In recent years, certain strands of political theory have championed the common(s) and left populism as promising strategies to bring about radical democratic change, challenging the global rule of neoliberalism. Among others, Chantal Mouffe has advocated the populist path:

left populism, understood as a discursive strategy of construction of the political frontier between ‘the people’ and ‘the oligarchy’, constitutes, in the present conjuncture, the type of politics needed to recover and deepen democracy (Mouffe, 2018, p. 5).

Similar claims have been made by several thinkers and researchers in the name of the commons or the ‘common’. For Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, the ‘common’ should drive the reconstruction of social goods across a variety of domains, becoming ‘the central concept of the organization of society’ (Hardt & Negri, 2012, p. 71). The common refers to nature and products of social labour, such as codes, networks and information, when these are organized as shared resources ‘through the direct participation of citizens’ (Hardt & Negri, 2012, pp. 6, 69–80, 95).

In the same vein, advocates of the digital commons, exemplified by free software and peer-to-peer projects such as Wikipedia, claim that these new commons furnish an effective motor of system change and historical transition. ‘As capitalism faces a series of structural crises, a new social, political and economic dynamic is emerging: peer to peer’ (Bauwens et al., 2019, p. 1).

However, contemporary proponents of the commons and left populism for democratic reform tend to pit them against each other. Mouffe has taken issue thus with the principle of ‘the common’ from the standpoint of radical democracy (Mouffe, 2018, pp. 54–55), while Hardt and Negri, speaking for ‘the common’, have dismissed all types of populism on the grounds of being elitist (Hardt & Negri, 2017, p. 23).

Contesting this trend, the present article advances the thesis that the commons and inclusionary or ‘left’ populism can and should complement each other in counter-hegemonic interventions promoting egalitarian and ecological democracy in our times. After elucidating its key terms, this article will make, first, a theoretical case for the combination of populism and the commons by explaining the political significance of their conjugation. Subsequently, discussion will build an empirical argument for the real possibility and the democratic promises of such a convergence by considering three ways in which populist politics and the commons merge and recompose each other in contemporary social movements, from the Spanish 15M and new municipalism to Occupy and other collective contestation in the Americas over the last two decades. These cases will illustrate how late social activism has effectively blended populist mobilization with the spirit of the commons, engendering a hybrid figure of ‘common populism’ that fosters grassroots processes of radical democratic transformation.

To situate it in the historical conjuncture, the swerve of anti-neoliberal or anti-capitalist politics towards the common(s) and left populism can be put down to a set of historic failures: those of state socialism in both its revolutionary and its reformist variants, as well as the current impotence of old-left political forces, from parties to trade unions and social movements, to amass countervailing power against the neoliberal hegemony. The commons put forward a bottom-up, participatory and egalitarian praxis of change, anchored in existing social needs, aspirations and voluntary community engagement. Left populism breaks likewise with the dogmatic closures and the bureaucratic ossification besetting various currents of the old left -parties, small fractions and trade unions. Appealing to popular majorities, left populism rallies together fragmented social classes against ruling elites, effectively constructing a massive power of political mobilization in our present (see Mouffe, 2018; Srnicek & Williams, 2015).

The political logics of both the common(s) and inclusionary or left populism reconfigure thus historical modes of transformative and contestatory politics. But they do not rule out established oppositional forces such as political parties and trade unions. Leftist populism has been embraced by old and new parties, including SYRIZA and Podemos (see Mouffe, 2018; Katsambekis & Kioupkiolis, 2019). Parties, unions and social movements would be integral to the proposed confluence of populist politics and the commons on the condition that they are indeed reconstructed in tune with the egalitarian, grassroots and non-hierarchical philosophy of the common(s), as the following discussion will suggest.

The commons and populism: conceptual notes and political logics

Given the slippery and contested meaning of both signifiers, some conceptual clarifications are in order.

The ‘commons’ or ‘common-pool resources’ (Ostrom, 1990) or ‘commons-based peer production’ (Benkler & Nissenbaum, 2006) designate goods that are collectively used and produced. There are many different kinds of commons, from natural common-pool resources (fishing grounds, irrigation canals etc.) to common productive assets and digital goods, such as open-source software (Dyer-Witheford, 2012). These diverse common goods are fairly shared and administered in participatory ways by the communities which generate or use them (see Ostrom, 1990, pp. 90–102; Benkler, 2006). The collective terms of the ‘commons’ eschew the logic of both private-corporate and state-public property (Bollier, 2008; Caffentzis, 2013; De Angelis, 2017). In this context, contemporary analysis foregrounds the collective practice of ‘commoning’, that is, of instituting, governing, sharing and fabricating the commons (see Linebaugh, 2008; Dardot & Laval, 2014).

Turning to the notoriously elusive ‘populism’, a consensus has arguably emerged over two defining axes: the centrality of the people as the sovereign source of power, and opposition to elites which have robbed the people of its sovereignty and harm the interests of the majority (see Laclau, 2005; Mudde, 2004; Canovan, 2005; de la Torre, 2015). The ensuing argument sticks to these formal structures of people-centrism and anti-elitism. Beyond them, actual populisms can assume a rich and contradictory variety of features. They can be nationalist, exclusionary, and right-wing or left-leaning, inclusionary and pluralist. They can be top-down, revolving around the persona of a charismatic leader, or leaderless grassroots movements (see Mudde & Kaltwasser, 2013; Weyland, 2017; Grattan, 2016; Mouffe, 2018).

