What Challenges for Political Participation in Times of 'Post-Representative' Politics? The Case of Urban Movements in Rome

The global financial crisis of 2008 has been considered a critical juncture (Roberts 2014) with economic and political effects. Indeed we are witnessing to the decreasing of citizens’ trust toward political elites and traditional parties. According to these massive changes, scholars have described the contemporary scenario as the era of “post-representative politics” (De Blasio and Sorice 2018). Nevertheless, the crisis of representation does not lead automatically to the absence of any kind of political participation. To the contrary, unconventional forms of collective actions are assuming a renewed relevance in many cities around the world: urban social movements are an example of that. These collective subjects are engaged in different types of practices and actions that, instead of asking institutions for changes, answer from below to citizens’ necessities through different types of direct social actions (DSA) (Bosi and Zamponi 2015). Even if without a traditional electoral framework, this type of social participation is in many cases the starting point for a new type of political engagement (D’Albergo and De Nardis 2016). The paper presents the results of an ethnographical research conducted between 2016 and 2018 on some of the most relevant urban movement organizations in Rome engaged in different types of DSA (i.e. anti-eviction struggle, social laboratories, requalification of green areas). The gathering of data is related to two main sources: semi-structured interviews and participant observation. The paper will analyse (a) the features, the repertoires and claims of these movements and (b) the relationship they establish with local institutions (regional and municipal ones). Accordingly, the paper has two goals: by a side it wants to shed a light on the political participation that is developing in cities in age of social, economic and political changes; by the other side it wants to explore the pathways through which democratic institutions can receive this participation from below without neutralizing its contentious potential. In a nutshell, this paper inquires what kind of democratic innovations are possible and fruitful at local level to cooperate with social movements, without co- opting them. Therefore, even if the paper is based on a single case study, it wants to provide insights at analytical level in the fields of social movements and urban studies, bridging them with the studies on democratic innovations and deliberation.