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HOW MUNICIPALISM INTRODUCES ANOTHER
RELATIONSHIP TO POLITICAL POWER
Municipalism
demonstrates a positive democratic renewal
which repositions the players in regards
to their power and that of those around
them in public municipal action. It
destabilises the image and practices of
power inherited from a tired
representative democracy, while at the
same time coping with the contrary winds
of a resurgence of interventionism and
withdrawal. It contributes to effecting
deeper change, from individual action to
collective and institutional action. In
this way, municipalism is subversive and
questions our liberty and our
responsibilities for the democratic
quality of our societies and our
institutions. It is a favored route
towards the democratic transition that IRG
strives for.
 
By
Charlotte Marchandise
and Elisabeth Dau
In our last editorial, Loïc Blondiaux and Séverine
Bellina concluded « Both a rise in
democratic demands and a return to
democratic imagination » in
France ; in this context municipalism
reveals a true return to creative democracy
at a local level. In this respect,
municipalities « (…) participate in the
essential reinvention of institutional and
state forms at every level (local, national,
regional, and global) », (Gustave
Massiah).
Municipalism :
the shared ambition to « create new
forms of institutions for collective
management » in the common interest.
Understood
stricto sensu as movements or
citizen electoral lists that « win
cities » (as the Spanish municipalists
say) and exercise collective power,
municipalism can also be understood in a
broader sense. Municipalism reaffirms the
priority of political vision, of meaning and
common interest as a response to a context
of demands for citizen emancipation, social
justice and ethics. Far from being a new
phenomenon, municipalism is part of an historical continuum
showing emancipatory and subversive
dynamics, which disrupt political
organisation and representations.
Additionally,
in the continuity of the visionary power
of Murray Bookchin (the
father of libertarian municipalism and
social ecology), the municipalism which is
today taking hold in municipalities in
Spain, as well as Brazil, Quebec, Italy, the
United Kingdom, France and even Kurdish
provinces of the North of Syria, is proof
that ecological, social and democratic
transitions are linked. Jonathan Durand
Folco reminds us of « the
structural incompatibility of an economy
founded on the imperative of infinite
growth with a society that is fair,
democratic and environmentally friendly
».
The
convergence of these urgencies and demands
makes the subject of democracy and the local
level a way in, and a historical opportunity
to link the creative power of societies with
that of public institutions. The municipal
institution finds itself at the meeting
point of the end of the institutional and
centralised verticality of our elitist
decision structures, with a strong citizen
effervescence and an imperative for public
action faced with ever more resounding needs
and urgencies. The municipalist movement
figures, then, as one of the responses to a
symptomatic crisis of representative
democracy and the detachment it has
established with citizens in their
relationships, practices and imaginary, but
also with the spaces and timeframes of the
exercice of political power. In this way, it
allows us to leave behind electoral events
and return to a « permanent
democracy » of emancipation.
Municipalism :
from a power « over the people »
to a power of the people « for and
with the people »
Municipalism
is the result of a hybridization of forms of
democratic and direct representation which
transform both the practice of, as well as
the relationship to, power. It is based
equally on the double tension between
alternative dynamics « outside of and within the
institution » and the «opening of
spaces for citizen emancipation in the legal
and institutional framework » and
the reinvention of its rituals. But how far are
we capable of going in terms of democratic
radicalness, democratic transparency, global
coherence and exemplariness ? How to
redefine spaces for decision from one end of
the chain to the other ? What part do
the elected play in decisions ? How do
we take back the entire system ? These
are some of the questions resulting from
responses carefully built in the public
sphere, the space for the meeting of public
actors with inhabitants that municipalities,
be they rebels or politically courageous,
have committed to open.
The
role of the elected is, consequently, to
create and maintain open the most spaces
possible with all inhabitants, especially in
advance of decision-making, in order to
clarify the criteria for collective
decision-making. These are reciprocal
engagements between the elected and the
inhabitants that contribute to the renewal
of a fallen, disappointed confidence. The
elected official works in the service of a
shared project for a limited time. This
changing power must also count on the
indispensable role of public agents. Working
with the elected, they guarantee the
continuity of public action and support, as
well as the demands of a living democracy,
and its necessary refounding from the inside
of the administration. These are the
conditions for profound changes in public
action, the integration of a new way of
doing at each level, including between
different levels of local and national.
The
displayed willingness to « encourage
participation » (citizen councils,
advisory committees) can only function if
those who facilitate them are trained
(popular education) and respect the promise
to co-construct. For all that, participation
is not decreed, it is constructed, with
proven methods and much humility. Experience
shows that each time we take action for the
daily life of people, we need to involve
them, in respect with the competencies of
the town hall. « That which you
do for us, without us, you do against us »
the inhabitants often remind us.
