One foot on the street and the other in the institution. Socio-spatial Analysis of a Municipalist Initiative

Abstract

This article analyses the way in which social movements adapt their reference frames when they decide to participate in the electoral arena and institutional politics. For this purpose, it studies the case of a citizens' candidature that came to municipal government of a city of Cádiz in 2015. The article proposes the concept of spatial frames of motivation, diagnosis and prognosis in order to study collective action, combining frame theory and spatial theory. This approach permits to identify frame transformations and the tensions experienced by activists when they face institutional participation, and the role of spatial practices and discourses in these tensions.