Civic Monitoring: Hybrid Practices of Democratic Participation in Italy and Spain

The concept of monitory democracy has represented a successful paradigm in the democratic theory. However, the concept of political monitoring has seldom entered the study of collective action. This gap is even more pressing today since the pandemic has clearly shown the necessity and potentialities of such a form of democratic participation. To start addressing this discussion, the present paper aims at investigating practices of civic monitoring, conceptualized as a paramount case of hybridization between social movements and civil society forms of action and their pro-democratic consequences. In doing so, it firstly discusses the democratic value of forms of organized distrust in collective action, introducing the concept of societal accountability. Moving from a theoretical discussion of the concept of civic monitoring, the paper offers a reflection on the interaction between movements and civil society actors in practices of control and oversight of powerholders. Given the vast array of actors populating the monitoring field, one should expect to find different strategies when it comes to oversight and control institutional power. In this sense, the expectation is that monitoring activities are characterized by the co-existence of different strategies and repertoires, as maintained by the hybridization thesis. Lastly, it advances a relational approach to investigate the consequences of monitoring practices, combining forms of integration (horizontal vs vertical) and modes of coordination (social movements, coalitions, communities, and organizations). This approach is in line with a relational and non-aggregative understanding of collective action, which dismantles the well-entrenched idea that associates social movements with the use of specific repertoires of action. On the contrary, relational accounts of collective action focus on patterns of interaction to differentiate among forms of civic engagement. Internal differences are thus determined by modes of coordination, namely on relational patterns characterizing the interaction between and within civic actors. Drawing from case studies coming from the Italian and Spanish accountability contexts, the paper maintains that practices of civic monitoring represent a perfect example of hybridization of the civic sphere at the level of practices. The analysis of the empirical material let emerge the co-occurrence of four different types of civic monitoring: 1. Monitoring Campaigns, 2. Communities, 3. Shared Monitoring, 4. Disclosure Monitoring. It also maintains that their consequences are better understood when considering the relational structure and strategies through which these practices unfold.