The following argument draws out possible points of convergence between the commons and democratic or ‘left’ populism, which is inclusionary, egalitarian and pluralist (Charalambous & Ioannou, 2020; Garcίa Augustίn, 2020; Grattan, 2016; Katsambekis & Kioupkiolis, 2019; Mouffe, 2018; Prentoulis, 2021). Researchers have disputed the concept of right-wing populism, objecting that this is nativist, authoritarian and exclusionary politics dressed in a thin populist grab (see Stavrakakis et al., 2017; Vergara, 2020a, b; Postel, 2019). This debate is beyond the scope of the present article which engages only with egalitarian inclusionary populism and construes populism as fundamentally people-centred and anti-elitist. In this inclusionary democratic populism, elites are economic/plutocratic and political ones who ‘usurp’ democracy and turn it into an oligarchic regime that radically corrodes political equality. Whether they are arguably populist or not, discourses and politics which pit the people against ‘foreign invaders’, denouncing the collusion of ‘cosmopolitan’ or ‘liberal elites’ with such presumed threats to the nation, are outside our range of reference.

On a different note, interesting parallels can be drawn between what is labelled ‘left populism’ and certain plebeian or socialist strands of republicanism (Muldoon, 2022). In classic and later republican politics, the ‘plebeian’ lower strata of the population regularly challenged elite rule and sought to institutionally control elites in mixed regimes where power was shared between patricians and plebeians (see e.g. McCormick, 2001; Vergara, 2020a). Moreover, several instances of popular agency and struggle from the late nineteenth century onwards can be fruitfully associated with earlier plebeian ‘experiences’, in which people excluded from political life or oppressed by elites rose up to re-claim political power (Breaugh, 2013).

On its present conception, left populism is a broad church which contests elitist disfigurations of democratic politics, advocating reinvigorated or radicalized egalitarian democracies (Grattan, 2016; Katsambekis & Kioupkiolis, 2019; Graeber, 2014). This popular or populist politics is not, and need not, be confined to events of plebeian insurrection or mixed constitutions where the existence of patricians and elite power would be a standing feature of the polity (on the mixed character of republican politics see e.g. McCormick, 2001; Vergara, 2020a). Radical anti-hierarchical egalitarianism is precisely a hallmark of the politics of commoning and the political principle of the commons (see Hardt & Negri, 2012, 2017; Dardot & Laval, 2014; De Angelis, 2017), with which the following argument seeks to build bridges and trace confluences.Footnote 1

To fathom the common ground between populism and the commons one should note, first, their key reference to ordinary people. Populism implies typically an appeal to ‘the common people’ that asserts popular sovereignty against elites (Canovan, 2005, pp. 29, 68). The commons, for their part, are ‘constituted of three main parts: (a) common resources, (b) institutions and (c) the communities (called commoners)’ (Dellenbaugh et al., 2015, p. 13) who self-manage the common goods. Hence, ‘commoners’ or ‘the common people’ lie at the heart of populism and the commons alike. This commonality deepens if we delve into their underlying political logics: the basic modes of thinking and acting that inform populism and the commons beyond their variable contents and structures. The populist logic is defined by the primacy of ‘the people’, popular sovereignty and anti-elitism, while the commons turn on communities of ‘commoners’ sharing common goods and co-deciding their production and distribution on terms of equality, fairness and participation. Hence, the collective self-government of a community of equally enfranchised members makes up the core of both political logics.

Divergences crop up as one veers away from this site of confluence. The division of the community and confrontation with elites are pivotal to populism, while the commons are more focussed around common goods. Traditional forms of the ‘commons of nature’, such as forests, land and irrigation channels, are rooted in local, often rural communities (Ostrom, 1990), while digital commons are frequently global (see Bauwens et al., 2019). In contrast, modern populism tends to inscribe the ‘people’ in the nation-state (see e.g. Canovan, 2005; de la Torre, 2015). Furthermore, populist mobilization often coheres around a personal leader (see Weyland, 2017; Laclau, 2005, p. 100), while the commons are inclined towards participatory decision-making.

Such manifest discrepancies do not erase, however, the cardinal space of overlap. Nor do they raise insurmountable barriers to potential or desirable conjunctions. It is not simply that the communities of ‘commoners’ and the ‘people’ are amenable to a plurality of constructions which may come to identify them, or that struggle against predatory elites is also paramount in the commons since the times of ‘primitive accumulation’ (see Linebaugh, 2008; De Angelis, 2007). It is also that populism and the commons can and, perhaps, should be conjugated to strengthen political projects of commoning and to democratize populism, deepening equal freedom across multiple fields, from the economy and the political system to gender relations, race, ethnicity and environmental conditions.

Deflating oppositions

To clear the theoretical terrain for this political proposition, we can begin by grappling with arguments in contemporary political thought which underscore purported contradictions between the commons and populism. On the one side, Mouffe has questioned the idea that the ‘common’

might provide the main principle of organization of society. The central problem with this celebration of ‘the common’… is that, by postulating a conception of multiplicity that is free from negativity and antagonism, it does not make room for the recognition of the necessarily hegemonic nature of the social order. In the case of Hardt and Negri, their refusal of representation and sovereignty proceeds from an immanentist ontology that is clearly in contradiction with the one that informs my conception of radical democracy (Mouffe, 2018, pp. 54–55).

The central problem with this critique is that it is predicated on the ontology of the common assumed by Hardt and Negri. A diverse array of other advocates and practitioners of the commons do not adhere to the same ontological convictions and emphasize antagonism and hegemony: the perennial struggles of the commons with social and political elites which enforce the rule of capitalist property (Bauwens et al., 2019; Caffentzis, 2013; De Angelis, 2007).

On the opposite side, Hardt and Negri’s verdict against populism rests likewise on shaky foundations. The notion that the people is always a unified body which suppresses multiplicity (Hardt & Negri, 2004, pp. xiv–xv, 106–107) imputes an ahistorical essence to the ‘people’ which is contradicted by their pluralist enactments (see e.g. Grattan, 2016; Garcίa Augustίn, 2020). The same doctrinaire essentialism vitiates Hardt and Negri’s cοntention that all kinds of populism are ‘characterized by a central paradox: constant lip-service to the power of the people but ultimate control and decision-making by a small clique of politicians’ (Hardt & Negri, 2017, p. 23). From the US Populist movement in the late nineteenth century to the 2011–2012 insurgencies of the Spanish 15M, the Greek ‘squares’ and Occupy, a variety of grassroots populist struggles attest to the contrary (see e.g. Grattan, 2016; Aslanidis, 2016; Garcίa Augustίn, 2020).

