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PORTSIDE CULTURE

RECLAIMING PARTICIPATORY GOVERNANCE: SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND THE
REINVENTION OF DEMOCRATIC INNOVATION  
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Andrea Felicetti
March 24, 2024
LSE Review of Books
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_ This book analyses social movements around the world that engage
with democracy-driven or participatory governance. _

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_Reclaiming Participatory Governance: Social Movements and the
Reinvention of Democratic Innovation_
Edited By Adrian Bua, Sonia Bussu
Routledge
ISBN: 9781032111216

_Reclaiming Participatory Governance_ is a compelling investigation of
the potential for bottom-up forms of democratic innovations to
vitalise our democracies. Anchored on Adrian Bua and Sonia Bussu’s
concept of “democracy-driven governance
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(DDG), this edited volume critically investigates the “potential,
limits and opportunities” of social movements’ engagement with
participatory and deliberative institutional designs. This is no small
feat since social movements and democratic innovations are often seen
as crucial in strengthening our democracies.

From the introduction, expectations are high. Pitted against forms of
“governance-driven democratisation” (GDD) that tend to be seen as
top-down and markedly bureaucratic, DDG is considered in its capacity
for effectively “[o]pening up spaces for a deeper critique of
minimalist liberal democratic institutions and the neoliberal economy
that underpins them”. Of course, this needs to occur at a time when
“space for meaningful citizen input is increasingly constrained by
technocratic decision-making and global economic pressure”.

The book presents a highly coherent and impressive collection of
in-depth analyses that span theory and empirical research, with a
great variety of cases. Spain takes centre stage, and there are no
case studies from English-speaking countries, going markedly against
the tide. Theory is at the heart of the first section. Drawing from
fascinating cases in Germany and Iceland, Dannica Fleuss shows the
urgency of thinking about democracy beyond liberal institutions. Nick
Vlahos introduces the idea of “participatory decommodification of
social need” as an interesting way to think about how participatory
governance can combat the worst effects of capitalism, with examples
from Toronto, Canada. Based on his extensive fieldwork in Rosario,
Argentina, Markus Holdo discusses the concept of “democratic care”
to unearth the work performed by activists that needs to be recognised
in participatory governance. Finally, Hendrik Wagenaar offers a
compelling analysis of strengths and weaknesses of the GDD/DGG pair
from a political economy standpoint, building on a well-established
threefold distinction between the dominant economic, financial system,
the political, administrative sector and civil society.

The second part is markedly empirical. Paola Pierri analyses the
Orleans Metropole Assise for the Ecological Transition
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in France, showing a case of “collaborative countervailing power”
that reminds us that the seminal work of Empowered Participatory
Governance
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Archon Fung and Erik Olin Wright remains highly relevant to understand
participatory governance. Lucy Cathcart Frodén investigates the
parallels between prefigurative social movements and participatory
arts projects as well as their potential to contribute to democratic
renewal. A rather effective collaboration between “right to the
city” activists and local administration is documented in Roberto
Falanga’s in-depth analysis of the participatory process for the
regeneration of one of the main squares in Lisbon, Portugal. Giovanni
Allegretti shows clearly how anticolonial protests irrupt into and
benefit participatory experiments in Kalaallit Nunaat, Greenland.
Mendonça and colleagues, instead, systematically explore strengths
and weaknesses of _Gambiarra_, an unconventional means social
movements in Brazil use to break into elites-dominated elections at
local and parliamentary level. Bua, Bussu and Davies offer the
ultimate comparison about the GDD and DGG models as embodied in the
historical trajectories of participatory governance of the cities of
Nantes and Barcelona respectively.

The third section highlights problems and limitations. Joan Balcells
and colleagues unveil the tension that lay at the basis of the famous
participatory platform Decidim [[link removed]]. Always focusing
on Barcelona, Marina Pera and colleagues look at the Citizen Assets
Program
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showing how lack of trust prevented this very advanced form of
democratisation from being embedded into its context. Fabiola Mota
Consejero considers another case from Spain where Madrid’s
progressive local government broke with a longstanding tradition of
conservative patronage but failed to turn its main innovation, Decide
Madrid [[link removed]], into an effective means for
participatory governance. Patricia Garcia-Espin, instead, shows the
fatigue and disappointment of activists involved in another innovation
of Madrid’s new municipalist government, the local forums. Finally,
Sixtine Van Outryve looks at a fascinating case of a local Yellow Vest
organization in Commercy, France, trying to set up an open citizens
assembly to have a communalist project represented in the local
government that ultimately failed.

