What’s so new about New Municipalism?

Abstract

New municipalism is a nascent global social movement aiming to democratically transform the local state and economy – but what, precisely, is so new about it? I situate new municipalism in its geographical, political-economic and historical contexts, by comparison with earlier waves of municipal socialism and international municipalism, arguing that it re-politicises traditions of transnationalism, based not on post-political policy mobilities but on urban solidarities in contesting neoliberal austerity urbanism and platform capitalism. This article identifies three new municipalisms – platform, autonomist, managed – whose characteristics, contradictions, interconnections and potentials are explored in terms of state-space restructuring, urban-capitalist crisis and cycles of contention.

Introduction: Anti-politics, austerity and spaces of politicisation

“…Firstly, there are a set of questions around the role of the local state associated with what has been termed the ‘new municipalism’ and is being articulated in cities like Barcelona, Preston (UK), Jackson (Mississippi USA) (e.g. Russell, 2019; Thompson, 2021). These movements have been defined by innovative engagements by the left to offer alternatives to the regressive and hollowed out role of the local state envisioned by different forms of austerity politics.…”

“…The new municipalism raises the prospect of a progressive politicisation and democratisation of the “urban”, though detailed reflection on the contingencies and achievements of projects is still emerging, such as Janoschka and Mota (2020) on the Madrid case and Rossi (2018) on the urban dimension of right-wing populism in Italy. The new municipalism is conceived both in terms of cities (in practice usually larger ones), but also urbanization as a political plane to develop alternatives to nation state centred politics – contesting neoliberal and nativist agendas and forging transnational networks of solidarity and policy transfer (Thompson, 2021). This can be read as an (anti-)politics contesting the nation state and its austerity policies, whilst also developing new knowledge practices and political mobilisations to overcome them, as Standring’s article in this issue details in relation to the Barcelona en Comú Platform (Standring, 2021: 567).…”

The urban politics of policy failure

“…Looking to what comes after failure is a useful way to understand urban politics, whether it be to understand the persistence of neoliberal policies that exacerbate inequality (Wells, This Issue;Peck, 2014), or to think though progressive or even radical urban futures (Baker & McCann, This Issue;Russell, 2019;Sutton, 2019). New municipalism, for example, is a governance movement rising in resistance to austerity urbanism and the failures of the state to work within the existing social contract (Russell, 2019;Thompson, 2020). Widening inequality, increasing poverty, housing and labor insecurity, negative health outcomes: these are all areas where urban governments have failed to achieve meaningful change and the new municipalism movement looks to use urban governance as a strategic space for progressive or transformative politics.…”

Urban fallism

“…The nation state, however, has suffered a loss of power since the advent and globalization of flexible capitalism in the 1970s (Harvey 1989;Sassen 1991). As a consequence, cities have gained increasing political relevance and agency Schmid 2011, 2015;Harvey 2012) which has recently given rise to a 'New Municipalism' that contests capitalist over-accumulation and neoliberal austerity urbanism (Thompson 2020). New municipalist movements understand 'the municipality as a strategic site for developing a transformative and prefigurative politics' (Russell 2019, 991) that involves 'a collective and perpetual struggle to democratize our society and to manage our affairs for ourselves' (Purcell 2013, 2).…”