Since 2020, arguments contrasting leftist populism with the commons have re-emerged in commons-related thinking and research, with a crucial twist. They conclude by pointing to the ‘urgent need’ (Dyer-Witheford, 2020, p. 182) to combine the two, without, however, elaborating on how such a composition can effectively come about (see also Howarth & Roussos, 2022). The following main part of the paper will take up this precise challenge after discussing the reaffirmed oppositions to discount them from within and to point out the pertinence of an intervention which construes populism and the commons as complementary.

Most recently, Howarth and Roussos (2022) reaffirm the claim that commoning practices, as illustrated by solidarity initiatives in Greece, challenge left populism in certain respects. More specifically, commons question populists’ ability to foster radical democracy, to further and deepen freedom, equality and justice across a multiplicity of social relations. Diverse instances of commoning, ranging from workers’ occupied factories to solidarity health clinics, advance co-production, self-organization and distributed leadership. They nurture thus organizational, infrastructural and subjective conditions of radical democracy which are not addressed by left populism. Taking issue with the tendency of post-Marxist theory to conflate the two (Laclau, 2005, 2014; Mouffe, 2018), the argument of Howarth and Roussos (2022) sets out to disentangle radical democracy from populism.

Howarth and Russos dismiss Mouffe and Laclau’s critique of the commons, according to which the neoliberal hegemony cannot be overhauled without representation and antagonistic collective subjects. The authors counter that the logic of commoning offers ‘a more holistic account of radical democratic strategy.... the struggle for a radical democratic transformation is not just about electoral politics, but also about everyday practices:...what we create together, how we relate to each other...’ (Howarth & Roussos, 2022, p. 5).

The ethos of solidarity and collective initiative diffused by initiatives of commoning counteracts the neoliberal logics of individualization and commodification (Howarth & Roussos, 2022, p. 12). Commoning constructs thus an egalitarian and libertarian common sense which carries forward the project of radical democracy. Moreover, the commons turn our gaze to local interactions and dynamics, ‘adding to an exclusive -and often exclusionary- concern with the national, regional and global levels of analysis’ in leftist populism (Howarth & Roussos, 2022, p. 13). Insofar as the populist strategy propounded by Laclau and Mouffe reckons only with the dimension of representative and electoral politics at the national level, it ‘can easily lead to a type of politics that is inextricably bound to the established forms, institutions and legal dispositions of (neo-)liberal democracy’ (Howarth & Roussos, 2022, p. 15). A radical democratic counter-hegemony should bolster, rather, mass grassroots action and self-organization (Howarth & Roussos, 2022, p. 15).

These critical pronouncements on left populism and the intent to divorce it from radical democracy, wedding the latter to the commons, convey the impression that commons and populism clash with each other, forcing an either-or choice (see also Stevenson, 2020). Howarth and Roussos end, however, on a subtler point which is buried under the former. They spotlight the challenges facing commons as a general principle of counter-hegemonic contestation: issues of scalability, the confinement to local contexts, the dispersion and fragmentation of commoning practices on the ground (Howarth & Roussos, 2022, pp. 14–15). They conclude, thus, that ‘Calls for hegemony -the creation of ‘a people’ through a series of equivalential linkages- can potentially be connected to the struggles of the multitude...and the production of a new commonwealth’ (Howarth & Roussos, 2022, p. 15).

Hence, late critical reflections on populism and the commons make a case for an alliance between populism and the commons. But their argument is mainly an afterthought which does not expand on how the transformative strategies of populist hegemony and commoning could be conjoined rather than separated from each other and contrasted.

Forging the links

The foregoing discussion of left populism and the commons indicates substantial grounds for welding alliances between the two. Populist politics and the commons can complement each other as strategic components of a political project radicalizing democracy. By integrating themselves in broad-based popular fronts and political projects, diverse bottom-up initiatives of commoning can coordinate their labours to incline them towards a path of democratic change and to reach out to wider social sectors. In turn, the people-centric and anti-elitist logic of constructing popular subjects should be grounded in grassroots activity and egalitarian collective participation to really empower popular majorities and avoid defeat by established forces.

Since 2015, two leftist populist projects, SYRIZA and Podemos, have confirmed this typical experience of the twentieth century. Vertical organizations, directed by a central leadership in a top-down manner, may achieve electoral gains and even accede to state power. However, they will fail to overturn the status quo and initiate drastic democratic reform if they are not backed up by massive popular engagement in the making of key political decisions and their realization. It is such a popular ‘ownership’ of a counter-hegemonic project which could impel and buttress populist governments to face up to the international forces of neoliberal hegemony. In the Greek case, when SYRIZA bowed to the concerted pressures of the EU and IMF, an alternative ‘Plan B’ could have been drawn up and implemented only if it were collectively owned by wider sectors of Greek society. A popular majority could transform itself through the active transformation of its material circumstances, assuming responsibility for the alternative project, taking part in implementing it and coping with its consequences (see Prentoulis, 2021; Papadatos and Laskos, 2020).

More broadly, the democratic promises of egalitarian populism cannot be made good without grassroots popular power. The exercise of power from outside or from above is in principle at odds with the collective self-government of the people on terms of equal freedom. Crucially, it prevents ‘ordinary people’ from honing their own capacities for self-direction, perpetuating instead dependence on personal leaders at the top. Accordingly, inherent tensions trouble the relations between ‘progressive’ top-down leadership and egalitarian social emancipation, particularly when populist leaders take office and gain command over the organized forces of a centralized state.

