Social Movements as Sites of Political Innovation
Andrea Felicetti and Donatella della Porta
Research on social movements has led over decades to a nuanced understanding of the ways in which movement contribute to democratic life. Today, the idea that social movements represent a dysfunction in the working of the liberal democratic order is clearly outdated. Yet, the success of these actors in developing democratic alternatives to the status quo is often questioned.
Besides social movement scholarship, research in democratic theory has also developed sophisticated ways to think about social movements. Liberal, participatory, agonistic and deliberative theories of democracy, just to mention some of the most influential ones, have each provided different tools for understanding movements and their democratic strengths and weaknesses.
Given the central role of electoral competition in contemporary democracies, it is not surprising that work on social movements has been framed with respect to the dynamics of electoral democracy. This applies equally to classic debates as well as to more recent ones. With respect to the former, one could think of the debates on opportunities and threats presented by the institutionalization of movements or the analyses of the relationship between, for instance, workers movements and progressive parties. With respect to more recent scholarship, instead, one could refer to the burgeoning research on party-movements and movements parties.
Nonetheless, the idea that in talking about democracy beyond elections, social movements might be considered as especially interesting actors is hard to resist. Indeed, rooted as they are in popular participation, social movements can often be seen as the very bearers of claims that elected representatives do not address, or at least not satisfactorily. Some movements may aim their claims and actions at electoral politics. Others, instead, may firmly reject such move and focus on all levels of politics except for the electoral one. Movements may dwell in the electoral politics arena, but, by their very nature, they have full leeway beyond it.
The versatility of social movements, their ability to impact democratic life within or without electoral channels, can be illustrated from a number of viewpoints. In this post, we briefly refer to an aspect which, until recent, has been overlooked in scholarship: the contribution of movements to innovate political life and, in particular, their ability to produce and implement new ideas of democratic participation.
The idea that social movements represent sites of societal and political innovation is not new. It was first explored by symbolic interactionists close to the “Chicago School”. Then, it was further expanded during years of debates on New Social Movements. However, little is known about the types of ideas and spreading mechanisms involved in innovation through social movements. It is by looking at these aspects that we can have a sense of the ability of movements to contribute to political innovation within and beyond the domain of electoral politics.
Social movements contribute to innovation in at least two different ways. First, they can sponsor governance innovation by taking an active role in processes leading to institutional change. In doing this, social movements enter in contact with representative institutions, but they do so in ways that may push elected officials to look beyond the domain of electoral competition only. Second, movements are incubators of democratic innovations: they are particularly sensitive to issues of internal democracy and generate new democratic practices that may contribute to democratize the public sphere, at a distance from mainstream politics.
Illustrations of the above mentioned two processes can be drawn from the recent wave of anti-austerity protests. In particular, on the one hand, the Icelandic Pots and Pan Revolution is an example of innovation brought about in collaboration with elected representatives. On the other hand, the acampadas of protesters in Puerta del Sol, Syntagma Square, or Zuccotti Park are democratic innovations aimed directly at the public sphere.
The Pots and Pans revolution in Iceland, which triggered anti-austerity protests throughout the rest of Europe, had far reaching effects on the political life in that country. Indeed, it gave birth to an unprecedented inclusive and direct process for reforming a core aspect of democratic governance, such as a country’s constitution. A strong emphasis on the direct participation of normal citizens has characterized the Icelandic movement, triggered by the turbulent events following the collapse of its banking system. In the autumn of 2008, the country entered a deep economic and financial downturn. Political protests against a government perceived as corrupt and incapable erupted. Equipped with kitchenware and shouting loud chants people took the protest in front of the Icelandic parliament, giving thus birth to the so called Pots and Pans revolution opposing austerity measures and demanding constitutional change towards a more democratic governance of the country. The mobilization that went on until winter 2009 was paralleled by a change in government. In late January, a left-wing coalition supporting constitutional change replaced the ousted grand coalition government made of the Independence Party and the Social Democratic Alliance.
The constitutional process that ensued was a rather complex one. It started with a National Assembly in Reykjavik in November 2009. The deliberative and participatory event was organized by ‘The Anthil’, a movement of grassroots organizations. It hosted 1,500 people discussing together for one day about the main values of the country and the future of Iceland in the aftermath of the crisis. The event was a clear manifestation of the movement’s demand for more grassroots politics to redress the fate of a country severely affected by elite driven policy choices. The discussions of the National Assembly were made public and elicited debate in the public sphere. In June 2010, the Icelandic parliament initiated a constitutional revision process. A few months later a constitutional committee appointed another National Assembly tasked with providing general guidelines for the work of a forthcoming elected Constitutional Assembly. Due to problems in the electoral process, the latter assembly was declared invalid by the Icelandic Supreme Court. Nonetheless, in a highly contested move in defiance of the court, the members that had been elected were appointed by the Government. The reform proposal by the Constitutional Council was then subjected to a consultative national referendum, the first one in the history of the country. More than half of the Icelandic voters participated in the referendum, expressing their support for the proposal. However, the government eventually dismissed the proposal and its plans of constitutional reform. The relatively low electoral turnout and the strenuous opposition to a proposal drafted by a politically appointed council, rather than a directly elected one, certainly affected the government decision.
As argued by Hélène Landermore in 2015 the failure of this proposal to be turned into a law should not lead us to overlook the fact that ‘for the first time in human history, a country’s foundational text (or at least a draft proposal for it) was written with the more or less direct participation of its people’. The proposal of constitutional change was in fact drafted in an iterative process between the public at large and the constitutional commission. The various drafts of the document received constant feedback via social media until the final proposal was eventually accepted with full consensus of all twenty-five members of the council. Though far from perfect, the Icelandic constitution making process achieved substantial inclusiveness and epistemic reliability.
The acampadas of anti-austerity protesters in Spain, Greece and the United States provide, instead, an illustration of democratic innovations away from electoral politics. Protesters did not just criticize the corruption of representative democracy but also experimented with different democratic models. The protest camps– at once repertoire of protest and organizational form – represented a major democratic experiment, as they were adopted and adapted from the social forums of the Global Justice Movements, and were intended to overcome their perceived failures. In acampadas conceptions of grassroots participation, characteristic of progressive social movements, have been in fact combined with special attention to the creation of egalitarian and inclusive public spheres.
While both global justice and anti-austerity movements promoted forms of internal democracy which combined participation and deliberation, relevant differences exist. Social forums mixed both associational and assembly-type forms, with an emphasis on consensus. The acampadas, instead, refused to accept membership associations, privileging the participation of the individuals – the citizens, the members of the community. From the relational point of view, whereas the social forum process was oriented to networking, as Jeffrey Juris observed, the acampadas followed a more aggregative logic, based on individual mobilization. From the cognitive point of view, while the forum aimed at building political alternatives, the acampadas were more prefigurative. These differences are in part the product of learning processes, after a perceived decline in the innovative capacity of the social forum process. At the same time, they also reflect adaptation to a context characterized by a legitimacy crisis of late neoliberalism (and ensuing social and political consequences) and also by national opportunities and constraints.
Our cursory illustrations, we hope, help understanding that in order to appreciate the full extent of social movements’ contribution to democracy we need to realize the versatility of these actors. Their ability to interface with electoral politics but also to act independently of it represents an important asset in the development of innovation in democratic life. Nonetheless, in engaging within and beyond electoral politics, social movements face important challenges that might hinder their ability to affect democratic politics. In understanding these limits and in conceiving ways to address them, we believe, lays an important challenge to everyone interested in democracy beyond elections.