In the current debate of remunicipalisation, public utilities become increasingly important; not only for water supply, but also for water management. This paper states that public ownership alone does not automatically ensure good quality and democratic control. Actually, public utilities can be considered hybrid institutions in which the logic of state (welfare production) meets the logic of markets (competition). Many scholars believe that synergies can emerge from these combinations. In this way, public water utilities are seen as an adequate vehicle of modern public welfare production. In contrast to this statement, the present paper considers whether the governance of public utilities is more complex than it seems at first glance. As we know, water utilities are confronted with several challenges, such as tendencies of privatisation, competition in increasingly liberalised markets, and the question of democratic control. This paper is based on the assumption that in the face of these challenges, actors can make different decisions on how to define companies’ structures of input-, output- and procedural legitimacy. Consequently, public water utilities can take different forms. Regarding this, a typology based on Weberian ideal types will be presented, which contains the following modes of public utilities governance: reduced governance, modern service producer, participative public utility, profit maximiser, and bureaucratic institution. With the help of this typology, it will not only be easier to distinguish public water utilities, but it will also be easier show which kind of governance mode might be more adapted to which kind of challenge. Also, conflicts among actors may become more understandable due to the preferences for different types of public companies.