The strains in question became glaringly apparent in a recent example of powerful populist rule with strong democratizing pretences: Chavismo in Venezuela (1999–2013). The concentration of power in the person of the president, and Hugo Chávez’s authoritative direction of the bloc of forces assembled around him, inhibited social progress towards self-organization and the self-empowerment of the people as the social movement relied on the ‘head’ rather than develop its own initiatives (Azzellini, 2015; López Maya, 2015). In grassroots communities themselves, the tight entanglement with the state bred also clientelist relationships and a growing dependence on the state and the leader, which undercut the growth of self-reliance and self-rule (see Stavrakakis et al., 2017).

Moreover, in every political process which composes grassroots participation with hierarchical forces, when conflicts break out between the two directions of decision, the top-down and the bottom-up, the central nodes of power and ‘vertical’ leaders can deploy their organized force or their unabashed power politics to overwhelm or co-opt cacophonous and poorly coordinated multitudes (Dangl, 2010; Zibechi, 2010). This well-known drama has been vividly replayed in the evolution of the Spanish party Podemos in 2014–2016, if we need to rehearse historical lessons (Kioupkiolis, 2016).

In recent times, egalitarian democratic movements have also failed to accrue the required stamina and structure to carry out systemic renovation. But the ‘vertical’ solutions of the past—centralized parties, governments and leaders—could hardly redeem the potentials of progressive populism towards greater freedom and equality without sustained popular involvement and alternative commons enacting decentralized grassroots democracy. Commoning can further contribute to the making of freer and more equal worlds by promoting ‘shared interests, solidarities and desires around which to build new economic imaginaries and perhaps, eventually, new institutional infrastructures’ (Zielke et al., 2021, p. 13).

On the other hand, contemporary theories and practices of commoning are marred by a strategic void at their very core (see Kioupkiolis, 2019). Lack of political awareness or dubious presumptions about historical change have resulted in a dearth of strategic thought and politics to expand transformative commons. Crucially, there is little engagement with what emerges as the strategic question for democratic renewal in our times: how to configure a collective agency that would commit itself to a large-scale project of structural renewal. Today, collective actors who would strive for radical democratic alternatives are either missing or they are fleeting and dispersed minorities. Social heterogeneity, precaritization, individualism and massive disaffection with politics are pervasive forces perpetuating the status quo and diluting or co-opting social contestation (see e.g. De Angelis, 2007, pp. 3–10; Wright, 2018, p. 56). Therefore, to generate powerful collective agency and overcome self-defeating dispersion, what is called for is a cogent understanding of how collective subjects are constituted in ways which can attain massive coalescence, social empowerment, and commitment to a coherent orientation which confronts inequalities in all their structures to effect social transformation.

There is a fundamental reason for the scant concern with political subjectivation and organization in much commons-oriented thought and action. Proponents of digital commons and commoners with Marxist leanings, such as Hardt and Negri and De Angelis, subscribe to ‘structural’ and socio-centric theories of historical transition. According to them, political revolutions occur in the aftermath of structural-technological innovations and mutations in the social relations of production (Bauwens et al., 2019, pp. 50–52; Hardt & Negri, 2017, pp. xv–xvi, 279, 290–295; De Angelis, 2017). The primacy accorded to economic-productive activity around the commons and the emphasis on actual initiatives of commoning tend to underrate the part of intellectual, cultural and political agency in inducing paradigm shifts. This perspective also fails to catch sight of political action beyond formal political institutions and revolutions or mass movements.

Crucially, the structural and socio-centric perspectives deflect attention away from the conscious political activity that must unfold within any social space, including the economy and technology, to swerve subjectivities and social practices towards enhanced democracy and game-changing objectives. Without such activity, the actual grip of neoliberal capital on both the activity and the minds of commoners is likely to maintain its hold (P2P Foundation, 2017). Cultivating a new social imaginary around the commons is thus a precondition for existing commoners to embrace goals and modes of organization which would propel the transition towards a commons-based society. Propagating a commons-centric imaginary and re-edifying subjectivity are quintessential political endeavours which call for a committed collective actor.

Τhe significance of integrating contemporary commons—such as decentralized open science and technology, small-scale communal agriculture or networked ‘fab labs’—in wider political contexts to link and scale them up has been acknowledged lately in relatively few quarters (McCarthy, 2019, p. 11; Zielke et al., 2021). Without such counter-hegemonic framing, ‘commoning risks becoming an identity-based, particularist endeavour that fails to construct a broad enough social base to constitute a genuinely democratic counter-hegemonic alternative’ (Zielke et al., 2021, p. 12).

It is precisely in this respect that leftist populism furnishes a crucial supplement: a theory and practice of welding together a broad-based popular subjectivity animated by new political imaginaries and projects (see Laclau, 2005, 2014; Gerbaudo, 2017; Grattan, 2016). The collective identity of the ‘people’ is deeply ingrained in democracy by its constitution. Moreover, a certain logic of populist mobilization which rallies a community of diverse forces against the same culprit, located in the ‘elites’ or ‘the establishment’, has also become widespread under late modern conditions of plurality and fragmentation (see Mouffe, 2018; Srnicek & Williams, 2015, pp. 158–161). Through this antagonistic populism, fractured and heterogeneous social classes which are variably affected by neoliberal hegemony can come together as the united people of the subaltern against a privileged minority.

Hence, making a ‘people’ the ground of collective subjectivity is currently a proposition put forward not only by a wide range of leftist theorists, but also by social movements and activists (see e.g. Srnicek & Williams, 2015, pp. 155–174, White, 2016, p. 35, Smucker, 2017, pp. 241–247). The mobilizational force of grassroots ‘leaderless’ populism, allying people from different backgrounds against a common enemy, has been empirically corroborated in data-based analyses of the late Yellow Vest movement in France (2018- to date; see Lüders et al., 2021).

