Public procurement is one of the areas where it is possible to achieve progress in making transnational corporations accountable, particularly with a view to making public policies consistent and coherent. In Europe, since the last revision of the EU directives on public procurement, there have...

If we want to create a democratic culture that invites people in, though, we can’t restrict our thinking only to big-P “Politics” as represented by elections, Westminster, and political parties. Participatory and collaborative decision making happens in all sorts of settings and places.We need a...

Gianpaolo Baiocchi offers a historical overview of what he terms Radical Cities in Latin America and draws out some lessons from the past 30 years. Comparing these experiences to municipal politics in Europe and  elsewhere, he highlights the distinctive features and charts the ups and...

The Covid-19 crisis has made clear the disastrous effects of years of austerity, social security cuts, and public service privatisation. But it has also demonstrated that public services and the people who operate them are truly the foundation of healthy and resilient societies. As privatisation...

Urban movements, borne out of civic activism in the first decade of the twenty-first century, function beyond the frameworks of official Polish urban development institutions and policies. In the recent years they have managed to enter the political debate, some of them morphing into a...

By building a “democracy from below,” the Zapatistas recognize the leadership of, and carry on a long tradition of resistance by Indigenous communities in Chiapas. Photo: Gareth Davies

This paper seeks to outline the changes that enabled the citizen platform Barcelona en Comú (Catalan for “Barcelona in Common”) to win the elections in Barcelona in 2015, a victory that signaled a rupture in the status quo of Spanish politics. Although the citizen platform...

The deaths of black Americans that proceeded George Floyd’s death all have a troubling common theme: the officers involved faced little to no legal repercussions for their actions. State and local governments are long overdue to publicly acknowledge, apologize and end their complicit role in...

To analyse and understand the ways in which it is possible for a decentralised and polycentric movement such as Barcelona en Comù to be voted at institutional level, D-CENT partners IN3 15M Data Analysis Group and Barcelona Media conducted the recently published research ‘When a...

Naples was the first Italian city to establish a “Department of the Commons” and the first to change the municipal statute by inserting the “commons” as one of the interests to be protected and recognised as a fundamental right. This italian city is just one...

Since the beginning of the UK coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic, tens of thousands of people have lost their lives. But the coronavirus crisis is not only a health crisis, it has had far reaching effects on people’s lives and livelihoods. Across the UK, communities have come...

The rise of loneliness worldwide, the centrality of real estate speculation for global economic growth, and the breakdown of many large-scale factories that helped to bring workers together mean that we have to rethink the ways we demand change. We can build community and force...