Municipalism is the political system of home rule at the local level, such as of a city or town, thus a municipality with its own governing authority as an administrative division of a sovereign state. Municipalism is more than simple support for municipalities in that it supports the primacy of municipalities as a means of enacting political change locally, and by extension grassroots movements to enact political change at higher levels of government. It is an approach to implementing social change which focuses on using the municipality as the vehicle for implementing change.[1] [2]
During the French Revolution, French: sociétés révolutionnaire controlled municipal governments and established alliances between neighboring cities, forming a federation of hundreds of "municipalist republics" in south France known as communalism.[3]
In Europe, municipalism developed in the socialist parties.[4] In 1881 the Federation of the Socialist Workers of France (a predecessor of the modern French Socialist Party) won control of the municipality of Commentry.[1] In subsequent municipal elections, socialist candidates and parties increased the number of municipalities they controlled to 70 in 1892, and then over 100 in 1896. Meanwhile, in Italy, changes in electoral laws enabled the Italian Socialist Party to gain its first municipality, Imola, under the leadership of Andrea Costa.[1]
Libertarian socialist and social ecologist thinker Murray Bookchin promoted what he called libertarian municipalism as the political branch of social ecology, focusing on the development of direct democracy within existing local governance structures.[5] [6]
Bookchin has been one of the influences on a movement known as "new municipalism" in the twenty-first century, exemplified by Barcelona en Comú.[7] [8] [9] [10]