Municipalism allows us to experiment with
new hypotheses in terms of relationships to
the other, the construction of the common
good, the organisation and facilitation of
decision-making processes, the creation of
new spaces-timeframes, etc. It is in line
with « the articulation between the
urgent and the alternative » (Gustave
Massiah). In this way, the political
differentiation of municipal movements comes
from the fact that they «aim for the
improvement of the way of life and not
political performance » as well as
« the creation of new spaces for
relationships »vi.
Municipalism :
a necessary democratic radicalness
(training, transparency, ethics,
benevolence)
At the
heart of their approach, the various
municipalist movements set down the
requirement of democratic radicalness as a
condition of their organisation and their
link to the population. Faced with ruined
confidence and a certain
« disgust » for politics,
responses have to be found. The obligation
to explain their decisions is, for the
elected, a central first step to give a
better legibility to municipal public
action. Ethics codes co-constructed by
Spanish citizen platforms (Barcelona en
Comú, Marea Atlantica) as well as
transparency rules are some of the major
commitments of these elected officials. This
is a drastic democratic requirement to which
the elected are submitted at each stage of
public action, a strictness and a teaching
method which change the relationship with
inhabitants. Benevolance and the attention
devoted to people and relationships is also
at the heart of the functioning of
municipalist platforms and their success,
as, for example, the experience of Marea
Atlantica in Spain demonstrates.
As
Frédéric Sultan (Remix the Commons)
suggests, municipalism is also « what
permits changes in categories of public
action, for example, to ask about
hospitality rather than opposing migratory
and tourist politics, to put otherness back
into the center. » In their founding
values, the « Fearless Cities, Cities
of refuge » maintain solidarity, the
feminisation of politics, as well as
benevolence and confidence as the basis of
municipalism.
Municipalist
radicalness is to not give way, to continue
to believe in the potential of each person
to have a voice, and to give them this
possibility. The transition to libertarian
emancipated societies goes through a process
of commensurate universalism, the search for
fairness, taking the most fragile into
consideration, not leaving anyone behind. This
fair Transition is a concept being
discussed at present by international
bodies. Like participation,
emancipation can not be decreed. The period
of transition is the moment to create the
necessary conditions for this emancipation.
Municipalism :
the challenge to produce a political
decision between collegiality,
representativeness and fairness
For all
that, co-decision has its limits and
« total collegiality » as well. A
collegial decision is justified for topics
of major interest or specific in space and
time, such as the layout of a specific
neighborhood discussed with local residents.
It can not exist continuously in
administrative time for it would then risk
being only for the small number who might be
available – and so not representative of the
total community. Pragmatically, spaces for
shared decision-making that take place
during business hours exclude those who
work, those spaces without childcare exclude
parents, and especially single parents, for
example. It is necessary to go
towards, again and again, towards
those who are invisible and those who do not
feel legitimate in speaking, to take the
debate away from institutions and bring it
to the bottom of the tower, into villages,
housing estates, and farms, into the spaces
where people live and exchange views.
Furthermore,
if it is also necessary to accept that
everyone does not want to speak and so to
remove the order to participate, which is
guilt-inducing and counter-productive. One
must also realise that not everyone can
decide, especially on difficult subjects.
This reality focuses on a blind spot of the
politics of participation stricto sensu.
The elected official must also
assume his representative responsibility.
Sometimes, the time available for a decision
can not wait for the time it takes to find a
consensus. If a budget is not decided upon
in time, a city may be put under the
guardianship of the prefecture. How to find
a balance between legitimate democracy which
gives the power for decision-making and also
a place for co-decisions ?
By
their election and their responsibilities,
elected officials are authorized to make
decisions and are legitimate. This role
needs to be adjusted in regards to their
mission to respond and represent citizens,
and clarified as to what is a political
decision. A political decision is
always at the crossroads of several
factors : the political
program upon which the political list was
elected, its values and ethics, its capacity
to be questioned and to be close to the
reality of the people including where
politics no longer go, the scientific and
academic information available, the
regulatory framework of the expertise of the
city, measures of the impacts of, or
evaluation of, past politics in the city or
in other municipalities.
To
reach the imaginary, build a public
opinion, link the dynamics of individual
and collective cultural transformation
in their relationship to democracy, to
oneself, to the other and to the world, is a
transformation which requires a better
articulation of other scales of action and
decision, from the local to the
international. Our democratic, social and
ecological crises are in effect intimately
linked from one level of intervention to
another. Today, concrete and operational
responses are being built in France, in
Spain, but also all over the world.
Municipalism, that we thought limited to the
scale of tiny villages with a thousand
inhabitants, today exists and is efficient
in much larger cities (Ex : La Corogne
population 245000, Valencia population
790000, Barcelona population 1.6 million).
It contributes to democracies of
emancipation and social justice that are
environmentally friendly, open and
pluralist.
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