workers in Rosarno, already disadvantaged, are further exploited as a result of the economic difficulties linked to the high price competition of agricultural products (Pugliese, 2012). So, for a whole day of work in the orange groves, from dawn to dusk, the labourers’ salary ranges from €21 to €25. The attribution of poor pay to immigrants is a direct consequence of a misrepresented productive supply chain that defines the whole stagnant economic sector. In the field of these economic relations, the supply and demand game is determined by the stronger actor who has the power to force price development: the mass distribution multinationals and those operating in the juices and drinks sector. The price formation alone represents the crucial step to understand this dynamic. This mechanism is well described by a small farmer from the Rosarno Plain: ‘The lion’s share of control over the market and profit margins belongs to the large retailers. This places the farmers in a difficult position as they have to absorb the shortfall in cost of production against their own profit margins. This would previously be identified and negotiated by mediator from the farmers whilst in talks with the large retailers. Today, the power balance has shifted towards the large retailers who negotiate the price based on what they are willing to pay not based on how much the product costs to grow and cultivate. This means the large retailers have the power and control and are able to say “this is the deal, take it or leave it” which puts pressure on the farmers to agree to a deal which is less favourable to them. This includes having to absorb the cost of production, labour and transport, leaving a deficit to the farmer between what the consumer pays and what it has cost them to provide the produce.’ We can also find the same situation for the oranges destined for industrial processing by the manufacturers of juice drinks. The President of Coldiretti Calabria explains:

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‘The small transformation industries present in Gioia Tauro plain underpay for the oranges they buy: they offer 0.7 cents per kilo. To put this into context and highlight the rough deal offered to the farmers, manpower costs them 0.6 cents per kilo […] then there are all the other costs involved in production including transport costs […] so it is obvious that if the farmers are being paid 0.7 cents per kilo they will lose money[…]. Another element of this financial inequality is that one litre of orange juice contains 3 cents of real orange value, with an average selling price of 1 euro, 1.50 euros … it is easy to calculate a mark-up of more than 4,300% that obviously has a significant impact in economic, ethical and moral terms.’ In this case, the multinationals do not negotiate directly with the producers, but with the small local enterprises whose business is juice extraction and who sit in the middle of the supply chain. The President of Coldiretti Calabria continues: ‘Their payment is indirect because they buy the concentrated fruit juice for 1.60 euros per kilo but to produce one kilo of concentrated fruit juice it takes 18 kilos of fresh oranges. So it is clear that the processing cost to the small local enterprises makes it impossible to pay less than 0.7 cents per kilo for the oranges and then to sell to the multinationals at a price lower than 1.60 euros.’ What we see here is a situation where, as Albert (2003) argues, markets favour the most able at the expense of the least able in a cycle that results in increasing inequalities. As a result of these economic dynamics, a real war between the poor people is inevitable: we are talking about what has been called the ‘war of the oranges’, where every actor will try to gain maximum benefit for his own supply chain segment, damaging all the others. In this context, the small businessman, in order to survive and stay in the market, is forced to sign unfavourable commercial agreements. At the same time, he becomes the last, and the weakest, part of the production process. In this specific case the example is represented by the orange farmer (Mostaccio, 2012). All these factors facilitate the exploitation of the immigrant labour force: the immigrant worker – often illegal – forms the basis of the production supply chain, a process that can be considered as a slavery relationship.

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Focusing attention on slavery, however, hides the central problem: job quality and the total absence of fair pay. Careful attention must be paid to the economic and rational exploitation, linked to the end of the social protections introduced by paid employment, associated with the welfare state. Neoliberal capitalism suggests that it does not need slaves but disposable workers, dumb and interchangeable, with no contractual rights and flexible to the extreme. The ideal worker is a temporary person, invisible and with no rights, quite the opposite of a slave who must be kept alive, even in their unproductive periods (Viti, 2009). This is common in many geographical areas: in Italy, for instance, the same problems exist in Puglia and Sicily with regard to the production of tomatoes; another example, recently reported in The Guardian, stated that: ‘Workers including children, said they were forced to work up to 12 hours a day without contracts or sufficient health and safety equipment in Campania, a region that produces more than a third of Italy’s tobacco. Some workers said they were paid about three euros an hour’ (Muzi and Tondo, 2019). There are also similar situations in many EU countries: European studies on severe labour exploitation in agriculture show this issue concerns half of the Member States, in particular, Spain, Italy, Greece, Belgium, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal and the UK. In Spain, for example, the miserable life conditions of migrant women has led to cases of sexual exploitation (Palumbo and Sciurba, 2018). In this context it can be understood that maybe the situation in Rosarno presents just the tip of the iceberg of a much bigger issue. The reaction of civil society organizations The Rosarno insurrection had some unexpected, and welcome, developments: following the difficulties of urban warfare, the local community began to organize to propose a change. One example of this is the case of FLAI-CGIL (Federazione Lavorati Agroindustria),3 who chose to go to the fields, among the farmhands, to promote their rights, following the traditional ‘street trade union’ approach. AIAB (Associazione Italiana per l’Agricoltura Biologica, Italian Association for Organic Agriculture) is creating a European network of sales points – detached from the retail industry – where the quality of the products and the lack of labour exploitation is guaranteed. In this context, SOS Rosarno (www.sosrosarno.org), set up to create a form of resistance to the capitalistic system, represents the most significant project. It is delivering an initiative that came from a meeting between different associations in the territory and small

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local producers. These associations promote and practise responsible consumption, sustainable development, the solidarity economy and equal cooperation between producers and consumers. A network based on values of quality and small-scale production, traditional methods, consumers’ health, environmental sustainability and workers’ rights developed. The basic idea is to promote new dynamics of exchange inside the solidarity economy in order to develop an alternative to a kind of economy that is intended to comodify everything, an economy that produces an ‘unhooking’ from the social dimension that should be the basic condition of the exchanges. One of the members explains how it intends to act: ‘They imposed onto us an economic model which goes to the detriment of workers, the weaker people. Victims of this crisis are always weaker people. We will not go along with this and for that reason we created this organization, whose aim is to act on a short supply chain of small producers and workers? I guess this should be our economic model. We brought together workers, small producers, everybody.’ The creation of a short supply chain, an alternative way to produce and exchange goods, is not just a symbolic gesture but creates an example of an important cultural shift. Another activist from this organization describes their plans in more detail: ‘SOS Rosarno was born to create an alliance between small producers, who do not poison the land with pesticide and who work in Gioia Tauro plain; and thanks to this network; […] groups of people who want to avoid buying things from Carrefour, or Despar or shopping centres but who want to buy directly from the producers who do not poison the land and do not exploit their workers or customers by paying fair wages and charging fair process for their produce.’ SOS Rosarno, therefore, crosses the simple symbolic level of solidarity, and has as its objective the fight for the defence of territory, the protection of the quality of life of the local population and the defence of the immigrant farmhands. It is about a political fight implemented with economic instruments. The aim is to create a group of small producers that decide to detach from the market principles, promoting an alternative way of sale and production, starting from the social formation of the price of each product. We are dealing with a modus

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operandi that requires direct agreement between producer and consumer: with the final price of the products, the regular recruitment of all of the workers (immigrant or not), the right pay and the fact that all the products are organic are guaranteed. This requirement can also be deduced from the Association’s website, where we can find a schedule with a transparent breakdown of prices; in the season 2016–17, for example, the oranges were sold at €1.30 a kilo, a price that is the result of the following: 0.09 cents for the harvest; 0.30 cents for manufacturing; 0.16 cents for transportation; 0.23 cents for promotion, 0.05 cents as the solidarity fund for the immigrants (to create community projects to support them), and finally, 0.47 cents for the producer (see www.sosrosarno.org). This kind of organization needs to find consumers who want, and are willing, to buy these products outside the traditional circuits. The natural place to test this alternative is, in the case of Rosarno, the wider network of SPGs. Through agreements concluded with the SPGs, especially in the North of Italy, SOS Rosarno has become a commercial partner and employs more than 50 per cent immigrants, protected in accordance with the law in terms of living conditions, and a living wage. After the SOS Rosarno project, Italian civil society organizations launched similar activities, such as Funky Tomato, a project to promote ‘a European campaign against agricultural workers’ exploitation, and support[ed] the creation of a participatory supply chain of production and transformation of high quality tomatoes, by constituting a social alliance among migrant workers, farmers, consumers, precarious workers and artists’ (www. funkytomato.it). Another example is the Sicilian Contadinazioni project that developed an ‘awareness campaign which involved several small farmers who agreed to convert their production in compliance with a set of ethical, quality and environmental standards’ (Palumbo and Sciurba, 2018: 65). Each of these activities represents good and innovative practices that can contribute to the creation of new, local and sustainable policies.

Are urban food systems the future? SPGs, farmers’ markets and all others AFN organizations consolidate the structures of everyday life (Braudel, 1981) while at the same time they open the way to changing territories, moving towards the foundational economy. What happened in Rosarno represents an important case study. Analysis of the sequence of events connected with the Calabrian village allows us to understand the negative impact

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of the global economy, with the ultimate goal to maximize profit on marginal areas while at the same time giving us the chance to observe the strategies and tools employed by the local actors facing the perverse economic effects regarding the dispossession and redistribution of value that is generated by others (Mazzucato, 2018). With this in mind, Rosarno is a significant place that has experimented with new economic dynamics, based on the self-organization of production, and with a commitment to protect the rights of its citizens, especially those who are already experiencing inequality. This approach includes migrant people who may or may not have European citizenship. We are living in an historical time where in Europe, as in many Western democracies, influential actors are fanning the flames of populism. So the choice to arrange food production and distribution according to environmental sustainability and social justice criteria, such as a real living wage for Italian and immigrant workers, is a radical approach and represents the best antidote to those who say, ‘help everybody but in his [sic] own home’. Populist movements use this belief to fuel dangerous ideologies such as sovereignism and racism (in Italy, as in Japan, we see that AFNs are able to use horizontal democracy principles to influence and challenge extreme beliefs born from right-wing political ideas). In this regard, Carlo Petrini, founder of Slow Food, recently stated: … local economies don’t exist in isolation … they work with other territories and exchange experiences and innovation. The rediscovery of the local community, as opposed to the national or global community, expels the narrow-minded ideologies of sovereignism and racism. So, today this local approach can be used as a counter-balance to the crisis of non-participation in political matters. (quoted in Castellina, 2018) Surely the matter of territorial dimension is one of the most problematic aspects. One of the weakest points about these selforganized groups is a lack of access to other local or national consumers, and also the need to re-establish a new relationship between urban and rural areas (Barbera et  al, 2016). After initial recognition of these new local arrangements, AFNs require an institutionalization process that is achieved through the creation of appropriate policies. The foundational economy proposes a transscalar approach: ‘Local commons point to the relevance of collective efforts and choices of whole generations at all levels, from the local

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to the national territory[…]. In the FE [foundational economy] perspective, framing local commons as the “civic infrastructure” of citizenship emphasizes actions at different territorial scales (including the national one) that are aimed at the de-commodification of goods and services which serve everyday needs’ (Barbera et al, 2018: 371). This approach could be useful for the development of policies to support international urban food programmes. After the creation of the City Region Food System (CRFS) in 2015 – an international food policies programme created for the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) together with other partners (Dubbelling and Santini, 2018) – the ‘Milan Urban Food Policy Pact’ (MUFPP) was introduced and signed up to (until the middle of 2018) by mayors from 165 cities around the world (Halliday and Barling, 2018). The principle is ‘Acknowledging that cities which host over half the world’s population have a strategic role to play in developing sustainable food systems and promoting healthy diets, and because while every city is different, they are all centres of economic, political and cultural innovation, and manage vast public resources, infrastructure, investments and expertise’ (MUFPP, 2015), and so mayors commit to ‘work to develop sustainable food systems that are inclusive, resilient, safe and diverse, that provide healthy and affordable food to all people in a human rights-based framework, that minimize waste and conserve biodiversity while adapting to and mitigating impacts of climate change’ (MUFPP, 2015). This programme presents a list of 37 provisions and 6 thematic clusters (governance; sustainable diets and nutrition; social and economic equity; food production; food supply and distribution; food waste). It also recommends the following: use cash and food transfers and other forms of social protection systems to provide vulnerable populations with access to healthy food; promote decent employment for all, including fair economic relations, fair wages and improved labour conditions within the food and agriculture sector, with the full inclusion of women; encourage and support social and solidarity economy activities, paying special attention to food-related activities that support sustainable livelihoods for marginalized populations; and promote networks and support grassroots activities (such as community gardens, community food kitchens, social pantries, and so on) that create social inclusion and provide food to marginalized individuals. These policies aim to enable cities to build sustainable food systems through food loss reduction, reducing unbalanced distribution and lack of access to food, recognizing family farmers and smallholder food producers and urban and peri-urban production and distribution

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(MUFPP, 2015). This urban food programme provides policies that could potentially have a big impact on the cities involved, but if we consider the extent and heterogeneity of these cities, it may also result in a rhetorical project without impact or outcome due to the size and difficulty of implementation. Surely, as Halliday and Barling (2018) have highlighted, to transfer food policies at the mayors’ hands only may be a notable limitation that should be offset with more important roles conferred to civil society. From this point of view, AFNs and urban food policies could also inform foundational economy proposals, for instance, in creating hybrid political alliances with intermediate institutions and their influence to change and drive public policy at local or national level (Froud et al, 2018). Furthermore, radical change could be realized in the adoption of social licensing for all large economic actors (public, not-for-profit, private), which could be a means of improving local expertise and increasing production and sales of goods on a local or national scale while also encouraging social responsibilities with regards to citizens. The result may be that the AFNs could facilitate a return of social and economic value to deprived regions. Notes 1

2 3

Slow Food is an international association born in Bra, Italy, in 1986 as an alternative to fast food and which aims to promote local food and traditional cooking. Its manifesto includes three basic principles about food quality: ‘good’ (natural taste and aroma should be guaranteed), ‘clean’ (the environment should be respected) and ‘fair’ (social justice should be pursued). Slow Food currently includes more than 100,000 members in around 150 countries. Coldiretti is the biggest Italian farmers’ association. An important Italian trade union, which involved agricultural workers.

