The democratising capacity of new municipalism: beyond direct democracy in public–common partnerships

Abstract

New municipalism, in its endeavour to democratise urban politics and policy, employs innovative strategies including public–common partnerships, which seek to support citizens in self-managing public goods and services. Proponents of new municipalism claim that these partnerships have a democratising capacity, as self-management is seen as an expression of direct democracy. In this article we examine this democratising capacity. By adopting an abductive methodology, the article analyses a case of a public–common partnership, the Citizen Assets programme promoted by Barcelona en Comú in Barcelona, Spain. The research findings show that the Citizen Assets programme does have a democratising capacity. However, democratisation is not achieved exclusively through self-management, which itself needs to be democratised, but by integrating different modalities of democratisation into the policy process, namely co-production and democratic control. Theorising this integration as a ‘non-appropriable’ form of policy making, the article makes an original contribution to research on democratisation in the context of a specific new municipalism-inspired policy programme.