Turning Off the Tap: Urban Water Service Delivery and the Social Construction of Global Administrative Law

This article explores the development of a cross-border dimensionto the delivery of urban water services as an arena for thesocial construction of global administrative law. When companiesfrom one country deliver water services in another country underdecades-long concession contracts, the ensuing political andlegal struggle engages one of the central strands of administrativelaw traditionally understood: the question of participationin decision-making processes that affect vital individual interests.Moreover, it does so in an arena that embeds public and privateactors in hybrid routines of both formal and informal participationat multiple levels of governance. Using Argentinian and SouthAfrican case studies, the article teases out in detail the interplaybetween international and domestic levels of the forms and processes(both formal and informal) that facilitate participation intransnational urban water services governance. The process ofsocially constructing global administrative law is centred initerative interaction between formal legal and informal politicalmodes of participation, especially social protest and politicalnegotiations. It is a process with two modes, political andtechnical, and the political salience of global administrativelaw is shaped first by differential capacities to deploy bothmodes, and secondly by the capacity to switch between nationaland international levels of governance.