Refuting arguments in political thought which pit inclusionary populism against the commons, the following survey will indicate the real possibility and the innovative potential of their confluence by delving into three areas of effective overlap: democratic populist movements nourishing the commons as diverse collective goods and activities; the same movements reconfiguring populist politics in line with the political logic of the commons; new municipalism in Spain. The three critical snapshots of actual confluences sketch the rudiments of commons-based popular politics that aims for a reinvigorated democracy and empowered people.

Commoning populism: movements pursuing common goods

Whereas ‘populism’ in the vernacular and in academic jargon calls to mind demagogic leaders who make popular promises to the ‘masses’, by an interesting twist of fate recent years have also witnessed the re-emergence of populist social movements (Mudde, 2017, p. 40).

Research in recent ‘bottom-up’ populism, most notably the ‘Arab Spring’, the Spanish 15M or ‘Indignados’, the Greek ‘squares movement’ and the North American Occupy in 2011–2012, has been growing over the last years (Aslanidis, 2016; Gerbaudo, 2017; Grattan, 2016). These mobilizations display affinities with populist movements of the past, such as the US Populists and the Russian Narodniki in the nineteenth century. But their practices were also animated by a distinctive commitment to the commons, integrating in populist contestation the political rationality and horizontalist decision-making of the commons.

To begin with, the populist character of the Spanish 15M, the Greek squares movement and the North American Occupy in 2011–2012 is unmistakable. ‘Democracia Real Ya’ was the aggregation of groups and blocs which, in March 2011, made the public call on people to take to the streets of Spain on the 15th of May, the birthday of the Indignados or 15M as the movement came to call itself. Their summon makes the prototypical populist gestures: (a) they identify with the people, the democratic sovereign. This is represented as an excluded and repressed subject, reclaiming sovereign rights; (b) they draw an antagonistic frontier between this people and elites, claiming that the elites have usurped popular sovereignty; (c) they press a series of demands which are made equivalent through their association with people and democracy (Manifesto ‘Democracia Real Ya’, 2012; for these features of populism, see Laclau, 2005, pp. 74, 81, 94, 98; Mudde, 2004, p. 543).

The populist tone is pronounced in the keywords and the mottos of the encampments, the assemblies and their protests. They step forward as the immense majority at the lower end of social hierarchy, asserting their common, popular character beyond any left/right divide. ‘We are the 99%’; ‘This is not a question of left against right, but a question of those below and those above’ (Movimiento 15M, 2013). Second, they rise against political and financial elites, denouncing the depletion of democracy: ‘They don’t represent us’; ‘We are not merchandise in the hands of politicians and bankers’. Finally, they express a set of equivalent aspirations to transform ‘the system’ around the key idea of democracy. ‘System error; restart, please’; ‘Iceland is the way’ (Movimiento 15M, 2013).

In a similar vein, the different Occupy assemblies and networks encompassed a multiplicity of people bearing diverse ideas and making different demands (Graeber, 2014; Klein & Marom, 2012). Yet they all identified with the Occupy name and the 99% vs. 1% frame of meaning, and they coalesced around the shared collection of aims and practices designated by the signifier OWS (Marom in Klein & Marom, 2012).

Likewise, the crowds which assembled in Athens’ Syntagma Square from May to August 2011 spoke in the name of ‘the people’. They challenged dominant elites, austerity policies and structures of power with vast crowds of human bodies and networked actions. They voiced a longing for deep democratic change by evoking ‘real democracy’ and ‘global justice’ in an attempt to put together broad coalitions for large-scale transformation (Giovanopoulos & Mitropoulos, 2011, pp. 274–340; Papapavlou, 2015; Prentoulis & Thomassen, 2013).

Turning to the second component, this mass populism-in-action engaged in diverse commoning practices, blending populism with the commons. Beginning with the making-common of space itself, the public sphere of squares and streets was managed by an open and diverse community of city dwellers and newcomers organized in free assemblies (Stavrides, 2016, pp. 165–171, 177). Moreover, in these common places, a wide range of specific common goods was offered by people in the assemblies and the encampments that were formed. Participants in the Occupy movement shared food, media, legal aid, medical aid, libraries, art, work and general care for reproductive needs (Grattan, 2016, pp. 160–169). Hence the commons were ‘at work in the desire to “Occupy everything!”’ (Grattan, 2016, p. 168). The 2011 Greek squares’ movement in Athens set up commons around art, work (a time bank) and various goods (through an exchange bazaar). These were sustained and diversified in the aftermath of the mobilization, extending to the establishment of ‘social clinics’, ‘solidarity schools’, food collectives etc. (Roussos, 2019; Varvarousis et al., 2021). Likewise, the 2011 ‘acampadas’ and their direct offshoots in Spain promoted digital ‘open source’ commons as well as commons of care and material reproduction which provided food, affective support and sanitation (Fominaya, 2020, pp. 129–130, 134–139; Varvarousis et al., 2021).

In these instances, the conjunction of populist mobilization with the commons grounds populism in grassroots decision-making and practices of solidarity and sharing. These both strengthen egalitarian bottom-up democracy—the direct power of the people—in populist politics, and recreate social bonds of collaboration and mutual aid, effectively empowering ordinary people in political decision-making and material life.

The same invigorating confluence has occurred in several environmental movements in the Americas, among others. This pro-commons environmental populism is a critical development in times of climate change calling for localized action, broad-based engagement and global policies. To illustrate, during the ‘Water War’ in Cochabamba (1999–2000), the heterogeneous coalition of the ‘Coordinator for the Defense of Water and Life’ allied factory workers, environmentalists, neighbourhood associations and other people in a common battle against the privatization of water services in Cochabamba. The coalition outlined an understanding of ‘the people’ as those lacking access to natural resources and political power (Andreucci, 2019). The popular front combined a radical democratic component—‘the revendication of direct, popular democracy’—with a commons component—‘the social reappropriation of the common good’ (Oscar Olivera, member of the Coordinadora, quoted in Andreucci, 2019, p. 627).

