The municipal gaze on the EU: European municipalism as ideology

Abstract

The EC/EU has been an eminently nation-led project. However, running in parallel, the European municipalist movement, braiding relations among cities across Europe, has sought to build an influential political role for municipalities within the European polity. The study of European municipal cooperation has become a consolidated thread of research in European and Urban Studies. Nonetheless, contributions on the topic tend to focus on the pragmatic aspects of municipal collaborations, glossing over the ideological foundations of European Municipalism. Therefore, by challenging the dominant scholarly view, this article contends that European Municipalism may be considered as a ‘thin-centred’ ideology. To support this argument, the ideological structure of European Municipalism is unbundled by throwing light on its conceptual components. As a result, this article construes European Municipalism as a ‘thin-centred’ political ideology, which postulates universal city-to-city mutualism and proposes a European counter-project built on a polycentric and diffuse conception of power.