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Bentham, J., Bowman, A., de La Cuesta, M., Engelen, E., et al (2013) Manifesto for the Foundational Economy, CRESC Working Paper No 131, Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change (CRESC), available at http://hummedia.manchester.ac.uk/institutes/cresc/ workingpapers/wp131.pdf Braudel, F. (1981) The Structures of Everyday Life: Civilization and Capitalism, Volume I, New York: Harper & Row. Brunori, G., Rossi, A. and Guidi, F. (2012) ‘On the social relations around and beyond food: Analysing consumers’ role and action in Gruppi di Acquisto Solidale (Solidarity Purchasing Group)’, Sociologia Ruralis, 52: 1–30. Carrera, L. (2009) ‘I gruppi di acquisto solidale. Una proposta solida nella società liquida’, Partecipazione e Conflitto, 3: 95–122. Caselli, D. and Dagnes, J. (2018) ‘Salvati dalla finanza? Analisi empiriche e prospettive critiche sulla finanziarizzazione del welfare e del benessere’, Autonomie Locali e Servizi Sociali, 2: 205–18. Castellina, L. (2018) ‘Noi di Slow Food, antidoto al sovranismo’, il Manifesto, available at https://ilmanifesto.it/noi-di-slow-foodantidoto-al-sovranismo/ Corsi, A., Barbera, F., Dansero, E. and Peano, C. (2018a) Alternative Food Networks: An Interdisciplinary Assessment, London: Palgrave Macmillan. Corsi, A., Barbera, F., Dansero, E., Orlando, G. and Peano, C. (2018b) ‘Multidisciplinary Approaches to Alternative Food Networks’, in A. Corsi, F. Barbera, E. Dansero, and C. Peano (eds) Alternative Food Networks: An Interdisciplinary Assessment, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 9–46. Cembalo, L., Migliore, G. and Schifani, G. (2013) ‘Sustainability and new models of consumption: The solidarity purchasing groups in Sicily’, Journal of Agricultural & Environmental Ethics, 26: 281–303. Dagnes, J. (2018) ‘Finanza e vita quotidiana: Finanziarizzazione delle famiglie Italiane’, Quaderni di Sociologia, 76: 35–56. Dubbelling, M. and Santini, G. (2018) ‘City region food system assessment and planning’, Urban Agriculture Magazine, no 34, available at https://ruaf.org/document/urban-agriculture-magazine-no-34measuring-impact/ Dubuisson-Quellier, S., Lamine, C. and Le Velly, R. (2011) ‘Citizenship and consumption: Mobilisation in alternative food systems in France’, Sociologia Ruralis, 51(3): 304–23. Fiorillo, V. (2015) Il Futuro del Biologico: Modello di Sviluppo per l’Agroalimentare, Milan: Egea.

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Hill, C. and Kubota, H. (2007) ‘Thirty-Five Years of Japanese Teikei’, in E. Henderson and R. van En (eds) Sharing the Harvest: A Citizen’s Guide to Community Supported Agriculture, White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing Vermont. Lagane, J. (2014) ‘Towards the revitalization of farmers’ markets in Marseille: When citizens advocate for a greener city’, Scienze del Territorio, 2: 227–38. Kondoh, K. (2015) ‘The alternative food movement in Japan: Challenges, limits, and resilience of the Teikei system’, Agriculture and Human Values, 32(1): 143–53. Marino, D. (2016) Agricoltura Urbana e Filiera Corte: Un Quadro della Realtà Italiana, Milan: Franco Angeli. Marino, D. and Cicatiello, C. (2012) I Farmers’ Market: La Mano Invisibile del Mercato. Aspetti Economici, Sociali e Ambientali delle Filiere Corte, Milan: Franco Angeli. Martino, G., Giacchè, G. and Rossetti, E. (2016) ‘Organizing the co‑production of health and environmental values in food production: The constitutional processes in the relationships between Italian solidarity purchasing groups and farmers’, Sustainability, 8(4): 1–22. Mastronardi, L., Marino, D., Cavallo, A. and Giannelli, A. (2015) ‘Exploring the role of farmers in short food supply chains: The case of Italy’, International Food and Agribusiness Management Review, 18(2): 109–30. Mazzucato, M. (2018) The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in Global Economy, London: Penguin Press. Migliore, G., Schifani, G., Guccione, G. and Cembalo, L. (2013) ‘Food community networks as leverage for social embeddedness’, Journal of Agricultural & Environmental Ethics, 27(4): 549–67. Minamida, S. (1997) ‘Teikei or copartnership; A characteristic type of the producer-consumer relationship in the organic agriculture movement in Japan’, AGRIS, 49: 189–99. Miralles, I., Dentoni, D. and Pascucci, S. (2017) ‘Understanding the organization of sharing economy in agri-food systems: Evidence from alternative food networks in Valencia’, Agricolture and Human Values, 34: 833–54. Moore, O. (2006) ‘Understanding post organic fresh fruit and vegetable consumers at participatory farmers’ market in Ireland: Reflexivity, trust and social movements’, International Journal of Consumer Studies, 30(5): 416–26. Mora, E. (2007) ‘L’Abbigliamento tra Etica ed Estetica’, in L. Bovone and E. Mora (eds) La Spesa Responsabile: Il Consumo Biologico e Solidale, Rome: Donzelli, 75–101.

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Foodscapes of hope: The foundational economy of food Kevin Morgan

Introduction This chapter tries to establish three propositions about the world of food. First, that food cannot be wholly commodified because, in contrast to all other capitalist commodities, it makes a unique contribution to the wellbeing of people and the planet alike, which is why it is intimately associated with the pivotal concept of moral economy. Second, that we need to make the transition from moral economy as an ethical critique to the foundational economy as political practice because the latter can translate the values of the former into the policies and practices that are necessary to render the food system more socially and ecologically sustainable. And third, that a foundational economy of food can be fashioned through initiatives such as the Food for Life programme,1 one of the boldest and most ambitious food system reform programmes in Europe, a programme that began as a school food reform scheme that was predicated on concerted action on the part of municipalities, civil society intermediaries and local communities. To illustrate the scope for as well as the limits to this radical food system programme, the chapter highlights the instructive experience of Oldham, one of the first local authorities to win a Food for Life Gold Award for its school meals service despite its Cinderella status as the ‘poorest town in England’. The experience of Oldham is instructive on two counts: (1) because it gives the lie to the notion that poor places are congenitally incapable of designing and delivering high-quality public services and (2) because it provides a compelling illustration of the power of purchase when it is deployed by a competent and confident municipal workforce. The chapter concludes by assessing what else is required, besides harnessing the power of public sector procurement, to fashion a food system that embodies the intrinsically significant values of public

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health, social justice and ecological integrity, the core values of sustainable development.

The exceptionalism of food Although it is customary to speak of ‘the food industry’ in the same terms as we speak of the car industry or the steel industry, we need to recognize that, from farm to fork, food cannot be treated as a conventional capitalist commodity. While food clearly is a business, it is a business like no other for one simple reason – we ingest its products and therefore it is vital to human health and wellbeing in a way that other industries are not, and this is what constitutes the exceptionalism of food (Morgan et al, 2006; Morgan, 2010). In short, while food firms need to make a profit like other capitalist firms, their products are required to meet ever-more stringent societal tests2 other than profitability – especially as regards human health and ecological integrity, the core ingredients of a sustainable diet for people and the planet alike (Garnett, 2014). Neoliberals have contested the exceptional status of food by trying to normalize the sector in trade liberalization talks, but this quest has proved elusive, as the abject failure of the Doha trade talks demonstrated.

From moral economy to foundational economy Perhaps the best way to understand the exceptionalism of food is through the prism of moral economy, a concept that conveys the rights and responsibilities that we owe to one another as fellow citizens as well as to nature and non-humans as part of our duty as environmental stewards. Significantly, the moral economy concept has been inextricably linked to the exceptional status of food throughout human history. In its modern usage the moral economy concept came to prominence in the field of social history through E.P. Thompson’s classic essay, ‘The moral economy of the English crowd in the eighteenth century’ (Thompson, 1971). As a radical social historian, Thompson was at pains to rescue the actions of the labouring poor from what he called ‘the enormous condescension of posterity’, and he self-consciously referred to the ‘crowd’ rather than the ‘mob’ because he was acutely conscious of the significance of language. In almost every 18th-century crowd action, he argued, it was possible to detect some legitimizing notion in which the men and women in the crowd were informed by the belief that they were defending traditional

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rights and customs, and, what is more, that they were supported in their actions by a wider consensus in the community. The ‘food riot’ was a case in point because it dealt with the basic necessities of life, where the claims of moral economy were deemed to be the strongest and most compelling. Although food riots were triggered by soaring prices, malpractices among dealers and by hunger, Thompson wanted to underline the fact that these triggers operated within a popular consensus as to what were legitimate and illegitimate practices in marketing, milling, baking and distribution and so on. This, in turn, was predicated on a traditional view of social norms and obligations, of the mutual obligations of all the parties in a community, which, taken together, constituted what he called ‘the moral economy of the poor’ (Thompson, 1971: 79). The key part of the argument runs as follows: While this moral economy cannot be described as “political” in any advanced sense, nevertheless it cannot be described as unpolitical either, since it supposed definite, and passionately held, notions of the common weal – notions which, indeed, found some support in the paternalist tradition of the authorities; notions which the people reechoed so loudly in their turn that the authorities were, in some measure, the prisoners of the people. Hence this moral economy impinged very generally upon eighteenthcentury government and thought, and did not only intrude at moments of disturbance. The word “riot” is too small to encompass all this. (Thompson, 1971: 79) Thompson’s essay was essentially an attempt to present a paternalist mode of food provisioning in pre-capitalist society, a mode founded on the norms and customs of mutual obligation accepted by all parties in a community, a moral economy that was juxtaposed to and threatened by the advent of a new political economy associated with the free market in grain. In its original formulation, the concept of moral economy was used to present the ethical claims of the poor to the essentials of life – the most essential of which was access to food – at a time when the gastric juices of early capitalism were dissolving the norms and customs of the old paternalist order. Thompson concluded his essay by saying that the breakthrough of the new political economy of the free market signalled ‘the breakdown of the old moral economy of provision’ (Thompson, 1971: 136). One of the criticisms levelled at the original essay was the way in which moral economy was uncritically juxtaposed to political

