(Dis)Continuity? Exploring the Transformative Potential of Remunicipalisation

Abstract

Social change remains under-theorized and under-explored in academic literature. A prevailing tendency has been to emphasize the reproduction of dominant systems over their disruption, and framing dominant political-economic logics such as neoliberalism as stable, enduring, and almost natural feature of contemporary society. This orientation has contributed to the marginalization of local alternatives as exceptions and only viable in supportive political and institutional contexts, such as Germany’s decentralised governance. In contrast, countries like the United Kingdom – characterized by a highly centralized state and widely recognised as the birthplace of neoliberalism – are often dismissed as inhospitable terrains for meaningful political or institutional change. To address these limitations, this dissertation turns to remunicipalisation as a strategic empirical lens for understanding the contingent, embedded, and agent-driven nature of social change. Remunicipalisation represents the taking back of previously privatized assets and services into local – largely municipal – control. In contrast to deterministic accounts, remunicipalisation is not treated as a linear or inevitable correction to failed privatisation, but a process shaped by local struggles, political ideologies, institutional constraints, and historical legacies. Through a focus on agency and the productive dimensions of power, this research shifts attention away from structural constraints to the ways actors creatively navigate and reconfigure them. This shifts the focus from the final outcome (i.e. remunicipalised public services) to the process of social construction (the actions, decisions, and negotiations within the process) that produce them. Drawing on three UK case studies, this dissertation presents remunicipalisation as a differentiated and dynamic process that can both reinforce and challenge existing power relations. It is neither inherently progressive nor regressive, but always political. Whether the outcome is symbolic or substantive, this research demonstrates that local governments are not passive agents of neoliberalism, but active sites of contestation, adaptation, and potential democratic renewal. Ultimately, the transformative potential of remunicipalisation lies in its practice: how it enacted, why whom, and toward what ends. This theoretical and methodological reorientation opens political horizons and reimagine what is politically possible.