Search

According to mainstream theory, citizens and among them young people in particular are disenchanted and increasingly skeptical of representative democracy and traditional political organization. Indeed, the decline in conventional participation is accompanied by a process of the reinvention of politics, characterized by the spread of unconventional participation and innovative approaches and repertoires of action. New practices configure themselves as informal, non-institutionalized, horizontal, increasingly di-vorced from traditional collective social cleavages, but personally meaningful and individually oriented. Finally, politics also divorced from long terms projects, as the future folds back into the present, it is ab-sorbed within it and it is consumed before it can really be conceived. The present appears as the only di-mension available for the definition of choices, a fully-fledged existential horizon which includes and sub-stitutes the future and the past. The acceleration of social life and its various times renders these two di-mensions ever more evanescent as reference points for political action. Yet despite all of this, individuali-zation and presentification do not equate with depoliticization. In a con-text shaped by the privatization of social and political experience and by a presentification of life-projects, the new forms of mobilization protagonized by youth can be analyzed as the search for a collective project by means of articulating and integrating diversity – as well as a way to express a deep form of indignation. In this monographic issue of Partecipazione e Conflitto we have recollected contribution which analyze the reinvention of participation – in direction of an alter-activism - in the age of individualization and presentification,.

Con questo fascicolo prende avvio il progetto editoriale di Partecipazione e Conflitto. Un progetto ambizioso che nasce dall’esigenza di creare uno spazio di approfondimento autonomo dedicato allo studio delle dinamiche di trasformazione dei sistemi politici contemporanei, con un focus specifico sull’analisi della partecipazione e dei conflitti politici e sociali che le caratterizzano. Una rivista non solo sulla partecipazione, ma di studi politici e sociali che riconosce una centralità agli aspetti della partecipazione, nella loro intrinseca ambivalenza, e nel loro legame costitutivo con le dinamiche di conflitto (...).

gli autori descrivono e analizzano sulla base dei dati di una ricerca empirica il rapporto tra Europa, Unione Europea e movimenti per una giustizia globale.

Multilevel Governance and Political Participation: An Introduction - The introduction draws a picture of the link between multi-level governance and transnational social movement. The Authors moves from the description of governance polity as a system of political opportunities to social mobilization, then they describe both local and global dimensions, regarding as a field of conflict and legitimacy. The fourth paragraph develops a comparative analysis on two alternative Europe, the one from above (the institutional building suffering a democratic deficit), the latter from below (the process of collective learning built up by Social Forums). In the end, the last paragraph describes the guidelines of the whole Issue. Keywords: Multilevel Governance; Social Movements; Europe; Globalization; Public Sphere

This article is available on the website of the old publisher Franco Angeli ( http://www.francoangeli.it/riviste/sommario.asp?IDRivista=152 )