Are we the people? Democratic municipalism in two European cities, in the approach to power and thereafter 2011-2024

This thesis examines the theory and practice of democratic (“new”) municipalism, as it has been expressed in Madrid, Spain and Zagreb, Croatia. In theory, municipalism aims to reclaim popular control over key dimensions of everyday urban life — from housing and infrastructure to public services — through a unique hybridization of participatory policy formation with conventionally electoral contestation. While widely celebrated in activist and scholarly discourse, however, the ability of municipalist formations to produce real-world outcomes consonant with their aims has varied sharply from place to place, and the tradition’s present vitality and capacity to produce new liberatory openings is in question. This research, grounded in a constructivist and critical epistemological framework, traces the intellectual and historical lineage of municipalism from its roots in libertarian socialist thought, through the horizontalist movements of the early 21st century, to its political crystallization in Ahora Madrid and Zagreb je NAŠ!. It blends textual analysis and a program of semi-structured interviews with close observation of the urban environments in question. Through detailed reconstruction of these two efforts, the study identifies municipalism as a participatory, feminist, agonistic and commons-based practice that proposes to challenge neoliberal hegemony from within the urban polity. It also assesses the limitations of the municipalist form, including its vulnerability to institutional capture, its theoretical looseness, and its retreat from mass participation into academic and elite spaces. The thesis contributes to the sociology of urban place and governance by clarifying the conditions under which municipalist experiments succeed, the assemblages they form, and the residual value they may offer to future emancipatory movements. Ultimately, it argues that while municipalism may not presently function as a mass political vehicle, its constituent practices retain relevance for prefigurative politics and the democratic stewardship of urban life.