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economy, implying that the former was a cultural residue of precapitalist society with no purchase on capitalist societies. Thompson later conceded this point when, reflecting on his original essay, he said that the moral economy need not be confined to traditional or pre-industrial contexts because it was a concept that was ‘continually regenerating itself as an anti-capitalist critique’ (Thompson, 1991: 344). Nowhere was the concept more applicable, he thought, than in the context of food provisioning for the poor and vulnerable, because ‘the world has not yet done with dearth or with famine’. To illustrate the point he cited, with approval, the work of Amartya Sen, a renowned expert on 20th-century famines in Asia and Africa. Although Sen never explicitly employs the concept, a moral economy perspective clearly informs his seminal study of poverty and famine because it decisively rejects a reliance on pure market forces to solve the problems of dearth and famine. Drawing on and developing what he called the ‘entitlement approach’, Sen showed that there were multiple ways in which people gained access to essential food supplies; for example, through direct provisioning, through purchase in the market from one’s wages and through income derived from social security systems and so on. The great merit of this approach was that it demonstrated that the vast majority of famines were triggered by a breakdown in such social entitlements (on the demand side) rather than by a shortage of supply – the ‘food availability decline’ (FAD) thesis that had dominated the minds of theorists and policymakers since the days of Adam Smith, and a thesis that had severely compromised anti-famine policies. Curiously, the FAD thesis could not explain why severe starvation could coexist alongside ample stocks of food. Sen had resolved this apparent mystery in the opening lines of his study, when he said that starvation is ‘the characteristic of some people not having enough food to eat’ and not ‘the characteristic of there being not enough food to eat’. The greatest weakness of the FAD thesis is that it gives few clues as to ‘the causal mechanism of starvation, since it does not go into the relationship of people to food’ (Sen, 1981: 154). Conversely, the great strength of the entitlement approach is that it views ‘the food problem as a relation between people and food in terms of a network of entitlement relations’ (Sen, 1981: 159). Three aspects of Sen’s analysis resonated with Thompson’s moral economy perspective. First, the idea of socially differentiated entitlements registered on his class-conscious antennae. Second, Sen rejected free market dogma by declaring that, no matter how a famine is caused, the solution called for ‘a large supply of food in the public distribution

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system’, an argument that echoed Thompson’s moral economy perspective. Third, the relationship of people to food highlighted how the process of food provisioning, particularly in times of dearth and famine, was fashioned by ‘systems of power’ (Thompson, 1991: 287). The extent to which systems of power rather than social need shaped food provisioning is best illustrated by the fact that it is not uncommon for food to be exported from areas suffering severe starvation, a spectacle that occurred during famines in Ireland and India. This was a major political issue in the Irish Famine of the 1840s, so much so that no issue has provoked so much anger in the sad saga of Anglo–Irish relations as ‘the indisputable fact that huge quantities of food were exported from Ireland to England throughout the period when the people of Ireland were dying of starvation’ (Woodham-Smith, 1975: 70). While the moral economy perspective may struggle to appreciate such a spectacle, because it is primarily concerned with human needs, the power of the entitlement approach is that it is able to demonstrate, logically and empirically, that there is nothing extraordinary in the market mechanism exporting food from famine-stricken areas. On the contrary, ‘food being exported from famine-stricken areas may be a “natural” characteristic of the market which respects entitlement rather than needs’ (Sen, 1981: 162). It is hard to imagine a more glaring example of the tension between social needs and market mechanisms than the spectacle of food exports from famine-stricken areas. But this tension is inherent in the provisioning of all commodities at all times in a capitalist system of production and exchange, and this is why a moral economy perspective – in which human wellbeing is deemed to be an intrinsically significant goal – is as valid today as it was in the past. One contemporary social theorist who has done much to champion the moral economy perspective is Andrew Sayer, who argues that: “Moral economy” may sound like an oxymoron because economic behaviour is strongly associated with power and the pursuit of self-interest, and economic forces often act regardless of moral concerns. Nevertheless, all economic institutions are founded on norms defining rights and responsibilities that have legitimations (whether reasonable or unreasonable), require some moral behaviour of actors, and generate effects that have ethical implications. Moral norms are not merely conventions, but embody assumptions about what well-being consists in, and these can be evaluated. (Sayer, 2007: 261)

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The thrust of Sayer’s argument is that a moral economy perspective is as relevant to the prosaic mainstream of everyday life as it is to social upheavals like dearth, famines and food riots, where the tension between social needs and market mechanisms is at its most pronounced. Geared as it is to the goals of human (and indeed non-human) wellbeing, a moral economy perspective can help us to better understand the extent to which ‘systems of power’ foster or frustrate these goals. This is especially important in the context of food policy because, given the unique status of food to health and wellbeing, consumers and citizens need to be empowered to make informed choices about what they consume and this, in turn, requires a food choice environment where ‘good food’ is readily available and affordable to all rather than the preserve of the better off (Morgan, 2015).

The foundational economy of food Given its exceptional status, food is a quintessentially important part of the foundational economy and this is especially the case with respect to public food provisioning. What is most distinctive about public sector catering is that it provides for some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in society, and this lowly social standing helps to explain why the sector has been burdened with a Cinderella status for so many years. But this chapter argues that the public sector catering service needs to be viewed and valued anew because the best index of a just and sustainable society is the way it feeds its poorest and most vulnerable members, be they pupils, patients, pensioners or prisoners. In the UK the public sector spends some £2.5  billion a year on food and catering services, of which schools and hospitals are the largest categories by value. This budget ought to be deployed more strategically to render good food more readily available in public sector settings (Morgan and Morley, 2014). The case for sustainable food procurement in the public sector was well made by Defra (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) more than a decade ago, when it said: If we are what we eat, then public sector food purchasers help shape the lives of millions of people. In hospitals, schools, prisons, and canteens … good food helps maintain good health, promote healing rates and improve concentration and behaviour. But sustainable food procurement isn’t just about better nutrition. It’s about where the food comes

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from, how it’s produced and transported, and where it ends up. It’s about food quality, safety and choice. Most of all, it’s about defining best value in its broadest sense. (Defra, 2003) The lowly status of public sector catering has two dimensions, each of which needs to be remedied before the sector can be considered part of a sustainable food system. On the supply side public sector caterers are among the lowest ranks in local authority hierarchies, and this is not unrelated to the fact that it is a service that is largely composed of and managed by women; and on the demand side the users of the service, be they school pupils or hospital patients, are among the most powerless and vulnerable members of society. One of the great merits of the Food for Life programme is that it recognizes the need to create new narratives around public sector food provisioning to raise the status of all parts of the food system, from producers to consumers. In this section I consider the key features of the programme before highlighting the case of Oldham Borough Council, one of the 10 local authorities that constitute Greater Manchester, and the first authority in the North West region to win a Food for Life Gold Award for its school food service. Foodscapes of hope: the Food for Life programme The Food for Life programme was launched by the Soil Association and its partners in 2007 with the help of a grant from the Big Lottery Fund. In practical terms it seeks to deliver good food and sustainable diets by harnessing the energies of public sector caterers, private sector suppliers and local communities that want their schools to enjoy food that is good for people and the planet alike. From its inception it was designed to promote the ‘whole school approach’ to school food reform, an approach that promotes the healthy eating message through every aspect of the school – the classroom, the dining room and the vending machine in particular – and ensures that the landscape and mindscape of the school are calibrated and mutually reinforcing. The programme is now branching out in two different ways – geographically, by diversifying beyond its original schools in England and sectorally, by including day nurseries, universities, hospitals and care homes as well as schools (Soil Association, 2015). The Food for Life programme is a highly innovative collaboration between charities (which originally consisted of the Soil Association, Garden Organic, Focus on Food, Health Education Trust and the Royal Society for Public Health) that builds partnerships with schools

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and other institutions to enhance their food culture. Schools work towards Bronze, Silver and Gold Awards in a process that actively involves pupils, staff, parents and the wider community in growing and cooking food and linking with farms to learn where their food comes from. In addition the Soil Association works closely with catering teams in schools and other settings to improve the quality and provenance of meals through the Food for Life Catering Mark, which also has Bronze, Silver and Gold Awards. The Bronze Catering Mark focuses on removing harmful additives, trans-fats and GM (genetically modified) food from the menu, and ensures that the majority of dishes are prepared freshly from unprocessed ingredients. The Silver and Gold Catering Mark standards are assessed on a points system, rewarding spend on ethical, organic and local ingredients. The meaning of ‘good food’ in Food for Life campaigns is defined in clear and simple terms as: (1) a healthy and sustainable diet: less fat/salt/sugar, less processed food and less but better quality meat; and more fruit and vegetables, whole grains and sustainable fish; (2) quality food you can trust: more fresh, local, seasonal, sustainable food, with low climate impact and high welfare standards; and (3) eating together: more opportunities for social contact through food, building families and communities and tackling loneliness (Soil Association, 2015). The most robust independent evaluation of the programme conducted to date sought to assess the impact of engagement with the programme on a pupil’s fruit and vegetable consumption and to answer the research question: ‘Do Year 4 and 5 pupils consume more fruit and vegetables in schools engaged with Food for Life than pupils in schools not engaged with Food for Life?’ Some of the main findings of the study are summarized below: • Pupils in Food for Life schools consumed more portions of fruit and vegetables than pupils in comparison schools. • Pupils in Food for Life schools ate significantly more fruit and vegetables in school; they also ate significantly more fruit and vegetables at home. • After adjusting for Free School Meal Eligibility (FSME), gender and local authority variation, pupils in schools engaged with the Food for Life programme were twice as likely to eat five or more portions of fruit and vegetables per day; they were also about 60 per cent more likely to eat more than the national average of 2.55 portions per day. • Across the whole survey, a large proportion of pupils reported eating no fruit and vegetables in the day prior to the survey. However, there were differences between the schools in the study, with 23.4 per

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•

•

•

•

cent of pupils in Food for Life schools and 33.9 per cent of pupils in comparison schools recorded as eating no fruit and vegetables. For fruit and vegetable intake there was a significant difference between pupils in Bronze and Silver Award schools. Pupils in Silver Award Food for Life schools were over twice as likely to eat five or more portions of fruit and vegetables compared to pupils in schools with no Food for Life Award. School meal take-up, based on pupil reports of meals in the week prior to the survey, was 56.1 per cent in Food for Life schools and 49.9 per cent in comparison schools, a 6.2 percentage point difference, which was significant. School meal take-up was associated with higher fruit and vegetable consumption for pupils in Food for Life schools. By contrast, fruit and vegetable consumption was not associated with school meal takeup in the comparison schools. This could be a reflection of greater provision of fresh fruit and vegetables in school meals in Food for Life schools than comparison schools. After adjusting for gender, FSME and local authority differences, pupils in Food for Life schools were about 40 per cent more likely to ‘like’ or ‘really like’ school meals. Pupils in Food for Life schools were also significantly more likely to give a positive rating of school lunchtime in their school (Jones et al, 2015).

The results reported above refer to dietary behaviour, one of the key themes of the Food for Life programme, but this is only one dimension of a programme that covers four key areas of activity, namely: food leadership and school food culture, food quality, food education, and community and partnerships. In other words, the full impact of this multidimensional programme has yet to be assessed because, despite all the official rhetoric around sustainability, healthy diets and childhood obesity and the like, the dissemination of the Food for Life programme has been left to charities, non-governmental organizations, highly committed schools and a small minority of supportive local authorities. The lack of official support – from central government and the public bodies nominally responsible for health, wellbeing and sustainable development – is all the more surprising when we consider that the programme is directly addressing some of the most intractable societal challenges today, such as how to persuade children and young people to adopt sustainable diets, and how to counter the burgeoning childhood obesity problem (Rodgers et al, 2018). The Food for Life programme embodies a tacit theory of change which posits that dietary behaviour change in the school will trigger positive spillovers in the

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home, a theoretical proposition that needs to be verified empirically.3 In terms of current consumption of fruit and vegetables, for example, children in the UK are nowhere near meeting the official ‘Five-a-Day’ guideline, and the Food for Life programme has sought to bridge this dietary gap. As the evaluators of the programme said: The wide gap between guidance and practice underscores the importance of improving dietary behaviours of children. It highlights the importance of the school environment given that, for many children, there are limited or no opportunities to eat fruit and vegetables at home. In this context, evidence of a difference in diet is notable given that fruit and vegetable consumption in Food for Life schools was not only higher within school time, it was also higher at home. This finding is consistent with the Food for Life programme aspiration to have an impact that spills over from the school to the home, and suggests an extension of the programme’s impact into the wider community. (Jones et al, 2017: 40) Social policy researchers and civic society campaigners have demonstrated that the school environment cannot be treated as an autonomous space that is separate from and impervious to its local community and wider society, a simple but fundamental point that for many years eluded the likes of John Dewey, arguably the greatest advocate of the ‘school as a laboratory’ of social change (Westbrook, 1991). The fact that fruit and vegetable consumption was found to be higher in Food for Life schools and their homes begs the old question of causality: was dietary behaviour change in the Food for Life school the trigger for the domestic dietary change or was consumption of fruit and vegetables already relatively high in both the home and school environments of the Food for Life children, in other words a case of correlation rather than causation? Such questions need to be answered by commissioning more targeted impact case studies, but this is unlikely to happen because the ‘age of austerity’ has eviscerated local authority capacity to perform discretionary tasks outside their statutory obligations. Aside from austerity, however, there is another reason why the multidimensional impact of the Food for Life programme has not been sufficiently researched, and that is due to the status of the school food catering service. The lowly status of the service is such that most local authority leaders – councillors as well as senior officers – have little knowledge of

