Municipal Progressive Network Systems: Towards an Ecosystem of Democratising Organisations beyond Party Politics: Evidence from two Italian Cities

The paper introduces the concept of ‘Municipal Progressive Network System’ (MPNS) as a framework to understand the emergence of new forms of political organisation beyond established political parties in municipal elections and governments. The concept is elaborated through in-depth analysis of two case studies from Italian municipalities. First, the civic coalition around the mayor Luigi De Magistris in Naples won two consecutive elections in 2011 and 2016 and coalesced minor left-wing parties with local groups ranging from civil society organisations to squat activists. Second, the coalition around Damiano Coletta, which secured an historical victory in 2016 in the stronghold of the Italian far right: Latina, a medium city in central Italy which was founded during the fascist regime. The paper addresses a research gap at elaborating frameworks to make sense of how the organisation and ideology of local political experimentations represent a major arena of democratic innovation. Indeed, while it is widely acknowledged that cities represent primary loci of experimentation with democratic innovations, most recently fuelled by the use of digital platforms for community engagement and deliberation (e.g. Melo and Baiocchi, 2006; Bua and Bussu, 2021, Kersting, 2021), the questions of what organisational forms and which systems of beliefs coalesce outsider political formations to fuel democratic innovations are rarely asked. The paper expands upon the concept of ‘Progressive Network Systems’ (Guglielmo and Ward, forthcoming) as an emerging organisational mode of radical politics with three key attributes: a progressive ideological core, a network of diverse types of organisations hybridising the typical forms of parties and social movements; the experimentation of systematic forms of democratic planning for maximising political change. The in-depth analysis of the two case studies is conducted primarily through qualitative thematic analysis from 20 interviews with local officers and activists. I identify three key features of MPNS’ organisations and core values. First, MPNS coalesce a diverse range of individual activists and civil society organisations infused with views of democracy as a participatory process primarily dedicated to the inclusion of the excluded and marginalised citizens (see Young, 2011). This is evident, for instance, with the organisation of ‘popular schools’ by the activists in Naples squats or the ‘periphery assemblies’ in Latina. Second, MPNS overcome the boundaries between hierarchical and horizontal modes of decision-making by developing an ‘ecological’ mode of organisation constantly re-assembling the relations among nodes (Nunes, 2021). For instance, this is evident from the experimentations with digital tools for coordinating action. Third, the MPNSs abide by what has been theorised as ‘prefigurative pragmatism’, in as much as they prioritise deliberative processes for MPNSs’ decision-making as a way to mark a difference with what the activists see as the ‘betrayal’ of progressive parties at engaging with the needs of the most vulnerable citizens. The paper concludes that MPNSs are to be seen as an emerging mode of ‘grassroots’ democratic innovation and that they represent a relevant trend for the renewal of progressive politics in the next decade.