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The return of the local state? Failing neoliberalism, remunicipalisation, and the role of the state in advanced capitalism

Author

Listed:
  • Franziska Christina Paul

    (3526University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK)

  • Andrew Cumbers

    (3526University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK)

Abstract

Picking up on the manifestation of state intervention following the 2008 financial crisis, we argue that the recent trend towards remunicipalisation underlines but also problematises the thesis of new state capitalism. Remunicipalisation refers to a process whereby towns, cities and sub-national regions take previously privatised services and infrastructures back into public ownership. Remunicipalisation has led to the emergence of regionally- and municipally-owned state enterprises across a wide range of sectors including water, energy, waste, transport, education, (tele)communications, and health and social care. Engaging with the nature of the ‘new’ state capitalism, and particularly challenging its theoretically restrictive understanding of the state as ‘market enabler’, we highlight that remunicipalisations have often emerged in response to the failed promise of neoliberal capitalism to improve the quality and efficiency of public services through the (supposed) competitiveness of the free market. Like neoliberalism, remunicipalisations take spatially diverse and variegated forms as market-driven logics interact with other political and economic determinations. As such, remunicipalisations often encompass critiques of neoliberal governance and market volatility, and instead focus on the potential of regional wealth creation as well as stabilising local market dynamics through diversifying ownership forms. Drawing upon our ongoing empirical work on German remunicipalisation, we aim to foreground how multiple determinations at work in the German political economy at different spatial scales shape its particular trajectory out of neoliberal mutation. We show how the remunicipalisation of energy provider TEAG has enabled the local state to intervene and diversify the uneven economic geographies in the state of Thuringia.

Suggested Citation

  • Franziska Christina Paul & Andrew Cumbers, 2023. "The return of the local state? Failing neoliberalism, remunicipalisation, and the role of the state in advanced capitalism," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 55(1), pages 165-183, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:55:y:2023:i:1:p:165-183
    DOI: 10.1177/0308518X211050407
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Neil Brenner, 1999. "Globalisation as Reterritorialisation: The Re-scaling of Urban Governance in the European Union," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 36(3), pages 431-451, March.
    2. Andrew Cumbers & Sören Becker, 2018. "Making sense of remunicipalisation: theoretical reflections on and political possibilities from Germany’s Rekommumalisierung process," Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 11(3), pages 503-517.
    3. David Hall & Emanuele Lobina & Philipp Terhorst, 2013. "Re-municipalisation in the early twenty-first century: water in France and energy in Germany," International Review of Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 27(2), pages 193-214, March.
    4. Brenner, Neil, 2004. "New State Spaces: Urban Governance and the Rescaling of Statehood," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199270064.
    5. Jamie Peck, 2002. "Political Economies of Scale: Fast Policy, Interscalar Relations, and Neoliberal Workfare," Economic Geography, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 78(3), pages 331-360, July.
    6. Sebastian Schipper, 2014. "The Financial Crisis and the Hegemony of Urban Neoliberalism: Lessons from Frankfurt am Main," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(1), pages 236-255, January.
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    Cited by:

    1. Laura Roth & Bertie Russell & Matthew Thompson, 2023. "Politicising proximity: Radical municipalism as a strategy in crisis," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 60(11), pages 2009-2035, August.
    2. David A McDonald, 2025. "(De)Financing remunicipalisation," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 62(4), pages 603-627, March.
    3. Ilias Alami & Heather Whiteside & Adam D Dixon & Jamie Peck, 2023. "Making space for the new state capitalism, part II: Relationality, spatiotemporality and uneven development," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 55(3), pages 621-635, May.

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