How can democracy-driven governance turns into techno-populism? Arguing on the case of Ahora Madrid

Ahora Madrid’s electoral manifesto was largely inspired by the new municipalism movement in Spain, and it was actively made up and supported by a myriad of urban social movements which joined together under the anti-austerity and pro-democracy protests of the 15M movement. The central pillars of their proposals for government were twofold: on the one hand, to fight against neoliberal urban structural inequalities and the sharp increase 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 the movement government of Ahora Madrid in pursuit of those goals after winning the local elections of May 2015: the territorial decentralisation 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 study critically analyses these policies from the point of view of the conflicting visions stances about the goal of urban democratization which came up from the various organizational traditions and ideational frameworks of the collectives involved in the 15M. It relies on various sources and types of information regarding the evolvement of those policies from 2015 to 2019: it comprises information collected from face to face interviews with local government officials, representatives of Ahora Madrid and of urban social movements and civic organizations; information gathered through participant observation in public events; published reports and online provided data as well as local opinion poll surveys. Based on empirical evidences we argue that, as a consequence of the competing democratic visions coexisting within Ahora Madrid, the original collective endeavor of democratizing the urban model of governance by means of transforming the status quo of power relations that impeded social justice, it got reduced to a simple model of governance that we describe it like a technopopulist fashion of ruling social conflicts.