Tackling Inequalities through Participatory Governance: The Experience of Ahora Madrid

The Ahora Madrid’s electoral manifesto was largely inspired by the new municipalism and supported by a myriad of urban social movement, civic and political organizations and non-formalized collectives. The central pillars of their proposals for government were twofold. On the one hand, to fight against neoliberal urban structural inequalities and the sharp increased in social and territorial disparities which were caused by post-crisis austerity policies. On the other hand, to achieve this by means of a new model of participatory governance which intended to broaden and deepen urban democracy. In this research we single out three novel policy measures implemented by Ahora Madrid in pursuance of those goals: the territorial decentralization of the city council policy decision making (through district councils devolution); the re-allocation of public funding for inter-territorial cohesion; and the adoption of democratic innovations facilitating extensive and direct participation in policy making. This paper critically analyses these policies by specially focusing on the annual call for participatory budgeting (from 2016 to 2019) - per districts and topics of the citizens’ proposals which have been initiated and voted, and by the socio-demographic profile of the participants per district -and also by analyzing three opinion survey carried out on yearly basis with representative district samples which collect citizens’ assessment about municipal policies and services. Ultimately our empirical analysis aims to pinpoint the achivements as well as the limitations of the Ahora Madrid’s policies for fighting against social and territorial structural inequalities. The results shall lead to critically discuss about the new municipalism's agenda in Madrid and elsewhere.