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or engagement with their catering staff (Morgan and Sonnino, 2010). Challenging these status hierarchies in the public sector is central to the foundational economy agenda, which aims to include lowstatus service employees in the policy-making arena as part of a larger and more ambitious process of building ‘public heterarchies’ (Barbera et al, 2018). Oldham: a beacon of good practice in a poor borough Services for the poor, it has been said, have a tendency to become poor services. But Oldham proves that this does not have to be the case because, despite being a poor borough, it is a beacon of good practice with respect to its school catering service. Oldham is one of the 10 local authorities that make up the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA), and it was famously dubbed ‘the poorest town in England’ after the Office for National Statistics (ONS) found it had over 60 per cent of its local areas ranked in the most deprived 20 per cent of areas in England (ONS, 2016; Chakrabortty, 2018). With a population of some 234,000, Oldham is a former textile town with a rapidly growing ethnic population. The ethnic composition of the town changed considerably between the 2001 and the 2011 censuses, with the result that the proportion of the population from white backgrounds decreased from 86.2 per cent to 77.5 per cent, while the South Asian population continued to grow, with residents of Pakistani heritage increasing from 6.3 per cent to 10.1 per cent and residents of Bangladeshi heritage increasing from 4.5 per cent to 7.3 per cent. The ethnic communities primarily live in the wards surrounding the town centre, and these are typically the most deprived areas in Oldham (Oldham Borough Council, 2019). Being one of the most ethnically mixed towns in England presents a variety of challenges to the town’s local education system, from cultural diversity in the classroom to culinary variety in the dining room. Accommodating and respecting this multicultural world has been one of the many unsung achievements of Oldham’s Education Catering Team. Although it rarely gets the attention it deserves, the team received national recognition when it became the first municipality in the North West of England and only the third in the UK to win the prestigious Gold Catering Mark for the quality of its school meals service. The award was the culmination of a five-year journey of improvement in which the council had previously won Bronze and Silver. As the council said when it won the Gold Award in 2014: ‘Every meal served in 92 primary and special schools by

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the catering team meets the gold standard and are examples of best practice. They are healthy, ethically prepared and contain lots of locally sourced ingredients and products which can be traced. All our menus are freshly prepared daily on site by our catering teams using a range of organic, high animal welfare produce and free range ingredients’ (Oldham Borough Council, 2014). On meeting the members of the Education Catering Team one is immediately struck by the professional commitment of the (all female) team and by the missionary zeal of its manager, Anne Burns, a veritable force of nature. I first met Anne in 2012 when we shared a public platform at a food policy conference in Manchester organized by the Soil Association. At that time Oldham was the holder of a Silver Award, and she told me in no uncertain terms that it was only a matter of time before her catering team won a Gold Award – and two years later they did just that. Recently I spoke with her again to discuss the key factors in winning Gold. “Everything depends”, she said, “on the people at the helm – the professional commitment of the catering manager, the skills and enthusiasm of the catering team and the sustained political support of local politicians.” What about the cost of Food for Life meals, was it not prohibitively expensive for a cash-strapped council in a highly deprived local authority area? The cost was not prohibitive, she said, because sound menu planning and close working relationships with suppliers helped her catering team to win the Gold Award with a 60p cost of food on the plate. At the time of the Gold Award in 2014, Oldham was charging £2 per head for a school meal, one of the lowest charges in the region. When the Gold Award was renewed in 2019 – and the renewal cost of £11,000 a year is not easy to find in a poor local authority that has suffered a decade of centrally imposed austerity cuts – the cost of food on the plate had increased to 65p per plate, still one of the lowest in the region. What makes this achievement all the more impressive is the fact that the school meals service is not subsidized in Oldham as it is in many other local authorities (Chakrabortty, 2018). Containing the cost of fresh ingredients is a major challenge for the Education Catering Team, especially when food prices are expected to increase even further as a result of Brexit, and the team has met this challenge until now by relying on the deep and long-term relationships it has forged with its top three suppliers. Apart from Brakes, a national food service company on which the council used to rely for most of its catering needs, the team has diversified the council’s procurement budget to incorporate two key local suppliers – TC Meats in Ashtonunder-Lyne and Ralph Livesey Ltd in Preston, a long-standing family

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of farmers with over 100 years’ experience of the fruit and vegetable trade. As a result of this localization strategy, the team estimates that nearly two-thirds of its procurement budget is now spent within the North West region. In other words, Oldham Borough Council has generated a double dividend from its school meals service because, in addition to the health and wellbeing benefits of a nutritious hot meal for children, which may be the only hot meal many of them will have every day, there is the developmental dividend for regionally based suppliers. These regionally based suppliers are the epitome of the ‘grounded firms’ – socially responsible and spatially embedded – that feature so prominently in foundational economy thinking (Foundational Economy Collective, 2018). Oldham as a microcosm: the future of the school food service As regards the future of the service – in Oldham and in the UK – it is generally agreed that school caterers face two formidable challenges: (1) how to increase school meal take-up rates to offset the rising costs associated with food ingredients and labour costs and (2) how to sustain the service in the face of the local authority budget cuts imposed by central government. If the school meals service is to be put on a sustainable footing, it must meet the take-up challenge. As one local authority business manager put it, ‘the key to low cost in providing a school meals service is not to reduce the food cost but to increase sales and thus spread staff and other overheads further’ (quoted in FFLP, 2010). The Food for Life programme’s Caterers Circle estimates that average take-up levels of 55–60  per cent are needed before school meals services can break even and become self-financing. In purely economic terms, then, Oldham’s performance seems little short of miraculous because the school meal take-up rate in recent years has been hovering at around 50 per cent, which means that its catering service is commercially fragile despite being one of the best in the country. Even before the onset of the financial crisis in 2008, the Local Authority Caterers Association (LACA) warned that ‘the service is under immense pressure and it is not inconceivable that local authorities would consider abandoning the service as budgets are unable to sustain the costs’ (LACA, 2008). The key issue, as LACA rightly emphasized, is that ‘school caterers are currently being expected to provide what is essentially a welfare service whilst still endeavouring to operate as a commercial venture’ (LACA, 2008; emphasis added). The challenge facing Oldham’s school catering service is a microcosm of the challenge facing the entire school meals system in

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the UK, where a decade of austerity-driven public spending cuts has fallen disproportionately on the institution of local government. The parlous condition of local government means that municipalities are less and less able to sustain the promise of the ‘school food revolution’, so called because it signalled the rise of a more ecological model of school food provision in the sense that it embodied the whole school approach referred to earlier, and also because it acknowledged the positive interplay of diet, health and learning and so on (Morgan and Sonnino, 2010). The ecological model had emerged as a repudiation of the neoliberal model introduced by Thatcherism, a model that triggered a ‘race to the bottom’ by introducing compulsory competitive tendering (CCT) into public sector catering. Under the CCT regime, local authorities were required to submit their school meal service to outside competition, and this had noxious consequences for the integrity of the service and the quality of the food. As bidders felt obliged to offer the lowest price, CCT triggered a dramatic reduction in costs, which induced major changes to the school meal service, including a loss of kitchens (as a processed food culture took root), a less skilled workforce and the debasement of the food, transforming it into what one prominent school cook characterized as ‘cheap processed muck’ (Orrey, 2003). From a public health standpoint, the neoliberal model was responsible for ‘a monstrously myopic mistake’ (Morgan, 2011: 33). In its desire to make short-term public expenditure savings, the Thatcher government fuelled the growth of unhealthy diets in schools, one of the primary determinants of obesity in children and young people. The neoliberal model was the low point in the history of the school food service in the UK, not least because all nutritional standards were abolished with respect to the food, and low cost was allowed to masquerade as best value with respect to the catering service (Morgan and Sonnino, 2010). The tension at the heart of the school food service in the UK is between ends and means – between welfarist ends and commercialized means – and the LACA rightly described this as the key issue to be resolved if the service is to be put on a more sustainable footing. This tension is also manifested in the schizophrenic stance of Conservative governments since 2010. Although its macro-level economic policies have been decidedly neoliberal, evidenced by a pre-Keynesian obsession with austerity budgets, its micro-level social policies for school food have been informed by a (modest) welfarist agenda far removed from the earlier neoliberal model of Thatcherism. This new Conservative stance on school food can be explained by a combination of societal

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shifts and power politics. First, a new societal consensus began to emerge in response to the moral panic about childhood obesity in the 1990s, and Blair’s Labour governments set about reforming the school food service, not least by reintroducing nutritional standards. Second, the Liberal Democrats were in coalition with the Conservative-led government in 2010, and they championed the cause of school food reform, particularly the policy of universal free school meals for all infants in their first three years, a policy that was introduced in England in 2014 (DfE, 2013). Although the commitment to free school meals for infants is a step in the right direction, it needs to be assessed in the wider context of what has been happening to local government, which has been financially eviscerated as a result of losing between 50–60 per cent of its funding from central government since 2010. But despite its enervating effects, austerity has not stymied the school food debate because progressive proposals are emerging at both national and local levels. For example, the Labour Party Manifesto for the 2017 General Election committed the party to free school meals for all primary school children, to be paid for by removing the VAT exemption on private school fees (Labour Party, 2017). Meanwhile, at the local level some municipalities have already introduced reforms that go way beyond the national commitments in England. The London Borough of Islington, for example, introduced Universal Free School Meals (UFSM) for all primary pupils in 2011 so as to support children’s diet, to support children’s learning and to ease the pressure on hard-pressed working families. The Islington offer is different to the nationally funded offer in England because it funds UFSM for all nursery classes and Key Stage 2 primary school pupils, while under the government’s criteria for UFSM, implemented in 2014, only children in Reception and Years 1 and 2 of primary school are entitled to free school meals, hence it is known as the Universal Infant Free School Meals (UIFSM) scheme. Research on the pilots for extending free school meals in England and Scotland found that there were significant increases in take-up among primary-aged children. This included take-up among those who were previously eligible and also for those who were not eligible. It is reasonable to suppose, therefore, that the universal nature of the free school meals offer removed the stigma associated with free school meals, which is what has depressed the take-up rate in the past (Islington Borough Council, 2019). The school food debate – embracing such pressing issues as the nutritional quality of the food, the financial integrity of the service,

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the take-up rate of school meals – needs to be given more political prominence because the scale of child poverty in the UK has reached truly alarming levels. The Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) reports that there were 4.1 million children living in poverty in the UK in 2016–17, equivalent to 30 per cent of the country’s children. Work no longer provides a guaranteed route out of poverty because more than two-thirds (67 per cent) of children growing up in poverty live in a family where at least one person already works (CPAG, 2018). In this sombre social landscape, where poverty and hunger are on the rise, the fight for nutritious school food that is accessible to all children and free at the point of consumption is second to none in importance because, as Raymond Tallis reminds us, the deepest differences between human beings are between ‘the hungry and the well-fed’ (Tallis, 2008: 5). If we believe there is a positive association between healthy diets, wellbeing and learning, then the quality of school food provisioning becomes one of the infallible tests of a society’s commitment to social justice and sustainable development.

