1st Edition

Reclaiming Participatory Governance Social Movements and the Reinvention of Democratic Innovation

Edited By Adrian Bua, Sonia Bussu Copyright 2023
    304 Pages 1 Color & 5 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    304 Pages 1 Color & 5 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    Reclaiming Participatory Governance offers empirical and theoretical perspectives on how the relationship between social movements and state institutions is emerging and developing through new modes of participatory governance.

    One of the most interesting political developments of the past decade has been the adoption by social movements of strategies seeking to change political institutions through participatory governance. These strategies have flourished in a variety of contexts, from anti-austerity and pro-social justice protests in Spain, to movements demanding climate transition and race equality in the UK and the USA, to constitutional reforms in Belgium and Iceland. The chief ambition and challenge of these new forms of participatory governance is to institutionalise the prefigurative politics and social justice values that inspired them in the first place, by mobilising the bureaucracy to respond to their claims for reforms and rights. The authors of this volume assess how participatory governance is being transformed and explore the impact of such changes, providing timely critical reflections on: the constraints imposed by cultural, economic and political power relations on these new empowered participatory spaces; the potential of this new "wave" of participatory democracy to reimagine the relationship between citizens and traditional institutions towards more radical democratic renewal; where and how these new democratisation efforts sit within the representative state; and how tensions between the different demands of lay citizens, organised civil society and public officials are being managed.

    This book will be an important resource for students and academics in political science, public administration and social policy, as well as activists, practitioners and policymakers interested in supporting innovative engagement for deeper social transformation.

    Chapter 11 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

    1. Introduction to the Volume

    Adrian Bua and Sonia Bussu

    Section 1: Conceptualising Democracy-Driven Governance

    2. Challenging the "Rules of the Game": The Role of Bottom-up Participatory Experiments for Deliberative Democracy

    Dannica Fleuß

    3. Innovations in Participatory Governance and the (De)commodification of Social Wellbeing

    Nick Vlahos

    4. Can Local Participation Disrupt Neoliberalism?: The Politics and Ethics of Caring for Democracy

    Markus Holdo

    5. The Democratic Multiverse: Governance, Associations and the Prospects for Progressive Democratic Renewal

    Hendrik Wagenaar

    Section 2: Tracing Emergence of Democracy-driven Governance

    6. Towards Participatory Transition Governance: The Role of Social Movements as "Collaborators" for Democratic Innovation

    Paola Pierri

    7. "Be Like Water": Participatory Arts, Prefigurative Social Movements and Democratic Renewal

    Lucy Cathcart Frödén

    8. Whose and What Right to the City?: Insights from Lisbon on the Interplay of Movements and Institutions Within Participatory Processes

    Roberto Falanga

    9. De-POLARising Civic Participation?: Lessons from the Incomplete Experience of Greenland

    Giovanni Allegretti

    10. Collective Candidacies and Mandates in Brazil: Challenges and Pitfalls of a Gambiarra

    Ricardo F. Mendonça, Lucas Gelape and Carlos Estevão C. Cruz

    11. Democracy-Driven Governance and Governance-Driven Democratisation in Barcelona and Nantes

    Adrian Bua, Sonia Bussu and Jonathan Davies

    Section 3: Assessing the Challenges to Projects of Radical Reform

    12. Expanding Participatory Governance Through Digital Platforms?: Drivers and Obstacles in the Implementation of the Decidim Platform

    Joan Balcells, Rosa Borge and Albert Padró-Solanet

    13. The Embeddedness of Public-Common Institutions: The Citizen Assets Programme in Barcelona

    Marina Pera, Iolanda Bianchi and Yunailis Salazar

    14. How Can Democracy-Driven Governance Turn into Technopopulism?: Arguing on the Case of Ahora Madrid

    Fabiola Mota Consejero and Cristina Herranz

    15. Surfing Disappointment: The Uneasy Inclusion of Social Movement Activists in Local Participatory Institutions: A Case Study in Madrid (2015–2019)

    Patricia García-Espín

    16. Institutionalising Participation from Below: From the Shack to Municipal Elections in Commercy, France

    Sixtine Van Outryve

    Section 4: Conclusion

    17. Towards the Messy Middle: The Next Generation of Democracy-Driven Governance Research

    Gianpaolo Baiocchi

    Biography

    Adrian Bua is Lecturer in Urban Politics in the Department of Politics and International Relations, and a member of the Centre for Urban Research on Austerity, at De Montfort University, UK. His latest work spans democratic theory, urban studies and political economy.

    Sonia Bussu is Associate Professor in Public Policy at INLOGOV at the University of Birmingham, UK. Her research and published work focus on participatory governance, coproduction and participatory research.