ABSTRACT
The above advertisement from Berlin’s electricity provider Vattenfall appeared in the city’s newspapers in autumn 2013. What is striking about it is not so much the company’s attempt to present itself as expert and reliable, but Vattenfall’s assertion that Berlin’s citizens should not be bothered about how their electricity is provided and managed. In fact, many of Berlin’s citizens were bothered, and they aimed to bother Vattenfall (hence the advertisement). Citizen-led initiatives have been campaigning to return the electricity network to public hands and these even prompted a referendum on remunicipalisation, which only very narrowly failed. These developments refl ect a broader awakening of public and political interest in infrastructure networks in the city as social movements and political parties have developed new, often confl icting concerns regarding private and public ownership and democratic urban governance more generally. Most notably, a long-running citizens’ campaign against the partial privatisation of the Berlin Water Company (BWB) played a key role in the remunicipalisation of the water company in 2013. However, the simple return of ownership to the state has itself been criticised by social movements and left-leaning politicians on the grounds that the “old way”, a return to a pre-privatisation form of state ownership, is no guarantee of democracy, equity and sustainability. Hence in Berlin we witness not simply the contestation of privatisation and the remunicipalisation of infrastructure networks, but also political contests over what remunicipalisation should actually entail. There is an ambitious, vibrant and often progressive politics of infrastructure in Berlin, with discourses of both radical and reformist change apparent, and the current and future roles of the state, civil society and the private sector are heavily contested.