Concluding remarks The history of the school food service in the UK provides a compelling illustration of the three propositions with which we began this chapter. In terms of the first proposition, the fact that food cannot be entirely commodified derives from its exceptionalist status, and this, in turn, rests on its unique role in sustaining the health and wellbeing of people and the planet. Without access to nutritious food in their early years, children’s physical and cognitive development will be stunted, and they will never be able to develop their capabilities to the full. The reason why the concept of moral economy resonates so deeply in the school food milieu is because, designed as it is to convey the rights and responsibilities we have to one another, these are especially pronounced with respect to our duty of care to vulnerable people, and especially to children. In the second proposition we proposed that we need to shift from moral economy as an ethical critique to the foundational economy as political practice because the latter can translate the values of the former into the policies and practices that are necessary to render the food system more socially and ecologically sustainable. We focused on the school food service as a tangible example of this shift because, while the moral claims of this service on scarce resources are second to none, as we argued earlier, these ethical claims need to be embodied in policies and practices that make a difference to the quality of life of

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the intended beneficiaries, in this case, school children and the caterers who nourish them. The final proposition suggested that a foundational economy of food can be fashioned through initiatives such as Food for Life, a programme that involves concerted action on the part of municipalities, civil society intermediaries and local communities. Although the Food for Life model is arguably the gold standard of school food provisioning, not least because of its holistic approach to production and consumption, it nevertheless remains a niche model because local authorities have neither the organizational resources nor the political commitment to adopt the model. We focused on Oldham because it is one of the local authorities that not only adopted the Food for Life model, but did so with great effect – becoming the first municipality in its region to win a Gold Award, a major achievement for ‘the poorest town in England’. The case study of Oldham illustrated the scope for municipal innovation as well as the structural limits of progressive localism. The secrets of its award-winning school catering service were attributed to the ‘people at the helm’ of the service – the professional commitment of the Education Catering manager, the skills and enthusiasm of the Education Catering Team and the sustained political support of local politicians. But its capacity to deliver quality meals in a highly cost-effective manner was also attributed to its deep and long-term relationships with its regionally based supply chain partners. Despite its impressive achievements, Oldham’s school catering service remains in a financially fragile state, like the vast majority of its counterparts throughout the UK, highlighting the structural limits of progressive localism. A combination of national and local action will be needed to overcome these limits. At the national level in England the school food service needs to be put on a more secure financial footing, along the lines of the Swedish school food system, where national regulations and fiscal support have together fashioned a highly successful system that is funded from general taxation, allowing all children to enjoy a healthy meal free at the point of consumption. At the local level municipalities need to build on the success of places like Oldham and Islington. In the case of Oldham, it remains something of a mystery as to why the Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, has not sought to scale up the Oldham model to the other nine local authority members of the GMCA, the first city region in the UK. Scaling up would help to generate critical mass for a high-quality food service that could be extended to other parts of the public sector in the cityregion. Scaling up good practice remains one of the greatest challenges

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for the foundational economy in general and for the school food service in particular, because good practice has been a bad traveller in the past (Morgan and Sonnino, 2010; Pitt and Jones, 2016). Notes 1

2

3

Food for Life is a Soil Association programme that aims to make good food the easy choice for everyone (www.foodforlife.org.uk/). The Soil Association is a UK charity campaigning for healthy, humane and sustainable food, farming and land use. There is a long history of legal controls on food quality. In the UK the Adulteration of Food and Drink Act 1860 is one of the clearest but by no means the earliest example. For an excellent discussion of the concept of environmental ‘spillover’ – the idea that one behavioural change will lead to other, more impactful changes – see McLoughlin et al (2019).

References Barbera, F., Salento, A. and Negri, N. (2018) ‘From individual choice to collective voice: Foundational economy, local commons and citizenship’, Rassegna Italiana di Sociologia, Special Issue, LVIX(2): 371–97. Chakrabortty, A. (2018) ‘The school that shows good food is not just for posh kids’, The Guardian, 25 April. CPAG (Child Poverty Action Group) (2018) Child Poverty: Facts and Figures, London: CPAG. Defra (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) (2003) Unlocking Opportunities: Lifting the Lid on Public Sector Food Procurement, London: Defra. DfE (Department for Education) (2013) ‘Free school lunch for every child in infant school’, Press Release, 17 September, London: DfE. FFLP (Food for Life Partnership) (2010) Return of the Turkey Twizzler? How Cost Cuts Threaten the School Food Revolution, Bristol: FFLP and Soil Association. Foundational Economy Collective (2018) Foundational Economy: The Infrastructure for Everyday Life, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Garnett, T. (2014) What Is a Sustainable Healthy Diet?, Food Climate Research Network, Oxford: University of Oxford. Islington Borough Council (2019) The Effectiveness of Islington’s Free School Meals Policy, London: Islington Borough Council.

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Jones, M., Pitt, H., Oxford, L., Bray, I., Kimberlee, R., and Orme, J. (2015) Evaluation of Food for Life: Pupil Survey in Local Commission Areas: Food for Life’s Impact on Primary School Children’s Consumption of Fruit and Vegetables, Bristol: UWE Bristol. Jones, M., Pitt, H., Oxford, L., Bray, I., et  al (2017) ‘Association between Food for Life, a whole setting Healthy and Sustainable Food Programme, and primary school children’s consumption of fruit and vegetables: A cross-sectional study in England’, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 14(6): 639. Labour Party (2017) For the Many Not the Few: The Labour Party Manifesto 2017, London: Labour Party. LACA (Local Authority Caterers Association) (2008) 2007 School Meals Survey in Wales, Chester: LACA. McLoughlin, N., Corner, A., Clarke, J., Whitmarsh, L., Capstick, S. and Nash, N. (2019) Mainstreaming Low Carbon Lifestyles, Oxford: Climate Outreach. Morgan, K. (2010) ‘Local and green, global and fair: The ethical foodscape and the politics of care’, Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 42(8): 1852–67. Morgan, K. (2011) ‘The coming crisis of school food: From sustainability to austerity?’, Welsh Economic Review, 22: 32–5. Morgan, K. (2015) Good Food for All, Senedd Paper Number 3, Cardiff: Institute of Welsh Affairs. Morgan, K. and Morley, A. (2014) ‘The Public Plate: Harnessing the Power of Purchase’, in T. Marsden and A. Morley (eds) Sustainable Food Systems, London: Earthscan, 84–102. Morgan, K. and Sonnino, R. (2010) The School Food Revolution: Public Food and the Challenge of Sustainable Development, London: Earthscan. Morgan, K., Marsden, T. and Murdoch, J. (2006) Worlds of Food: Place, Power and Provenance in the Food Chain, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Oldham Borough Council (2014) ‘School meals are top of the class’, Press Release, 28 May. Oldham Borough Council (2019) ‘Oldham in profile’, Oldham: Oldham Borough Council. ONS (Office for National Statistics) (2016) Towns and Cities: England and Wales, Newport: ONS. Orrey, J. (2003) The Dinner Lady, London: Transworld. Pitt, H. and Jones, M. (2016) ‘Scaling up and out as a pathway for food system transitions’, Sustainability, 8(10): 1025.

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Rodgers, A., Woodward, A., Boyd, S. and Dietz, W.H. (2018) ‘Prevalence trends tell us what did not precipitate the US obesity epidemic’, The Lancet Public Health, available at www.thelancet.com/ journals/lanpub/article/PIIS2468-2667(18)30021-5/fulltext Sayer, A. (2007) ‘Moral economy as critique’, New Political Economy, 12(2): 261–70. Sen, A. (1981) Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Soil Association (2015) Food For Life: Making Britain Healthier Through Food, Bristol: Soil Association. Tallis, R. (2008) Hunger, Abingdon: Acumen. Thompson, E.P. (1971) ‘The moral economy of the English crowd in the eighteenth century’, Past & Present, 50: 76–136. Thompson, E.P. (1991) Customs in Common: Studies in Traditional Popular Culture, London: Merlin. Westbrook, R. (1991) John Dewey and American Democracy, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Woodham-Smith, C. (1975) The Great Hunger: Ireland 1845–9, London: New English Library.

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Conclusions and new policy directions Filippo Barbera and Ian Rees Jones

Introduction The act of doing policy to or imposing policies on citizens is the cardinal sin of policy practice. As the chapters in this volume have illustrated, to avoid this sin the last half century has witnessed a great experiment that has celebrated and promoted neoliberal principles with the ideas of individual freedom and the sovereign consumer citizen at their core, the great deception being that consumer-citizens are free to choose, don’t have policies imposed on them and are free from the stifling confines of bureaucratic states. As the chapters have shown, this is by and large a failed experiment but, despite the economic crisis, the laboratory is still open for business. As processes of financialization have invaded increasing aspects of daily life, the evidence from this volume clearly demonstrates that the effect has been to constrain the autonomy of individuals and weaken the ties of community and solidarity. The loss of collective voice has not been counterbalanced by a stronger individual choice. Moreover, the idea of citizenship has been distorted and used against citizens as large corporations have been able to enjoy the rights of citizenship while evading their duties. In this concluding chapter we focus on the relationship between the foundational economy and new emerging forms of citizenship. Our starting point is the argument that foundational thinking is necessarily underpinned by the fostering of a new and universalistic model of citizenship, a model that views citizenship as more than a status that brings with it a bundle of rights that one possesses qua citizen, but as something that is also a dynamic part of daily life (Barbera et al, 2018). As a number of the contributors to this volume suggest, this perspective moves beyond citizenship as a collection of rights and responsibilities to emphasize the active and social nature of citizenship where people continually work on, engage with, dispute and argue over their rights and duties. Of course, this is easier said than done, and there is a danger of underestimating the depth of the structural

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and economic crisis and its effects on the capacities of individual citizens. Moreover, this perspective risks converging with the idea of ‘caring liberalism’ (Jessop et al, 2013: 111) and concentrating on the goal of individual ‘activation’ in terms of self-entrepreneurship and human capital as the main, if not the only, horizon for people’s wellbeing. Foucault’s biopolitical perspective provides the intellectual underpinnings for this critical stance: In practice, the stake in all neo-liberal analyses is the replacement every time of homo œconomicus as partner of exchange with a homo œconomicus as entrepreneur of himself, being for himself his own capital, being for himself his own producer, being for himself the source of [his] earnings. (Foucault, 2008: 252–3) The latent code of these narratives would appear to be indebted to the myth of growth at the heart of the ‘cargo cult’ described by P.L. Berger in Pyramids of Sacrifice (1976): individual activation, like the ‘ancestors’ ship’ evoked in the cargo cult, would arrive from the ‘pre-Keynesian past’, bringing the gifts of new technologies, skilled work and income opportunities, with public action relegated – at best – to a role that is ancillary to the market and the logic of competition. It is important to keep this critique in mind when recognizing that since the 2010s, uneven rights regimes across the globe (Morris, 2018) have intensified systems of civic stratification (Lockwood, 1996) resulting in inequalities in rights and duties with concomitant asymmetries in capacities to exploit and gain from existing rights regimes. However, foundational thinking offers an approach that directly addresses these issues based on the defence and management of local commons (Barbera et al, 2018) and the idea of citizens as commoners who are active agents in democratic struggles (Stevenson, 2015). In this respect we view the commons as things that are universally used and enjoyed but cannot be exclusively acquired or owned (Araral, 2014), and citizenship is the capacity (through rights and duties that are continually worked on) to act collectively in the defence and management of local commons (Carolan, 2017). This, we suggest, requires a thriving and flourishing civil society as an arena or space of political praxis where hegemonic struggles, resistance and innovations offer opportunities for action and intervention to secure civil repair (Alexander, 2006). The chapter proceeds by further developing the argument for a closer alignment between the foundational economy and an alternative

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model of active citizenship as praxis. In line with the comparative nature of the collection we consider models of citizen participation and citizen engagement in historical terms and across different territorial and spatial levels. We then draw on the findings from this collection to explore the policy implications for different spheres of the foundational economy addressing, in turn, governance and public action, housing and urban life, water and waste, and food.

Active citizenship as praxis The long-term economic crisis, the extension of financialization further and further into areas of daily life, the pursuit of austerity policies and consequent increasing inequalities across Europe have led many to question Marshall’s (Marshall, 1992 [1950]) important conceptualization of social citizenship (Revi, 2014). We take as our starting point that social cohesion is inextricably linked to the institutional unity of citizenship, market and bureaucracy, and citizenship has a strong role to play in structuring the conditions of social and economic inequality. Moreover, the evidence suggests that instead of steady and linear progress towards an ideal of universal personhood, contemporary social life across the globe has experienced new forms of civic stratification (Lockwood, 1996), whereby citizen rights are extended, lost, curtailed, manipulated and appropriated as a mode of control (Morris, 2003). As Bricocoli and Salento point out in Chapter 6 of this volume, the postwar era has witnessed three ideal types of citizens, from the politically engaged citizen of the Fordist era, the individualized citizen of the neoliberal era and the activated citizen of the post-crisis period. A key feature of the development of welfare policies, in Europe at least, is the idea of ‘activated citizens’ who are expected to engage reflexively with the individualized conditions of contemporary societies. The latter is very different to the idea of active citizenship that is connected to the foundational economy. Rather, it is a continuation of a reduction of the citizen to key individualized acts; as voter, taxpayer and consumer. The underlying assumption is that human activation is best regulated by the market wherever possible. We could speak in this connection of a ‘market simulacrum’. Furthermore, where market failures occur, the public actor’s role should be limited to acting as a market fixer or to creating the conditions for competition between ‘active’ people, even where there is no market; in this later case, we could speak of a ‘simulated market’. A growing body of scholars drawing on civic republican and ecological thinking have responded to these trends by arguing

