Eau Méditerranée's Panopticon: Democratic Oversight for Deregulated Public Services

How can democratic oversight of deregulated public services be provided without running the risk of reintroducing the layers of bureaucracy that deregulation was to remove? A study of the deregulation of water services provided by Eau Méditerranée in the south of France shows how a reworking of an 18th‐century concept for increasing visibility in a prison environment, updated to take account of the capabilities of today's information technology, can help. By adopting a new approach to management transparency—making the wealth of data it holds freely available to its clients—Eau Méditerranée found a novel way to provide a clear and credible form of accountability for local authorities without further increasing its bureaucratic workload. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.