How is the line to be drawn in the public–private divide when those who would bridge it also assert that globalization restricts the state's ability to deliver public policy objectives? Critics of modernity have seen the distinction between two public–private discourses, state and market, the open and the hidden, as a modern flawed version of classic notions of the democratic citizen community. The projection of the divide on to a global stage appears to take us even further from that ideal. We report the results of a narrative analysis of the way practitioners in the Netherlands and England and Wales now deliver global public goods in the management of water as compared with their predecessors delivering public health and progress in the 19th century. In their adherence to the water systems concept we find them actively supporting a transparent public sphere beyond the state where multiple forms of agency assert global responsibilities.