PIGS, from crisis to self-organisation
A country or a society in crisis is not a “time of opportunities“ as we often hear when stock markets are translated into real life. Crises are thrilling times of resistance, but also desperate moments of destruction. The term PIGS started to be used more…
Grenoble, France: Citizen participation in water utility delivers low tariffs for its poorest residents
Elected officials and environmental activists mobilised in Grenoble in the 1980s and 1990s to prove that corruption was involved in many deals, and set up an alternative, municipal entity to take back and run the water utility. Remunicipalisation took place in 2001, and opened the…
Why libertarian municipalism is more needed today than ever before
We can understand almost all of today’s crises to be crises of democracy. Representative ‘democracy’ has turned people from empowered citizens to alienated constituents. Libertarian municipalism, which promotes direct democracy, is an essential tool to regain power at the citizen level and provide solutions to…
Governing Kurdistan: Self-Administration in the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq and the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria
The author, Joost Jongerden, dives deep into the the the ideas of the nation-state and a societal self-organization questioning and how these two systems of governance differ and what the societal implications are of these differences, based on two examples. One model is the Kurdistan…
Radicalising democracy: How Hannah Arendt’s legacy endures in Barcelona
Writer Hettie O’Brien analyses Hannah Arendt’s model of council democracy, and how Barcelona en Comú are transforming the way democracy works. According to O’Brien, if Arendt had been alive today, she may have looked to Barcelona’s government and Europe’s fearless cities movement for examples of…
The EU’s obstacle course for municipalism
Progressive municipalist city governments in Europe have introduced important policies to promote citizen participation, public ownership of services, expanded affordable housing, and many more. But their radical democratic programmes face obstacles from both EU and national neoliberal legislation. Photo: Pixabay
The mayors and the movements
In 2015, a wave of social movements lifted left-wing mayors to power in Spain. Their experience in office shows the importance of linking institutional power to bottom-up mobilization. Fearless Cities, a recent book produced by BenComú activists, has sought to draw wider lessons from these…
Scaling out: Translocal solidarity and the new municipalism
The new municipalist agenda is shaping up worldwide. The requirement for successful municipalist experiences to exceed the local level and enter the regional or national agenda might jeopardize their existence, since it challenges the very bases of their conception. The notion of growth by “scaling…
Barcelona’s experiment in radical democracy
After the success of the Fearless Cities North America summit held in New York, author Masha Gessen reflects on the origins and values of Barcelona en Comú, as well as the challenges that Ada Colau faces half way through her term in office. Photo: Umberto…