Privatisation and private sector participation became an essential part of donor agendas in the 1980s and 1990s under Washington Consensus. These policies were expected to increase efficiency, effectiveness and transparency of public service delivery by instituting market principles into public enterprises. In practice, however, private sector participation becomes embedded in the micro politics of service delivery and is mediated by the political and social relations already in place when the policy is implemented. Drawing from interviews and documents gathered in Ghana, this paper examines the problematic relationship between the public and private water companies operating a management contract in the urban water supply between 2006 and 2011. Interpreting these conflicts and the controversial outcomes of the management contract through the framework of Cultural Political Economy, the paper shows how the politics of the management contract draw from the broader historical and economical context of urban water supply in Ghana. The paper concludes by proposing ways of accounting for these socio-political environments in evaluating privatisation outcomes.