Τhe battle against privatization was successful. But the Morales-MAS government, which eventually took power riding on the wave of this counter-hegemonic ferment, did not live up to broader democratic aspirations. Still, the populist agitation around eco-democracy was grassroots and crafted its own collective identity. This was powerfully articulated with the communal self-governance of natural resources and a subaltern class base, giving rise to a distinct figure of commons-based populism vying for democratic hegemony (Andreucci, 2019, pp. 628–631).

Commoning populism: people commoning the political

Late grassroots populism does not relate to common goods only as external resources and accessory activities. It has injected them into the core of its political engagement, reshaping populist politics in tune with the egalitarian logic of co-deciding and co-creating that informs commoning and deepens democracy. The insurgent citizenship of the Spanish 15M in 2011 (and the Greek squares and Occupy in 2011, among others) can serve again to illuminate this point. This movement embodied a hybrid figure of ‘common populism’ which makes political decision-making and initiative accessible to ordinary people on a footing of equality, turning thus politics into a common enterprise of laypeople in their diversity. This ‘common populism’ stands in principle opposed to hegemonic populist politics whereby the ‘masses’ are commanded from the top by individual leaders, while collective identity tends to be homogenized and undifferentiated.

Departing significantly from populist politics which concentrate power at the top, 15M populism tellingly illustrates how ‘common populism’ sets out to revisit the logics of leadership, collective identity and representation. These are subordinated to the political logic of the common(s) which can renew and further democratic politics by promoting horizontality, egalitarianism, collective self-government and plurality in common.

Centralized leadership and vertical hierarchies are typical of populist politics (see e.g. Laclau, 2000, pp. 208–210; Weyland, 2017) In the case of 15M, too, collective activity and initiative, a type of common leadership exercised by the movement itself, were concentrated in the squares of Puerta de Sol in Madrid and Plaça de Catalunya in Barcelona. Informal individual leaders arose, also, due to differences in political know-how, in communicative skills and the division of labour among spokespersons and moderators (Razquin Mangado, 2017, pp. 132–134, 324). But organized political leadership and elected leaders, a standing separation of directors and directed, were ruled out as a matter of principle, while decisive power resided in the general assemblies (Castells, 2012, pp. 113, 129).

The popular assemblies convened in central public sites in 2011 across Spain made up participatory spaces of collective decision-making, opening political power to all ordinary citizens and contesting the rule of political and economic elites (Dhaliwal, 2012, pp. 265–266). The movement’s opposition to representative politics and the dominance of the markets went hand in hand with an endeavour to involve ‘normal and common people’ (Dhaliwal, 2012, p. 265), pulling down barriers to participation in political deliberation. Occupied squares were redesigned thus into ‘spaces to do politics without politicians...spaces without money, leaders and merchants’ (Dhaliwal, 2012, p. 263), available to ordinary citizens, poor, non-experts and socially marginalized people (Thorburn, 2017, pp. 91–92).

Ιn effect, through its wide network of assemblies in public squares and neighbourhoods that was spread all over the country, 15M populism configured political agency itself as a commons, making political decision and action a collective activity of common people. This commoning of political practice and government was a deliberate objective pursued in many interlocked and mutually amplifying ways. In addition to the openness of public space and collective decision-making itself, 15M assemblies in 2011 laid down specific rules, roles and processes through which they consensually made decisions in common and laboured to reduce actual asymmetries of power. Hence, they recognized only individuals and no groups as equal participants in the procedures of political deliberation. They moderated discussions. They limited the time of speaking in assemblies to distribute it more widely, and they used lot to allocate the time available for speaking. They reached for consensus or majoritarian decisions after protracted internal debate, facilitating the transformation of preferences and refraining from overruling minorities. This ‘internal democracy’ was enlivened by a practical culture which favours symmetrical communication, transparency, and consideration for minorities (Dhaliwal, 2012; Fominaya, 2020; Razquin Mangado, 2017).

Moreover, in representative political functions that reappeared in the assemblies—the posts of spokespersons, discussion moderators and special working-groups—binding mandates and alternation were enforced to keep the power concentrated in such functions accountable and resistant to long-term appropriation by particular actors. In all these ways, the political agency of ‘the people’ claimed by assemblies and encampments became freely accessible to the power of any and all rather than an affair of elites and representative rulers (Lorey, 2014, pp. 50–55; Razquin Mangado, 2017, pp. 178–179, 270).

Decision-making in open assemblies of the multitude emerges thus as the key organisational scheme through which contemporary collective action strives ‘to common’ political leadership in the sense of taking a political initiative and leading the way to change. The 2011 democratic insurrections, from the Arab Spring to the Spanish squares and Occupy, highlight the political salience of the assembly form (Graeber, 2014; Thorburn, 2017). Alternative modes of collective leadership have been enacted in recent years also through distributed leadership, institutional devices, an ethos of ‘leading by obeying’, and feminized leadership foregrounding care and issues of reproduction in everyday life (Castells, 2012, pp. 45, 120–121; Harris, 2003, pp. 317–321, Aguirre Rojas, 2009, pp. 31–32, 94–95, Forti & Russo Spena, 2019, pp. 37–39, 98–99). Such schemes have surfaced in multiple sites of action and intervention, from digital networks to municipalist politics, sketching out the rudiments of another populism which renders leadership a collective process directed in common by ordinary people in their diversity.

Turning to the other pivot of historical populism, popular unity—‘el pueblo unido’ according to the famous song of the ‘Nueva Canción Chilena’ movement—15M politics was again democratically subversive and transformative, pluralizing populism. The unity of its people did not rest upon actual or desired uniformity but rather on the affirmation of plurality and openness beyond fixed ideologies. These are pronounced traits which mark out digital commons, in particular, giving rise thus to a form of ‘open-source’ populism (Grattan, 2016, pp. 163–164).