The findings in this book are rather sobering. Employing a rigorous
approach devoid of self-celebration or ideological dismissal,
virtually every chapter of this book details a host of challenges
participatory governance faces in the context of minimalist
democracies dominated by neoliberal economics. In many case studies,
elements of both GDD and DGG coexist, and sometimes one morphs into
the other. Second, empirical investigations highlight weaknesses with
DGG. This reduces our expectations about this model of
democratisation, yet it also lends it a more realistic and useful
outlook. Third, while the theoretical section highlights the political
economy of participatory governance as a crucial issue, that remains
in the background in the empirical analysis, as it tends to happen in
the field. This kind of investigation remains essential.

Further, after reading this book, one has the feeling that
contemporary participatory governance grapples with two important
limitations. First, the promotion of participatory governance remains
primarily within the purview of a select group of political actors:
progressive parties, particularly those with a robust radical left
presence. As we move to the centre of the political spectrum, the idea
of reinvigorating democracy, let alone doing so by means of radical
participatory governance, seems to lose attractiveness. Indeed, the
book consistently shows that, in those uncommon cases in which
progressive parties that champion participatory governance take power,
they downscale their democratisation ambitions as they face the
challenges implied in participatory governance. These can vary from
administrative hurdles in implementing innovation to more endogenous
problems relating, for example, to internal conflicts arising from
differing conceptions of democracy that exacerbate fatigue and
disillusionment. Second, the book gives the sense that contemporary
participatory governance still has a mass democracy problem. It is
still missing any substantial connection with the public at large.
Except for occasional influence during electoral campaigns, none of
the studied experiments have garnered sustained support or substantial
interest from the public at large.

This might seem disheartening, especially because there is no
practical solution in sight. The electoral defeat of Spanish
municipalism
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central to this book, heightens this sensation. Yet, there is not much
use in despairing, and a temporal prospective might offer some hope.
As Gianpaolo Baiocchi reminds in his refreshing concluding remarks, it
is not so long ago that the idea of participatory democracy made its
irruption in our democracies. Initially championed by social movements
and to a lesser extent Left political projects in the 1960s
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this idea was later taken up by mainstream policymakers and
international agencies. Unsurprisingly, participatory governance has
not been able to singlehandedly compete with the broader political
trend towards neoliberal governance; indeed, it has had to adapted to
it to some extent. The resistance it meets today shows major
limitations. Yet, this volume stands as proof of the ongoing efforts
to use participatory governance in critical and democratising ways
around the world. It also speaks to the fact that there is great
social scientific scholarship trying to understand and strengthen this
phenomenon.

The book often refers to the value of learning from and with
activists. Indeed, one of its the most significant contributions is
its ability to forge an expanded understanding of participatory
governance. This volume goes beyond the perpetual dispute between
different conceptions of democracy. It shows how participatory
governance todays draws from a rich tapestry of diverse ideas and
practices – both old and new. The fact that concepts such as
“care”, the “right to the city”, “communalism”, “new
municipalism”, “gambiarra” and “decolonisation” are brought
together in this volume speaks to the eclectic nature and vitality of
contemporary participatory governance. Despite its challenges,
participatory governance continues to attract the ingenuity of people
and their eagerness for democracy. Persistence is crucial, as these
are fundamental ingredients in the struggle to build a more equal and
just world.

 

_Note: This post gives the views of the author, and not the position
of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics
and Political Science._

 

Andrea Felicetti, (PhD, Australian National University) is Senior
Assistant Professor in Political Science at the University of Padua.
His work focuses on democratic theories, public spheres, and
governance. He authored Deliberative Democracy and Social Movements
and co-authored Discursive Turns and Critical Junctures. His research
appears in numerous international journals including Journal of
Politics, Democratization, and European Journal of Political Research.

* Social Movements
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* democracy
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* Participatory democracy
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* governance
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