Triggered by dissatisfaction with centralized and bureaucratic representative democracy, since the 1970s so-called new social movements have pushed for various forms of participation in decision-making, spreading through a sort of ‘contagion from below’ (Rohrschneider 1993). Emerging trends within social movements that mobilized in the wave of protest against the financial crisis and for democratization illustrate this form of democratic innovation. Recently, the Global Justice Movement as well as anti-austerity protests have produced knowledge about direct democratic processes (Cox 2014, 965). In the beginning of the new millennium, with their reflexive practices inspired by Zapatistas and the building of deliberative spaces, the Global Justice Movement paid specific attention to knowledge production. More recently in the 2010s, those who protested in Tahrir, Porta del Sol, Syntagma Square or Zuccotti Park, and later in Gezi Park or Place de la République, have both criticized existing representative democracy as deeply corrupted and experimented with different models of democracy, stressing especially participatory and deliberative qualities. As a protest repertoire and organizational form, the acampadas – long-term camps in squatted public spaces – have been seen as the incarnation of a democratic experiment that has been adopted and adapted in different contexts. Aiming at participation and deliberation, the acampadas developed from previous practices of internal democracy, such as social forums, in the attempt to learn from their limits and try to address them (della Porta 2015b). In these activities, conceptions of participation from below, cherished by progressive social movements, have in fact been combined with a special attention to the creation of egalitarian and inclusive public spheres (della Porta 2013). With their emphasis on consensus, the acampadas privileged the participation of lay persons – the citizens, the members of the community – mobilized as individuals rather than members of associations of various types (Juris 2012), building on their personal experience and knowledge.
Contemporary progressive movements have considered transparency, equality and inclusivity as important democratic values. In particular, the setting up of camps in open-air space has aimed at enhancing the public and transparent nature of the process, expressing a reclaiming of public spaces by citizens. Choosing open spaces as the main site of protest, activists place a special emphasis on the inclusivity of the process, which involves the entire agora. The heterogeneity of participants is mentioned as a most positive aspect of the camps, in which people of different backgrounds, classes and ideology sit together and talk with each other (Gerbaudo 2012, 69). In this way, the acampadas, by occupying and subverting the use of prominent urban public spaces, aimed at reconstructing a public sphere in which problems and solutions could be discussed among equals (Halvorsen 2012, 431). Within the camps, the general assemblies aimed at mobilizing the common people – not activists but communities of citizens – through placards and individualized messages. Alternative practices were also developed in the everyday management of camp activities, including through free kitchens, medical tents, libraries, media centres and information centres for visitors and new participants (Graeber 2012, 240).
In all these activities, there were attempts at balancing the principle of direct democracy with a search for consensus. In the camps, consensual decision-making was built upon the practices devised by the horizontal wing in the Global Justice Movement (della Porta 2009), as collective thought was expected to emerge through inclusivity and respect for the opinions of all, even in large assemblies involving often hundreds of thousands of people. A consensual, horizontal decision-making process was based on the continuous formation of small groups, which then reconvened in the larger assemblies. Deliberation through consensus was in general seen as an instrument against bureaucratization, but also against the routinization of the assembly, and a way to construct a community (Graeber 2012, 23). So, the acampadas have been sites of contention, but also of exchange of information, reciprocal learning, individual socialization and knowledge building. Their ultimate goal was building a community through the personal knowledge of the participants and their direct experiences, including the expression of strong emotions. So, the occupied free spaces had to develop ‘possible utopias’, by attracting the attention of the media and inspiring participation, but also by ‘providing a space for grassroots participatory democracy; ritual and community building, strategizing and action planning, public education and prefiguring alternative worlds that embody movement visions’, as well as networking and coordinating (Juris 2012, 268). Camps were thus considered as places not only for talking and listening, but also for the building of collective identities, happening through the development of strong emotions and longer-lasting relations. Open public spaces were to create intense ties and sharing of a common belonging through encounters among diverse people. Camps therefore had to show opposition but also to prefigure new relations, experimenting with another form of democracy.
Some of the mentioned innovative ideas about democracy have been at the basis of institutional experiments that were indeed inspired by the same principles of participation and deliberation. Besides engaging in internal practices of democratic innovation, social movements are in fact also carriers of innovation in institutions, performing this role in a variety of ways and with different results. In short, social movements raise claims not only on specific policies, but more broadly on the way in which the political system as a whole functions: its institutional and formal procedures, elite recruitment and the informal configuration of power (Kitschelt 1986). Movements have often obtained decentralization of political power and channels of consultation with citizens on particular decisions; appeals procedures against decisions by the public administration; the possibility to be allowed to testify before representative institutions and the judiciary, to be listened to as counter-experts, to receive legal recognition and material incentives. Repertoires of collective action, which were once stigmatized and dealt with as public order problems, have slowly become legal and legitimate (della Porta and Reiter 1998), while direct democracy has been developed as a supplementary channel of access to those opened within representative democracy (della Porta, O’Connor et al. 2017a). Social movements also contribute to the creation of new arenas for the development of public policy, such as expert commissions or specific administrative and political branches, for example state ministries or local bureaus on women’s and ecological issues in many countries. Within international organizations, such as the EU, movement activists have been co-opted by specific public bodies as members of their staff (Ruzza 2004) and opportunities for conflictual cooperation develop within regulatory agencies through consultation, to incorporation in committees, to delegation of power (Giugni and Passy 1998, 85). These institutions mediate social movement claims and even ally themselves with movement activists with whom they may have frequent contact.
In recent times, democratic innovations have included participatory arenas open to the participation of normal citizens in public debates on relevant (and often divisive) issues. Especially at the local level, there have been various attempts at increasing participation, through the creation of high-quality communicative arenas and the empowering of citizens. In fact, one can distinguish, with Graham Smith (2009), two main institutional formulas: assembleary, or oriented to the construction of a ‘mini-public’, usually selected by lot. The former in particular have seen the participation of social movement activists in neighbourhood assemblies or even thematic assemblies, neighbourhood councils, consultation committees, strategic participatory plans and the like. In particular, participatory budgets have spread from Porto Alegre, a Brazilian city of 1,360,000 inhabitants, to being recognized by the United Nations as one of the forty ‘best practices’ at global level (Allegretti 2003, 173). In order to achieve social equality and provide occasions for empowerment, citizens are invited to decide about the distribution of certain public funds through a structured process of involvement in assemblies and committees. The objectives of these institutions include effective prob-lem-solving and equitable solutions, as well as broad, deep and sustained participation. The participatory budget has been credited with creating a positive context for association, fostering greater activism, networking associations, and working from a citywide orientation (Baiocchi 2002). Even though the intensity of participation, its duration and influence, vary greatly between the various participatory devices, they all point towards the limits of a merely representative conception of democracy. The aim of improving managerial capacities, through greater