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that citizenship is not a receptacle that has instrumental benefits but is a continuing process that has important ethical and practical components. Here the emphasis is on the ethical core to citizenship that recognizes co-dependence, solidarity and autonomy. Citizenship therefore has a deeply ethical status that requires constant defending through the practice of creative politics (Barry, 2016). And active citizenship reflects a civic republicanism that some have highlighted in the emphasis on autonomy and solidarity found in the work of Pierre Bourdieu (Goldberg, 2013). While acknowledging the importance of these republican accounts, our foundational approach to citizenship emphasizes socioeconomic relations and actions at different territorial scales that have the goal of decommodifying those goods and services that serve everyday needs. There is a danger that, like aspects of citizenship within civic republicanism, this approach places too great an emphasis on individuals to be active in the realm of citizenship at the cost of other aspects of daily life such as leisure, play, work, pleasure and family relations. Here, we think there is a useful distinction to be made between active and activist citizens (Carolan, 2017). Active citizens take part in forms of social participation including donating money to charities and volunteering in community organizations, writing letters to newspapers, blogging and signing petitions. These activities are an important part of democratic societies and are undertaken by a wide range of social groups in different contexts. The activities of activist citizens, on the other hand, constitute a political project that challenges routine, understandings and practices. In this light, activist citizens are engaged in everyday political action or praxis as a form of human freedom (Arendt, 1998: 225). This goes beyond a focus on statist attempts to measure and meet human needs (Brown, 2019). An example of the distinction can be found in the responses to the economic crisis in Spain that some have argued has generated new forms of solidarity and city life (Garcia, 2017). In the face of austerity and government inaction people have mobilized at local municipal level to occupy schools and hospitals, to resist housing evictions and to promote mechanisms for self-government. Such local responses to the shifting character of regimes of rights (Morris, 2018) suggest a new form of citizenship is emerging where economic, symbolic, solidaristic and institutional battlefields (Munch, 2012) are fought over and won at local and national levels, allowing new forms of people’s control, participation and decision-making (Garcia, 2017). This is one example, but it is perhaps illustrative of what Barbera et al (2018) have argued, drawing on Durkheim, is the crucial role of effervescent rituals in the collective actions of activist

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citizens. This has strong parallels with Isin’s work on performative citizenship that focuses on the transformative potential of activists pursuing rights claims across different social groups and polities (Isin, 2017). Barbera goes further to argue that effervescent rituals are creative, innovative, open to challenge and of necessity require a commitment to continuous dialogue and debate. Above all, they are heterogeneous in nature while driven by common aspirations to flourish according to understandings of the good life and a fair society that are, in turn, open to continuous dialogue and debate. Our argument is that citizenship in this sense is a form of praxis (Arendt, 1998) that is rooted in social and economic relations, and that the defence and management of local commons provides the ideal focus for the activism of active citizens.

Comparative perspectives on models of social participation and citizen engagement There is a long history of policy initiatives designed to extend and deepen the capacity of individual citizens to participate in decision-making, from policies based on Arnstein’s ladder of citizen participation (Arnstein, 1969) to now well established and diffused forms of citizens’ forums, citizens’ juries, collaborative governance and participatory budgeting (Michels, 2011), with convincing evidence for the impact of the latter form of citizen participation on health and wellbeing outcomes (Touchton and Wampler, 2014). Citizen participation has been viewed as a means for civil society to transform democratic forms and of itself has virtuous outcomes in terms of better governance and new insights on important social problems (Cornwall, 2002). The key policy question is how to expand citizen participation in policy and economic decision-making against the backdrop of declining trust and disillusionment in politics and democratic institutions. In contrast to historical planning epochs where citizens were excluded or used and manipulated to legitimate the decisions of elites, the principles of citizen participation have now been taken by multinational agencies from the European Union (EU) to the World Bank and United Nations (UN). While these developments are to be welcomed, there is a danger that, despite good intentions, there are unintended consequences. These include the possibility that interventions mirror or reinforce neoliberal values, or provide a gloss to legitimate and preserve the existing global capitalist order (Cornwall and Fujita, 2012; Jessop, 2002). An increasing emphasis on

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the techniques of citizen engagement may lead to technocratic forms of participation that bypass local democratic structures. Participation may hence be a sort of Trojan horse for reinforcing the neoliberal architecture of welfare capitalism in the light of ‘caring liberalism’. Participation and the mobilization of market-friendly private resources would thus become stable – and stabilizing – features of the European social model, against a backdrop of decreasing public resources and responsibilities. Here, participation – a bit like waving a magic wand or like the loaves and fishes of the parable – would supposedly make it possible to do more with fewer (public) resources. The market-friendly view on ‘social innovation’ seems to follow this path (BEPA, 2010). Finally, the rapid diffusion of different approaches to participation has not necessarily been accompanied by reliable evaluations of their impact on the lives of ordinary citizens. For example, in the past in the US it has been argued that participation methods required by law do not, in practice, meet their goals, and are often counterproductive (Innes and Booher, 2004). More recently, however, it has been argued that we are witnessing a new type of civic movement that is moving away from traditional forms of participation, protest and engagement and is developing innovative forms of direct action against governments (Youngs, 2019). It is clear that over time, forms of participation have changed and adapted, and while there is still the danger of appropriation of participatory techniques by neoliberal agendas, there is also the promise of new forms of networked participation that operate across territorial boundaries and are heterogenous in nature. Many of these are working within paradigms that are close to, or part of, foundational thinking; they include Universal Basic Income (UBI), Universal Basic Assets (UBA) and Universal Basic Infrastructure (UB-Infra) and (at least in part) the solidarity economy. The latter is an economic framework that focuses on forms of local governance based on equity and shared prosperity. It constitutes a worldwide phenomenon that is present in diverse economic sectors, aiming, for example, to create employment for poor and low-qualified workers (Lemaitre and Helmsing, 2012), and evidence from the US suggests that such local approaches can have positive outcomes for communities (Bell et al, 2018). Many of these ideas are compatible with and complementary to the foundational economy. There is therefore a growing body of evidence from different countries indicating a strong link between innovative economic paradigms based on understandings of equity, sustainability and solidarity and new forms of citizenship.

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Policy implications for different spheres of the foundational economy In light of the above and our argument for a new form of citizenship based on the defence and management of local commons, it is important to ask how citizenship relates to different sectors of the foundational economy. Moreover, it is key to maintain that the ‘need’ for a new form of citizenship does not generate per se the emergence of a new praxis: ‘needs’ have to be symbolically constructed, socially organized and economically coordinated to support the emergence of viable alternatives (Elster, 1982). In this vein, the chapters in this collection have raised a number of important issues with respect to local economic relations and citizenship. In the sphere of platform cooperativism, for example, Davide Arcidiacono and Ivana Pais (Chapter  2) have highlighted how platforms have attracted citizen activists, but they have often found it difficult to survive in the face of the practices of international corporations operating within the platform economy. This is an important challenge to the foundational economy because those areas of economic relations that are increasingly governed by platform techniques, such as transport and care, are part of the infrastructure of everyday life that is at the core of foundational thinking. An important question at the heart of the foundational economy is the extent to which the state should be involved in the planning, delivery and provision of foundational goods and services. In Chapter 3 Leonhard Plank provides a detailed reflection on new forms of public ownership. Examples include limited-profit housing associations, remunicipalized water companies and water cooperatives that have a number of goals that are relevant to our argument (Cumbers, 2012; Cumbers and McMaster, 2012). That is, they are applied to the common good agenda, seek to strengthen the role of citizens as active economic and political agents and are aimed at redistributing power and democratization (Rahman, 2017). This is a very different form of state involvement to that of the past, a sort of ‘enabling state’ that rejects both old statist models of universal service delivery and the New Public Management models of consumerism (Wallace, 2013). As Plank points out, public ownership is a policy lever that now needs to be reimagined as a democratic collective endeavour, informed by a vision of universalism, committed to experimentation in a varied and decentred economy with a fuller and inclusive form of citizenship at its core. To achieve this, as he argues, the state is here to stay, albeit in a different form that is not less radical then the old model. For instance,

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the enabling state should focus on those reforms that encourage a more equal distribution of economic power and rewards even before government collects taxes or pays out benefits (Hacker, 2011). A range of alternative forms of ownership within the sphere of the commons is found in the non-profit, social enterprise and cooperative sectors. This is an area of rapid growth across the globe with evidence that they deliver a number of benefits. Mondragon’s governance model, for example, combining commitments to democratic principles, solidarity and competitiveness, appears to be the foundation to its market competitiveness (Agirre et  al, 2015). Ownership models vary, however, and the multistakeholder cooperative model, bringing together producers, sellers and consumers under one single enterprise, may offer a means of providing a greater focus on social and environmental benefits while functioning within existing markets (Gonzalez, 2017). It is important to be aware that cooperatives are not immune to financialization in the market, as the case of Danish cooperative housing has shown (Bruun, 2018). Moreover, worker cooperatives face a number of challenges in the context of global capitalism (Cheney et al, 2014). It is against this background that the network analysis of the Italian welfare system presented by Sandro Busso and Joselle Dagnes in Chapter 4 provides important insights into the complex relationships within a fragile and low-intensity nonprofit extractive sector. While it acts as a nursery for the promotion of citizenship and participation, and can be described as a form of productive capitalism, it is nevertheless facing a precarious future, and the provision of services is based on a delicate balance between the citizenship rights of users and workers. In their case study of planning in Greater Manchester (Chapter 5), Julie Froud, Mike Hodson, Sukhdev Johal, Hua Wei and Karel Williams draw on the work of Luigi Mazza to argue that citizenship is a body of practices whereby active citizens continually reshape rights and duties and crucially, for their area of concern, forms of belonging. Setting out a periodization of planning within the Greater Manchester area they forensically uncover how, and where, citizens were excluded or used to legitimate the decisions of elites. Turning to the pioneering work of Jane Jacobs,1 they envisage a very different civic future that aims to build a citizen’s city region that is fostered by an enabling central state, a reinvention of the tax system with civil society and intermediary institutions playing co-producer roles, and where planning strategies are based on the placed-based knowledge of citizens. In their analysis of urban planning, housing and the grounded city (Chapter 6), Massimo Bricocoli and Angelo Salento also make a

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distinction between citizenship as status, or as a set of rights and duties attributed to the members of a political community; and citizenship as a practice, as a sphere of action that citizens engage in. Drawing on the concept of the ‘grounded city’ (Engelen et al, 2017) they argue for innovative initiatives focused on basic needs that completely replace investments aimed at productivity gain. However, the problem of land value, they argue, goes deeper than this, and what is needed is more than the overturning of top-down planning with bottom-up civil society initiatives. Rather, what is required is recognition of land as an intrinsically social asset (an asset in common) and a political project driven by active citizens, so that any innovations emerging from civil society are transformed into a ‘radical, non-reformist reform of the use of land’. The democratization of key assets such as land, labour, capital and knowledge would thus appear to be a key overarching requisite to truly generate new forms of citizenship. Without acknowledging that the flourishing of human societies derives both from individual initiative and from collective infrastructures that belong to everyone (Kohn, 2016), participation alone will be entrapped in the stifling cage of caring liberalism. In this light, in Chapter  7 Dario Minervini provides a detailed case study of waste management, and reveals how the role of the citizen in this sphere is reduced to a performative/behavioural one that diminishes the potential multidimensionality of citizenship and reduces it to a consumer profile. He presents a potential alternative in a key area of the commons that is based on a co-productive relationship between the sciences, expertise and all actors of the network. Such co-constructed social-material accountability, he argues, would be based on recognition of how the social organization of production, consumption and disposal of waste affects the common interests of citizens. In a similar vein in Chapter 8, Sergio Marotta and Ferdinando Spina present an analysis of water privatization and remunicipalization in the UK and Italy, and develop a compelling argument that water is a foundational good and that public policies must be radically repurposed to meet the needs of society rather than exclusively aim to maximize profits. Turning to food, in Chapter 9 Fabio Mostaccio reviews the role of farmers’ markets and Solidarity Purchase Groups (SPGs) in local food supplies, and argues that foundational economy thinking proposes a trans-scalar approach to food supply, with local commons as a civic infrastructure at the core of supply chains and choices from the local to national level. These ideas are reinforced by Kevin Morgan in Chapter 10, who emphasizes the exceptionalism of food

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and brings forward ideas on the moral economy (Sayer, 2007) to buttress a foundational approach to food that is based on the range of rights and responsibilities that we owe to one another as fellow citizens as well as to nature and non-humans as part of our duty as environmental stewards.

Concluding remarks In this final chapter we have tried to develop an argument that links the foundational economy to a new conceptualization of citizenship. At the heart of this is the idea that citizenship is a social process that is driven by the defence and management of the local commons. These are the basis for daily life and are a core part of the foundational economy. Within this framework, the chapters in this volume have examined initiatives and innovations at different territorial scales, from state to local communities, and in different national and international settings. They indicate there is much to do within the policy field to support and develop initiatives that are based on the ideas presented here. There are indications that national and local governments are beginning to view these ideas as imaginative and transformative alternatives to retrenchment in the face of economic crisis and austerity. An example close to hand is Welsh government investment in foundational economy experiments in 2019.2 Another one is the Italian Strategy for Inner Areas (Servillo et al, 2016), which measures citizenship in terms of spatial distance (travelling time) to key everyday services such as school, hospitals and public transport. These are encouraging signs, but we would add that the basis for taking this work forward should be recognition that a new model of citizenship needs to be based on the actions of an enabling state that go well beyond the strengthening of individual human capital and activation. Notes 1

2

Details of Jane Jacobs’ pioneering work and how it is being taken forward in contemporary urban settings are available at the Center for the Living City (https://centerforthelivingcity.org/). In May 2019 the Welsh government offered funding of up to £3  million to support businesses and organizations operating within the foundational economy (see https://gov.wales/foundational-economy).

