Retroaction between Territorial Differentiation and Universal Model of Urban Services: Lessons from the Libyan Case

The article deals with the relationships between the territorial splinterring and the changes of the network provision services. It shifts from linear explanations and claims the necessity to take into consideration the retroactions between territorial differenciation and the management practices. The Lebanese case, despite its apparent specificity linked to the effects of the civil war, is interresting because iseveral explicatory registers have to be combined, among which the undettered relevance of the universal network as a goal for the sector’s policies, as well as neoliberal reforms. The article focuses on the electricity sector, a State monopoly whose performance is very weak, but that is still waiting for reforms to be conceived, and the drinking water sector, managed at the local level, but the target of a sound reform since 2000, including a limited privatisation attempt. The article first remembers the unachieved implementation of the universal model, than outlines the territorial differentiation resulting from the war, and that the reconstruction policies have not fully fixed and, otherwise, sometimes accentuated. The current neoliberal reforms are adding new factors of differenciation according to the local results of the reforms.