Let’s Win Madrid: Radical Democracy and Prefigurative Constitutionality in the New Municipalism

The thesis proposes prefigurative constitutionality as a novel approach to the production of constitutional and political theory and the study of non-state political actors in the context of strategies for radical democracy. Prefigurative constitutionality requires a bespoke understanding of prefiguration itself, as a transversal complex of types and functions of political action, applicable far beyond the limits of ‘prefigurative politics’ narrowly conceived. It opens constitutional theory to the constitutive, self-valorising practices of movements and parties, discovering in their prefigurative constitutional practices both implicit critiques of mainstream constitutionalism, and emergent constitutional models of future democracies to come. It poses the vital challenge for prefigurative practices to recognise and refine their constitutional practices. It reflects back onto questions of methodology, demanding a novel adaptation of grounded theory methods within a critical theoretical framework. The prefigurative-constitutional lens is here applied to the experience of ‘new municipalism’ in Madrid, from its roots in the 15M movement, to the separate constitution of municipalist platform Ganemos Madrid, left populist party Podemos, and their attempted confluence in Ahora Madrid, the formation that would ultimately contest and win Madrid’s 2015 municipal election. Reading Ganemos’ asambleario constitutionality through the work of Antonio Negri, and Podemos’ populist constitutionality through the work of Ernesto Laclau, reveals novel constitutional models as well as offering deeper insight into the logics of their respective political strategies. Simultaneously, the key concepts of prefiguration and hegemony are critically developed. In seeking to explain the weakness of Ahora Madrid’s constitution, the concept of leadership becomes crucial. Beyond its explanatory function, leadership also constructs the theoretical ground on which prefiguration and hegemony, Negri and Laclau, Ganemos and Podemos all most productively intersect. The analysis culminates in the discover of prefiguration and hegemony’s complementarity, and the need for their confluence in a unified theory.