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References Agirre, I., Reinares, P. and Freundlich, F. (2015) ‘Does a democratic management model enhance perfor mance through market orientation? Empirical evidence from the Mondragon Industrial Group’, Review of Radical Political Economics, 47(3): 345–67. Alexander, J. (2006) The Civil Sphere, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Araral, E. (2014) ‘Ostrom, Hardin and the commons: A critical appreciation and a revisionist view’, Environmental Science & Policy, 36: 11–23. Arendt, H. (1998) The Human Condition, Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Arnstein, S. (1969) ‘Ladder of citizen participation’, Journal of the American Institute of Planners, 35(4): 216–24. Barbera, F., Negri, N. and Salento, A. (2018) ‘From individual choice to collective voice, foundational economy, local commons and citizenship’, Rassegna Italiana di Sociologica, 2: 371–91. Barry, J. (2016) ‘Citizenship and (Un)Sustainability: A Green Republican Perspective’, in S. M. Gardiner and S. Thompson (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Environmental Ethics, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 333–43. Bell, M., Leopold, J., Berry, D. and Hall, A. (2018) ‘Diversity, discrimination, and persistent inequality: Hope for the future through the Solidarity Economy Movement’, Journal of Social Issues, 74(2): 224–43. BEPA (Bureau of European Policy Advisors) (2010) Empowering People, Driving Change: Social Innovation in the European Union, Luxembourg, Publications Office of the European Union. Berger, P.L. (1976) Pyramids of Sacrifice: Political Ethics and Social Change, London: Allen Lane. Brown, W. (2019) In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise of Antidemocratic Politics in the West, New York: Columbia University Press. Bruun, M. (2018) ‘The financialization of Danish cooperatives and the debasement of a collective housing good’, Critique of Anthropology, 38(2): 140–55. Carolan, M. (2017) ‘More-than-active food citizens: A longitudinal and comparative study of alternative and conventional eaters’, Rural Sociology, 82(2): 197–225. Cheney, G., Cruz, I., Peredo, A. and Nazareno, E. (2014) ‘Worker cooperatives as an organizational alternative: Challenges, achievements and promise in business governance and ownership’, Organization, 21(5): 591–603.

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Wallace, J. (2013) The Rise of the Enabling State: A Review of Policy and Evidence Across the UK and Ireland, The Carnegie UK Trust, available at www.relationalchange.org/pdf/Enabling%20State.pdf Youngs, R. (2019) Civic Activism Unleashed: New Hope or False Dawn for Democracy?, Oxford: University Press.

262

Index References to figures and tables are in italics

A

AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety 34 Aalbers, M.B. 138 ABC (Acqua Bene Comune, Water Common Good) 194–5 activated citizenship 130, 150, 251 active and activist citizenship 17, 251–3 Addiopizzo 212 affordable housing 51, 58, 59, 60, 107–8, 115–16, 124, 144, 146–7 affordable water 189 agriculture see farming AIAB (Associazione Italiana per l’Agricoltura Biologica, Italian Association for Organic Agriculture) 218 Airbnb 45 Albert, M. 217 alternative food networks (AFNs) see food supply chains AMAP (Associations pour le maintien d’une agriculture paysanne) 212–13 Ancitel 168–9 Andreotti, A. 34 Arcade City 36, 37 Arendt, H. 16 Arera 186, 187, 190 Arnstein, S. 253 Austria housing providers 58–60 planning 107, 119, 120 water cooperatives 63–5 Austrian School 54, 55

B

Bakker, K.J. 184, 186–7, 198 Balibar, É 78 Banham, R. 124 banking system 83–4, 84, 138–9, 140 Barbera, F. 194, 198, 208, 222 Barling, D. 223 Barnes, P. 199 Bauman, Z. 145 Bayliss, K. 184, 189, 190–1 Bell, E. 15 Berger, P.L. 250 Big Five, hegemony of tech firms 29 Big Society 122

bike-sharing 31 Blair, Tony 122 Blau, E. 119 Bologna, citizen participation in 107, 119–20 Boltanski, L. 11, 28 Bourdieu. P. 92, 134, 139, 252 brand communities 41–2 Braudel, F. 8 brownfield platforms 27, 43, 45 brownfield land 113, 116, 123 Buchanan, James 54 bureaucracy 55 Burns, Anne 240

C

Calvino, Italo 181 Cameron, David 122 Canada, urban mobility platforms 35 capabilities approach 10–11, 16 car-sharing 31–2, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37 car2go 37 care services, platforms 38–43, 44 Care.com 38–9, 44 cargo cult 250 Casserole Club 39, 44 Castellina, L. 221 Centro Servizi Welfare 42, 44 CGIA Mestre 188 Chase, R. 27 Chicago School 54 Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) 244 China, urban mobility platforms 32, 33 circular economy 159 citizenship (concept) active citizenship as praxis 251–3 approaches to 16–18 citizen as consumer 12–13, 14–16, 19, 56–7, 161, 249, 251, 255 civic republican approach 17, 251–2 and the commons 18, 250 communitarian approach 17 and corporations 14–16 crisis of 17 denizenship 13 and ethics 252 and financialization 12, 14 and foundational economy 12–16 and human need 10–12, 16

263

The Foundational Economy and Citizenship ideal types of 130, 251 individualized citizen 29, 130, 250, 251 inequalities in 13 liberal approaches 17 models of social participation and citizen engagement 253–4 new forms of 249–58 performative citizenship 5, 17, 253 and policy implications for foundational economy 255–8 as subjects 14 Cittadinanzattiva 188 City Region Food System (CRFS) 222 civic republican approach 17, 251–2 civil sphere theory 198 Co-operatives UK 43 Coldiretti 210, 216–17 Cole, I 129 collective housing projects 144–7 commons and citizenship 18, 250 local 18, 198, 221–2, 250, 258 movement for the defence of 193, 194, 197–8, 250 recognition of water as 194 communitarian approach 17 community-supported agriculture (CSA) 212–13 company housing 58–9 compulsory competitive tendering (CCT) 242 CONAI 167, 168, 169–71 consumers citizens as 12–13, 14–16, 19, 56–7, 161, 249, 251, 255 food supply chains 208–14, 218–22 housing 150 and platforms 29, 34, 35–6, 37, 38, 40–2, 44–5, 45, 46 and public sector 55–7 and waste management 167, 170, 173–4 and water supply 184 contracting out 75, 77, 77, 162 cooperatives 256 housing 58–60, 145–7, 148–50 non-profit sector 87–92, 94 platforms 30–1, 38–46, 44–5 water supply 63–5 Corneo, G. 57 corporations, and citizenship 14–16 council housing (UK) 107, 108, 111, 113, 114 Cowan, S.E. 108 Cox, Jonson 192

critical political economy 11 Crouch, C. 12 cryptocurrency, urban mobility platforms 36 Cumbers, A. 53

D

data collection, and platforms 29, 34, 37, 40–1, 43, 44–5, 47 David, Christopher 36 De Ambrogio, U. 94 Dean, H. 10 Defourny, J. 84–5 Defra (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) 234–5 deliberative democracy 17 della Porta, D. 76 denizenship 13 Denmark, housing 145 developer-led regeneration 107–8, 109–10, 113–19, 121, 123–5, 133, 138, 143, 144 Development Corporations 113–14 Dewey, John 238 Didi Chuxing Technology Co 32 differential rent 136–7 digital platforms see platforms direct food distribution models 208, 209–11 dispossession, and technology 28 Dodge, M. 112 Doyal, L. 11 Dubuisson-Quellier, S. 212–13 Dupuis, M. 209

E

Eau de Paris 61–3 eccoo 42–3, 44 ecological approach 242, 251–2 electric cars 36 employment see labour force enabling state 122, 255–6 Engelen, E. 151 environmental accounting 166 Equal Care Co-op 42–3, 44 Espeland, W.N. 165 Ethereum technology 36 ethics and citizenship 252 and moral economy 11–12, 230–4, 244 European Commission, water tariffs 189–90 European Environment Agency (EEA) 159 European Union agriculture 211

264

Index labour exploitation 218 waste management 161–2 exceptionalism of food 230, 244

F

Fa’ la cosa giusta! 209 Fagan, H. 160 famine 232–3 farmers’ markets 209–11 farming civic movements 218–20 farmers’ markets 209–11 immigrant workers’ exploitation 214–20 and municipal water companies 62 and neoliberalism 207–8, 216–18 Solidarity Purchasing Groups (SPGs) 211–14 Faulk, L. 91 financial crisis (2008) and the central state 51, 65 and non-profit sector 81–5, 81–4 financialization and citizenship 12, 14 housing 137–40 providential foundational economy 8–9 water supply 191 see also neoliberalism; private sector/ privatization FLAI-CGIL (Federazione Lavorati Agroindustria) 218 Florida, R. 108 food 229–46, 257–8 entitlement approach 233 exceptionalism of 230, 244 famine 232–3 Food for Life programme 239–44, 245 foundational economy of 234–45 moral economy 230–4, 244 and neoliberalism 230, 242 public sector catering 234–45 social needs vs market mechanisms 233–4 see also food supply chains Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) 222 food availability decline (FAD) thesis 232 food delivery platforms 39 Food for Life programme 235–41, 245 food riots 231 food safety 209, 210 food supply chains 207–23, 257 civic movements 218–20 collective forms of political participation 213–14

direct food distribution models 208, 209–11 economics of 207–8, 210–12, 215–18, 220 farmers’ markets 209–11 food safety 209, 210 foundational economy approach 208, 221–3 immigrant workers’ exploitation 214–20 neoliberalism 207–8, 216–18 and political and economic sphere 214–20 Solidarity Purchasing Groups (SPGs) 208, 211–14, 220 and trust 209, 210 urban food systems 220–3 value extraction 210, 215 see also food Forum Italiano dei Movimenti per l’Acqua (Italian Forum of Water Movements) 185, 190, 193, 193–4, 196, 197 Foucault, M. 250 Foundational Economic Collective 92 foundational economy, and civil sphere 7–19 and citizenship 12–16, 249–58 commons and civil repair 16–19 and human needs and moral economy 10–12 scope of the foundational economy 8–10 foundational economy, and new forms of citizenship 249–58 active citizenship as praxis 251–3 policy implications 255–8 social participation and citizen engagement 253–4 France food supply chains 212–13 municipal water companies 60–3 platforms 35–6, 39 free school meals 243 Funky Tomato 220 Furbey, R. 129 FutureGov 39

G

‘Galli’ Law (Italy) 185 gaming (by water companies) 190 Gemeindebauten 58, 119, 120 gentrification 131 Gereffi, G. 160 Germany, industrial strategy of 51, 65 GESCAL plan 132 Giolitti, Giovanni 185 GMB Union 192

265

The Foundational Economy and Citizenship Goodman, D. 209 Gough, I. 11 Gove, Michael 192 Greater Manchester City Deal 123 Greater Manchester Spatial Framework (GMSF) 123 Greater Manchester Transport Strategy 123 greenfield land 111, 123 greenfield platforms 27, 43, 45 grounded city concept 151–2, 257 Guardian, The 218

H

Hall, D. 191 Hall, P. 124 Halliday, J. 223 Hassan, J. 183–4 Hindess, B. 75 home food delivery platforms 39 homeownership ideology 132, 136, 145–7 House of Commons Public Accounts Committee 190 housing 129–52, 256–7 affordable 51, 58, 59, 60, 107–8, 115–16, 124, 144, 146–7 city centre apartments 116–18 collective housing projects 144–7 council housing (UK) 107, 108, 111, 113, 114 decline of housing policies 132–4 financialization of 137–40 foundational future 119–25 Gemeindebauten 119, 120 homeownership ideology 132, 136, 145–7 house prices 134–5, 138 limited profit housing providers 58–60 neoliberalism 133, 139 permanent rent and public housing stock 147–50 private sector 107–8, 109–10, 113–19, 121, 123–5, 133, 138, 143, 144 role of civil society 129–31, 133, 150–1 and social innovation 130–1, 140, 147–51 social housing 107–8, 114, 118, 132, 133, 140–7 three epochs 129–30 undivided property cooperative 145–7, 151 and urban rent 134–51 see also planning

housing developers 107–8, 109–10, 113–19, 121, 123–5, 133, 138, 143, 144 human needs 10–12, 16 human rights, and citizenship 16, 17 Hungary, populism 66 hydrologic cycle 187

