Neo-Liberalism and its Alternatives in Europe’s Peripheral Middle Sized Cities: a Comparative Analysis of the Building of a Political Capacity

The issue of if and how local governments and societies can imagine alternatives to pro-growth urban development models is a long-standing one in urban and regional studies (Logan and Swanstrom, 1991; Imbroscio, 1997). However, the political space for building alternatives and political - economy diversity to neo-liberal globalisation is considered rather limited (Stone, 1993 ; Darel, 2005). Notwithstanding the pervasive influence of neo-liberal beliefs in the last years alternative urban policies have emerged The notion of “progressive” politics – associated to the so-called new municipalist turn in Europe - has been widely used in order to qualify a wide range of political and social processes advocating for political agendas and policies that prioritize the needs of workers and citizens over corporate demands, deliver social justice outcomes and promote citizen participation into policy-making processes (Schrock, 2015; Russell, 2019). However, these categories cannot be taken for granted, since they are culturally and historically determined. In this paper we will analyse the processes leading to the emergence of alternatives to pro-market and neo-liberal urban policies by paying particular attention to how social actors make use of these categories in their discourses (Archer, 2003) and engage in processes of change. We will build on a comparative analysis of the social and political processes for the building of alternative strategies to neo-liberal globalization in two middle-sized cities in Europe’s peripheries historically characterized by a state-driven industrialization, Lubin (Lower-Silesia) in Poland and Brindisi (Apulia) in Southern Italy. The Polish political context is currently characterized by democratic backsliding with the consolidation of Law and Justice party, which is also particularly suspicious of the autonomy of cities. In this scenario we will analyse how the mayor of Lubin (centre-right) has tried to build an agenda and local policies which are conceived as an alternative to both market oriented urban policies and social policies of the national populist party. In the case of Brindisi, after years of corrupted municipal government and inertia a shift in the developmentalist narrative focused on the lack of growth and private investments has occurred with the election of a new left-wing mayor linked to environmental activism. His political manifesto “Brindisi common good” aims to translate into policies an alternative to neo-liberal growth. In the two cities we witnessed the emergence of “people”/ “community” oriented urban agendas. However, these terms are also at the centre of controversy and meaning battles among social actors (elected officials, experts, union’s and social movements activists) and are used on both side of the ideological political spectrum. Our ambition it to sketch out a categorization of how different core-policy-beliefs are linked to specific policy-problems and policy-solutions (Mehta, 2011) and to contribute widely on the literature on the building of a capacity of action by analysing the social supports to these political projects. The paper is based on original empirical material collected in the framework of an on-going research (30 semi-structured interviews and documentary research) in the two case-studies.