What’s so new about New Municipalism?

Abstract

New municipalism is a nascent global social movement aiming to democratically transform the local state and economy – but what, precisely, is so new about it? I situate new municipalism in its geographical, political-economic and historical contexts, by comparison with earlier waves of municipal socialism and international municipalism, arguing that it re-politicises traditions of transnationalism, based not on post-political policy mobilities but on urban solidarities in contesting neoliberal austerity urbanism and platform capitalism. This article identifies three new municipalisms – platform, autonomist, managed – whose characteristics, contradictions, interconnections and potentials are explored in terms of state-space restructuring, urban-capitalist crisis and cycles of contention.