Privatization, the World Water Crisis, and the Social Contract Richardson Dilworth, Drexel University T o deny someone the right to water is tantamount to denying them the right to life, and to set a price on water is to set a price on life. It comes as no sur- prise then to find a good amount of anxi- ety and contention over who gets to set the price of water and how much they charge. And over the past two decades, throughout both the developed and de- veloping world, setting the price of water has fallen increasingly to private compa- nies at the same time as various demo- graphic changes have increased water scarcity. Thus we hear water described simultaneously in terms of both a hu- manitarian crisis of global proportions— one standard though very rough figure is that more than one billion people lack access to safe drinking water ~Davis 2005, 146; Black 2004, 28! —and as the “oil of the 21 st century” ~ Wessel 2005!. The lively discussion over the myriad roles played by private companies in the distribution of the world’s water—known collectively as “public-private partner- ship,” “private sector participation,” or merely “privatization”—falls roughly into two types, which I will here call “technical” and “moral.” The technical discussion, dominant in academic and policy circles, revolves around the rela- tive costs and benefits of public versus private supply of water in terms of water quality, water pricing, capital investment, extent of water service, and environmen- tal protection ~see the review of this lit- erature by Davis 2005!. The moral discussion, dominated by activists ~ Pe- trella 2001; Barlow and Clarke 2002; Shiva 2002! and activist journalists ~ Rothfeder 2001; Ward 2002; Inter- national Consortium of Investigative Journalists 2003; Holland 2006!, focuses on water privatization as a facet of global corporate capitalism, with particu- lar stress laid on the fact that the water industry is dominated by only a few transnational corporations, aided by World Bank and International Monetary Fund loan provisions requiring private sector participation in water infrastruc- ture development ~Conca 2006, 221–3; Davis 2005, 154; Center for Public In- tegrity 2003!. To the extent that these authors concern themselves with the ac- tual effects of privatization, it is usually to discuss a few well-known cases of failed privatization efforts, such as that which occurred in Cochabamba, Bolivia ~ Finnegan 2002; Barlow and Clarke 2002, 154–5; Black 2004, 78–9; Conca 2006, 238; Davis 2005, 166–8!. While the technical discussion of water privatization largely fails to ad- dress the larger moral implications of its subject, the moral discussion of water privatization largely fails to suggest any realistic policy solutions, instead resort- ing in most cases to a call for “grass- roots” control that, I argue, fails to address urbanization as one of the chief causes of world water scarcity. I thus seek to reconstruct the moral argument against water privatization by following the lead of many authors in defining the moral illegitimacy of water privatization in terms of the social contract. That is, if the moral responsibilities inherent in civil society are defined by the initial social contract ~ Hobbes @1651# 1962, 101–2; Rawls 1971!, and if the current social contract allows for water privatiza- tion that denies the human right to water, then it is necessary to reformulate the social contract—or, as it has been called, the “world water contract” ~Global Com- mittee for the Water Contract 1998; Pe- trella 2001!. The social contract delivers human- kind out of that most fundamental collec- tive action dilemma, the state of nature, by setting up a system of incentives that compels citizens to interact peacefully. Key to a successful social contract, then, is a system of incentives appropriate to a given state of nature, or, in other words, incentives premised on a reasonably accurate appraisal of human nature. “Human nature” is of course a construct of a specific place and time, which thus requires a different social contract in dif- ferent contexts ~cf. Macpherson 1962!.I argue here that one problem with the moral argument against water privatiza- tion is that it fails to take urbanization into account in its implicit assumptions about human nature and thus formulates a world water contract inappropriate for an urbanizing world. The meaning of water is to some extent culturally relative ~ Blatter, Ingram, and Levesque 2001; Espeland 1998!, yet few would question the fact that, across all cultures, some minimal level of water is necessary for basic sustainability ~Gleick 1996!, and the changes in land use that come from the industrialization and population growth known as “urbanization” create water stress that threatens sustainability ~see, for instance, UN World Water As- sessment Program 2006, chap. 3!. I thus offer an alternative formulation of the world water contract for an urbanizing world; one that seeks to return to earlier notions of the city as a commercial asso- ciation and which borrows and extends the notion of corporate citizenship from the literature on business ethics. While I hope my reformulation of the world water contract is more realistic than others, I readily admit that it is still probably of more theoretical than practi- cal relevance. Possibly more importantly, I hope that my critique of moral argu- ments against water privatization will provide a new tool to those such as my- self who teach about water politics and policy. Books by opponents of water pri- vatization are often sensational and alarmist but they do raise legitimate con- cerns about the commodification of a natural resource that can help students recognize the significance of the other- wise seemingly arcane academic litera- ture on water administration. The Richardson Dilworth is assistant profes- sor of political science at Drexel Uni- versity, author of The Urban Origins of Sub- urban Autonomy (Harvard University Press, 2005) and editor of Social Capital in the City: Community and Civic Life in Philadel- phia (Temple University Press, 2006). He lives in Philadelphia and drinks mostly tap water. FEATURES PSOnline www.apsanet.org 49