A Politics of Inevitability

This book provides a detailed analysis of the controversial privatisation of the Berlin Water Company (BWB) in 1999. As with other cases of privatisation around the world, the city�� government argued there was no alternative in a context of public debts and economic restructuring. Drawing on post-structuralist theory, the analysis presented here steps outside the parameters of this neat, straightforward explanation. It problematises the ��ard facts��upon which the decision was apparently made, presenting instead an account in which facts can be political constructions shaped by normative assumptions and political strategies. A politics of inevitability in 1990s Berlin is revealed; one characterised by depoliticisation, expert-dominated policy processes and centred upon the perceived necessities of urban governance in the global economy. It is an account in which global and local dynamics mix: where the interplay between the general and the specific, between neoliberalism and politicking, and between globalisation and local actors characterise the discussion.