Spanning diverse fields, from ‘open-source’ software (the GNU/Linux operating system) to freely shared music and open online encyclopaedias (Wikipedia), the new digital commons which have flourished on the Internet build new schemes of community and collective self-governance which overflow the boundaries of closely knit communities and face-to-face interaction. Digital networks introduce more democratic modes of sociality whereby co-operation on equal terms is coupled with enhanced individual autonomy and creativity (Benkler, 2006, pp. 117–120; Bauwens et al., 2019).

Τhe popular unity and identity constructed by late populist mobilizations such as 15M is pluralist and ‘open-source’ in ways akin to these digital commons. The very composition of 15M assemblies and encampments became gradually very diverse, encompassing a multiplicity of young and old people without set ideological positions (Castells, 2012, p. 115; Huguet, 2012, p. 32). More significantly, radical inclusivity, the non-partisan call-out to all ordinary people to join, the openness to plurality beyond the left/right divide, respect for differences and minorities were core values of what 15M came to stand for (Sitrin & Azzellini, 2014, p. 135; Razquin Mangado, 2017, pp. 260, 270).

Common slogans and hallmark practices configured a shared frame and a collective identity. But this was a practical and plural identity, under collective construction, leaving ‘the people’ an open call to be reframed by the diverse participatory assemblies. Slogans and processes were nearly empty signifiers. Their political contents were filled out by participants through an evolving collaborative practice, in which differences interacted, clashed and sought to generate a collective outcome acceptable to all (Sitrin & Azzellini, 2014, pp. 135–136, 138–140).

Such practical identities facilitate forms of convergence which nurture plurality and openness. A heterogeneous assemblage of agents and practices can more easily cohere around concrete objectives and revisable co-construction rather than around group identities and full-blown political programmes or ideologies. Acceptance of empirical ‘messiness’ and hybridity, a flexible approach oriented to concrete problem-solving and a reluctance to take universal, dogmatic positions make up an open-minded and pragmatic outlook which can ‘depolarize’ strategic choices, supporting broad and diverse assemblages in the interests of the many (de Sousa Santos, 2008, pp. 266–267). Such pluralist identities and practical, open communities are characteristic of both digital commons and contemporary grassroots populism. Hence, ‘open-source’ or ‘common’ populism can advance the equal freedom of the people in their diversity.

Commoning populism: urban people commoning the city

‘New municipalism’, a global drift encompassing several cities across continents (Pisarello and Comisiόn Internacional, 2018, p. 10), is another hinge point linking late grassroots populism and the commons in ways which intend to radicalize democracy. Its Spanish chapter and, particularly, the citizen platform ‘Barcelona en Comú’ which governed the city of Barcelona from 2015 to 2023 stand out internationally as a signature instance of new municipalist politics in which a variant of bottom-up populism converges with urban commons.

Since 2015, the ‘cities of change’ of the new municipalist wave have imagined themselves as a democratic response to present circumstances of steep inequalities, elite rule, renewed patriarchy, social expulsions, climate change and civilization crisis. Starting to rise in 2014 across different localities in Spain and walking in the footsteps of the 15M movement, political municipalism reclaimed the city as the heartland of citizens’ democracy, weaving relations of mutual support in everyday life through ‘proximity’ and ‘from below’ (Colau, 2018, pp. 193–196).

Several activists and advocates have already noted how these municipalist projects have the potential of mobilizing people while championing a strong, participatory democracy ‘where ordinary people actually have a say’ (Roth, 2021, p. 69). But some have misleadingly opposed new municipalism to leftist populism (Roth, 2021, pp. 68–69), obfuscating the populist moment in the former.

In effect, the municipalist venture in Spain bore the populist DNA of 15M, its people-centrism which focuses on ‘citizens’ and democracy for the many, along with its progressive anti-elitism (Martínez & Wissink, 2021). But new municipalism started out from a certain diagnosis of the political conjecture after the 15M insurgency, which failed to reshuffle the decks of power. Dominant institutions remained largely impervious to demands for popular sovereignty, a more equitable distribution of wealth and the protection of welfare rights. Hence the turn from mobilizations to ‘the electoral’, which took a municipalist inflection in 2014–2015. The aim was to reach out to all citizens affected by the crisis, to ‘win the city’ and to translate the politics vindicated by civic spaces and activism into electoral majorities and local institutional policies (Forti & Russo Spena, 2019, pp. 21–22, 29).

In 2014–2015, ‘municipalist platforms’ or ‘confluences’ were put together to contest the May 2015 local elections across Spain. Confluences were alliances between parties, movements, civic groups and non-organized citizens (Junqué et al., 2018, pp. 72–73, 80). After the 2015 elections, these citizens’ platforms became involved in administration as coalition or minority governments in five of the largest cities in Spain: Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Zaragoza and A Coruña (Monterde, 2019, pp. 29–34). Barcelona en Comú, led by Ada Colau, was prominent among them. It was established in 2014, and it won the local elections of May 2015 obtaining 25, 2% of the vote and 11 councillors (Forti & Russo Spena, 2019, pp. 45–47). In 2019, it came second with 20, 71% and 10 seats, forming eventually a minority government.

The two electoral programmes of the Barcelona municipalist platform open a window into its distinctive blend of citizen-centred populism with a pro-commons discourse. ‘Citizens’ (‘ciudadanos’), citizens as a whole (‘ciudadanía’) and ‘persons’ (‘personas’/‘persones’ in Catalan) occupy the centre stage in both programmes (see Barcelona en Comú, 2015, pp. 7, 14; Barcelona en Comú, 2019, p. 23). The 2015 programme was construed from the outset as a ‘citizens’ mandate’ (Barcelona en Comú, 2015, p. 7). In 2019, the ‘Future Barcelona’ was introduced as a ‘radically democratic city’ in which ‘citizens as a whole (‘ciutadania’ in Catalan) have the ultimate word’ (Barcelona en Comú, 2019, p. 4).