I

immigrant workers’ exploitation 214–20 individualized citizen 29, 130, 250, 251 indivisible property model 146–7 initial coin offering (ICO) 36 Ireland famine 233 farmers’ markets 210 Isin, E.F. 17, 253 Islington, London, free school meals 243 Italian Institute for Environmental Protection and Research (Ispra) 166, 167, 168, 171–2 Italian National Institute of Statistics 188 Italy food supply chains 209, 210, 211–12, 214–20, 222–3 immigrant workers’ exploitation 214–20 planning 107, 119–20 platforms 33, 42 Strategy for Inner Areas 258 water supply 181, 185–98 see also housing; non-profit sector; waste management

J

Jacobs, J. 124 Jäggi, M. 119–20 Japan, food supply chains 213 Jessop, B. 250 Jones, M. 236–7, 238

K

Keynesianism 13, 54, 55, 74–5 Kohn, M. 14

L

labour force exploitation of 34, 74, 92–4, 214–20 and foundational economy 9 and housing 58–9, 116, 118, 133 immigrant workers 214–20 low-intensity extraction model 92–4 and market instability 85–6, 86

266

Index non-profit sector 74, 76, 76–7, 78, 85–6, 86, 92–5 and platforms 28, 30, 34, 35, 38, 43 precariousness 85–6, 86 Law, J. 160 LeCab 35, 37 Liberaterra 212 limited-profit housing 58–60 Lobina, E. 187 Local Authority Caterers Association (LACA) 241, 242 Lockwood, D. 13 Lombardy, housing 141, 142, 143, 144, 147, 148 Lyft 32, 33, 34, 37

M

MacKenzie, D. 165 Manchester Development Update 117 Manchester Independent Economic Review (MIER) 123 Manchester, UK see planning Marcon, G. 76 marginal rent 135, 136–7 markets, and human activation 251 see also neoliberalism; private sector/ privatization Marshall, T.H. 12, 17, 150, 251 Marx, K. 28, 134 Mastronardi, L. 211 material foundational economy 8, 9, 11 Mattei, U. 193, 195 Mazza, L. 106 Mazzucato, M. 94 Megginson, W.L. 54 migrants exploitation of workers 214–20 housing 148, 149–50 Milan food supply chains 222–3 housing 143, 144, 146, 148 urban mobility platforms 33 Milan Urban Food Policy Pact (MUFPP) 222–3 Miraftab, F. 106 MIT 28 mobility, platforms 31–7, 37 Mobility Factory 36 Modo 35, 37 Moore, M.L. 40 Moore, O. 210 moral economy 11–12 and food 230–4, 244 Morgan, K. 208 Moro, G. 17

Morozov, E. 28 mortgage loans 136, 138–9 Moses, Robert 124 municipal hydraulic paradigm 183 municipal water companies 60–3 mutual adjustment 84 Muzi, L. 218 Muzzicato, S. 138

N

Naples, water services 194–5 National Association of Italian Municipalities (ANCI) 168–9 National Audit Office 188, 189 National Packaging Consortium 163, 164 neoliberalism and citizen-consumers 12–13, 14–16, 19, 56–7, 161, 249, 251, 255 and farming 207–8, 216–18 and food 207–8, 216–18, 230, 242 and housing policy 133, 139 outsourcing 75, 77, 77, 79, 80, 82, 85–6 and platforms 29, 43 and public sector 52–3, 66 service models 77–8, 77 waste management 161, 163–4 water supply 187 see also financialization; private sector/privatization networks, non-profit sector 86–92 New Public Management 52, 161, 162, 186 Nicholas, R. 112 non-profit sector 73–97, 256 crisis response strategies 85–92 financial crisis (2008) 81–5, 81–4 inter-organizational networks 86–92, 89–91, 94–5 labour force 74, 76, 76–7, 78, 85–6, 86, 92–5 low-intensity extraction model 92–5 obtaining funding 91, 94 and resource flows 78–80, 79 service models 77–8, 77 social capital 92, 94–5 social welfare market characteristics 74–80 value-extraction strategy 74, 92–5 Nussbaum, M. 10 Nyssens, M. 84–5

O

Ofwat 184, 187, 190, 192, 198

267

The Foundational Economy and Citizenship Oldham, Food for Life programme 239–42, 245 Olsen, Mancur 54 Onlife paradigm 28 OÖ Wasser 63–5 organic farming 62 Orrey, J. 242 outsourcing 75, 77, 77, 79, 80, 82, 85–6 overlooked foundational economy 9

P

Palumbo, L. 220 Paris municipal water companies 61–3 urban mobility platforms 35 Parker, D. 184 Partago 36, 37 Peck, J. 52 Pennisi, C. 194 pensions expenditure 81, 82 performative citizenship 5, 17, 253 Petrini, Carlo 221 Piano INA-Casa 132 Piedmont, non-profit sector 87–92 planning 105–25, 256 after City of Manchester Plan (1945) 108–14 and capital market 116–17 change needed 124 civic future 109–10 cyclical nature of 124–5 developer-led regeneration 107–8, 109–10, 113–19, 121, 123–5 foundational future 119–25 historical overview of 105–8, 109–10 negotiated urban planning 137 and social housing 142–3 town hall planning 108–14 and wellbeing 121, 123 platforms 27–47, 25 concept and characteristics of 27–30, 43, 45 cooperativism/capitalism comparison 43–6, 44 data 37, 40–1, 44, 45, 47 digital infrastructure 37, 44, 45 economic value strategy 28, 29, 31, 37, 44, 45 extent of 28 funding of 33, 36, 37, 42–3, 44, 45 governance 37, 40, 42, 43, 44, 45, 45 greenfield/brownfield 27, 43, 45 labour exploitation 34 market type 29, 33, 34, 35, 37, 40, 44–5

platform capitalism 27–30, 31–7, 37, 43, 44, 45 platform cooperativism 30–1, 38–46, 44–5 scale 32, 37, 40, 43, 44–5 and social capital 41–2 traditional vs platform service 45 urban mobility platforms 31–7, 37 users 34, 35–6, 37, 38, 40–2, 44–5, 45, 46 welfare services 38–43, 44, 45–6 Polanyi, K. 56 populism 66, 221 private sector/privatisation and citizenship 12, 14–16 group think 54 and housing 107–8, 109–10, 113–19, 121, 123–5, 133, 138, 143, 144 and planning 107–8, 109–10, 113–19, 137 platforms 27–30, 31–7, 37, 43, 44, 45 protest movements against 192–5 and providential foundational economy 8–9 and public sector 55–6 remunicipalization of water supply 192–7 and resource flows 78–80, 79 service models 77–8, 77 and social welfare 75, 76 waste management 161–3, 165, 168–72 water supply 184, 185–97 see also financialization; neoliberalism providential foundational economy 8–9, 11 public choice theory 53, 54–6 public housing see housing public ownership 51–67, 255–6 beyond the central state 53–7 case studies 57–65 and the central state 51–3, 65–6 as collective democratic endeavour 56–7 internationalization 52–3 limited-profit housing 58–60 municipal water companies 60–3, 192–9 and neoliberalism 52–3 public choice theory 53, 54–6 remunicipalization of water supply 192–9 role of citizens 56–7, 192–4, 196–8

268

Index and universalism 66 unthinking of 54–6 water cooperatives 63–5 water supply historically 182–5 public sector catering 234–45

Q

quasi-markets 77, 78, 80, 130, 140

R

Rahman, K.S. 56 Ranci, C. 76 Raynsford, N. 106 recycling see waste management regulatory capitalism 52 rent-seeking 136, 137, 139, 151 rental market, and urban planning 116, 117–18, 119, 125 rents see urban rent repeasantization 208 Ridygo 35–6 rights from below 194 Rome, water supply 195–6 Ronchi Decree 2009 (Italy) 186 Rosarno case study 214–21 Rose, C. 183

S

Sanger, M.B. 74 Sanitaire-social.com 39, 44 Saroldi, A. 211 Sassen, S. 14 Sayer, A. 10, 11–12, 233–4 Scholz, T. 30, 46 school food 235–45 Schulze Bäing, A. 118 Schumpeter, J. 13, 55 Sciurba, A. 220 Sefage programme 31 Sen, A. 10, 11, 232–3 shareholder socialism 57 ShareNow 33 Sicilian Contadinazioni project 220 Sidecar 33 Silkin, L. 105 Slow Food 210, 221 social capital 41–2, 92, 94–5 social citizenship 11, 13, 74, 251 social housing 107–8, 114, 118, 132, 133, 140–7 social license 16, 47, 53, 58–60, 198, 223 social property 14 Società Edificatrice Abitazioni Operaie 146–7 sociotechnical construction 28 Soil Association 235, 236 solidarity economy 4, 219, 222, 254

Solidarity Purchasing Groups (SPGs) 208, 211–14, 220 Soper, K. 11 SOS Rosarno 218–20 Soss, J. 78 Spain, activist citizens 252 Srnicek, N. 27 Stadera housing estate, Milan 148, 149 starvation 232–3 Stevens, M.L. 165 subordinate subsidiarity 80 Sullo, Fiorentino 136 Switzerland, urban mobility platforms 33

T

Tallis, R. 244 taxation 47, 58, 59, 119, 122, 164, 167 technology, and work 28 Teikei 213 Thevenot, L. 11 third sector see non-profit sector Thompson, E.P. 230–2, 233 Thompson, N. 55, 56–7 Tickell, A. 52 Tondo, L. 218 Town and Country Planning Act 1947 (UK) 105, 107 Town and Country Planning Act 1990 (UK) 115–16 transnational corporations (TNCs) 53 Tullock, Gordon 54 Turin non-profit sector 88 water supply 195–6 Turner, B.S. 13

U

Uber 32, 33, 34, 37, 38, 45 uberization 34 Uganda 64 undivided property cooperative 145–7, 151 United Kingdom public sector catering 234–45 water supply 182–5, 186–92 welfare platforms 39, 42–3 see also planning United Nations, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) 222 United States food supply chains 212–13 non-profit sector 91 platforms 32–3, 34, 36, 38–9 Universal Basic Infrastructure 4, 254

269

The Foundational Economy and Citizenship Universal Basic Services 4 Universal Free School Meals (UFSM) 243 urban food systems 220–3 urban mobility platforms 31–7, 37, 45–6 urban planning see planning urban rent 129–51 and collective housing 144–7 financialization of housing 137–40 historically 132–4 new housing projects 140–4 permanent rent and public housing stock 147–50 as unresolved issue 134–7 Urban Waste Report 167, 171 Urry, J. 160

V

value extraction strategies food supply chains 210, 215 non-profit sector 74, 92–5 platforms 28, 29, 31, 37, 44, 45 see also waste management values 11–12 van der Ploeg, J.D. 207–8 van Dijck, J. 27, 29 Vienna housing 58–60 planning 107, 119, 120 Virginia School of Political Economy 53, 54 von Mises, L. 54, 55

W

Wales 4, 258 see also United Kingdom waste management 159–76, 257 and citizens’ worth 164–5, 166–74 eco-modernist philosophy 163, 174 foundational economy approach 173–5 institutional framework for 161–6 waste as a resource 159–60, 163 Water Act 1973 (UK) 183 Water Act 1989 (UK) 184 water cooperatives 63–5 Water Observatory 62 water supply 181–99, 257 arguments against public ownership 196–7 charges for 183, 188–91, 188, 196 chief executive pay 192 and civic movements 185–6, 192–8 cooperatives 63–5

depublicization of 186 experiment in public management 194–5 financialization of 191 foundational economy approach 198–9 impact of privatization 184–5, 186–91 importance of 181–2 infrastructure 61, 64, 184, 191, 196–7 joint stock companies 185, 186 mechanics of extraction and exploitation 186–91 municipal water companies 60–3, 192–8 private sector 184, 185–97 profits from 188, 190–1, 192, 193 quality of service 61, 62, 63, 64, 183, 184, 187 regulatory framework in Italy 185–6 regulatory framework in UK 182–5 remunicipalization of 192–8 social licence 198–9 water tariffs 188–91, 188, 196 Weber, Max 55 Weisbrod, B.A. 75 welfare mix 75 welfare platforms 38–43, 44, 45–6 welfare provision 10–14 financialization 8–9 platforms 38–43, 44, 45–6 see also non-profit sector wellbeing and food 230, 233–4, 241, 244 and foundational economy 8, 10, 16–17 and housing 146–7, 151 and human need 10–11 and planning 106, 110, 121, 123 Westbrook, R. 238 Williams, K. 160 Williams, R. 18 Wong, C. 118 Woodham-Smith, C. 233 work/working conditions see labour force

Z

zonal view 8

270