 Experiments with public participation in water services planning, worker cooperatives, community water systems and other innovative models of service delivery are challenging older models of public water delivery.Proponents argue that remunicipalisation cannot be an unquestioned return to what was offered before privatisation; it must be an improvement on what is meant by public and an expansion of the democratic terms of engagement.Nonetheless, entrenched neoliberal beliefs in market-based incentives, ring-fenced accounting, cost-reflexive pricing, and competition within and between government departments (commonly defined as corporatization) has transformed the ways in which people think about and manage public services, raising questions about the potential for deep reform in the public sector.