In the typical style of anti-elitist populism, the platform denounced also the ‘unfair policies’ which forced the most vulnerable population to assume the cost of the crisis (Barcelona en Comú, 2015, p. 19). The political object of Barcelona en Comú [BnC] was thus to establish an alternative to the ‘devastating policies imposed by the State and European Commission’ (Barcelona en Comú, 2015, p. 14). The 2019 programme confirms this anti-elitism: ‘In the Future Barcelona there is no room for lobbies and speculators, for oligopolies and major [economic] powers. It is a city made by people [‘persones’] and for the people [‘persones’]’ (Barcelona en Comú, 2019, p. 23).

Recent research into BnC politics further attests to its populist inclinations (Sintes-Olivella et al., 2020). An analysis of Ada Colau’s communicative style as mayor of Barcelona indicates that in 2015–2017 her political discourse in social media revolves around the construction of ‘the people’ with whom she identifies. She also employs an anti-system language against big corporations, banks, traditional parties and elite political actors. The anti-elitist component (9–21% in her posts), however, is not as salient as the ‘inclusionary populist’ (Sintes-Olivella et al., 2020, p. 203). She advocates for ordinary people, foregrounding her ‘leadership’ and speaking out in defence of disadvantaged social groups. Hence her concern with the right to housing, immigration, poverty and women’s rights (Sintes-Olivella et al., 2020, pp. 204–205).

At the same time, this municipalist populism identified with ‘commons’ and ‘commoning’ from its birthdate, inscribing them in its very name: ‘Barcelona in Common’ (Barcelona en Comú in Catalan). New municipalism set out to foster commoning amply and in depth, ranging from the political process itself to the city at large. The attempt at ‘commoning politics’ started out from the collective construction of the electoral programme that took place since the second semester of 2014 in different spaces of the municipal platform and in neighbourhood assemblies. These were open to all citizens who wanted to participate to effectively build a ‘citizens’ mandate’ (Barcelona en Comú, 2015, p. 7). The political vision broadened into a transformation of city’s government and urban life into collective activities directed by the body of citizens themselves (Barcelona en Comú, 2015, p. 14; see also Baird et al., 2018, pp. 49–51).

In its own structure, the municipalist confluence in 2015–2019 was committed to internal democracy and the facilitation of political participation. Its coordinating body consisted of representatives of all groups and spaces of the platform. Its members usually rotated on a regular basis and were subject to the highest authority of the whole community of platform members. To lift civic participation, the organizational model was anchored in neighbourhood assemblies and everyday life. Multiple spaces and modalities of participation and decision-making were introduced, both ‘presencial’ and digital, so that more people could get involved (Junqué et al., 2018, pp. 72–75).

In its first term in city government, BnC rolled out a wide set of specific policies which effectively implemented the new municipalist agenda of commoning politics and the city. To step up civic involvement in decision-making, the BnC government launched the digital platform ‘Decidim Barcelona’, which enables citizens to submit proposals for the city and to collectively decide on them. Furthermore, people took part in the co-production of public policies, from their design to their implementation, through ‘Neighborhood Plans’ and ‘multi-consultations’. Effective control over the administration was increased by monitoring the ethical conduct of civil servants and by enhancing the transparency of financial administration (Bonet i Martί, 2018, pp. 114–115).

Beyond the conduct of government itself, new municipalism has sponsored the commoning of public goods and services through new institutional frameworks. Since 2015, BnC’s administration has transferred municipal goods to communities for the realization of social and cultural projects. It has enacted the community management of public buildings, services and spaces, and it has striven for the ‘remunicipalization’ of basic services. ‘Remunicipalization’ included the establishment of a new energy company and the ongoing struggle to recuperate the privatized water company of Barcelona. The city drafted, furthermore, the ‘Citizen Assets program for community use and management’ which regulates civic access to municipal goods, legalizing and protecting squatted social centres (Forné et al., 2018, pp. 142–145; Martínez & Wissink, 2021, pp. 11–14).

Epilogue

The political logics of commoning and democratic inclusionary populism are not identical. Self-managing and sharing particular goods or ‘resources’ are more salient in the commons. Anti-elitism is typically more prominent in populist politics, in which top-down leadership may substitute for the actual self-rule of the people. But in both theory and practice, inclusionary populism and the commons do converge over the democratic empowerment of ‘ordinary people’ who reclaim or effectively exercise their sovereignty in governing the polity or specific communities and goods for the common benefit.

In political terms, this combination is crucial for building up power and movements for egalitarian democratic change. Populism can supply the political strategy which is missing in the commons: a powerful strategy for rallying together social forces, for constituting a new collective subject for change, for winning over the hearts and the minds of popular majorities, for imbuing activity with a conscious direction. Without this strategic supplement of populist politicization, the diverse practices of commoning are likely to remain dispersed and with little political thrust. On the other hand, populist politics without effective participation and self-government at the grassroots is likely to reduce itself to a top-down process and a thin formula or rhetoric of the people without popular agency.

Late social movements in Europe and the Americas, among other areas, show how grassroots egalitarian populism can be effectively conjugated with the commons—diverse common goods and politics itself as a common activity of laypeople—to spread and defend the commons, to democratise populism and to strive for a broader renewal of contemporary democracies in crisis. Such common populist activism has been successful in several instances of struggle, but it has yet to deliver a wider socio-political transformation. However, the political projects and logics of ‘common populism’ could help to trace the lineaments of promising strategies for wide-ranging democratic reconstruction in an egalitarian and ecological key.