Call for papers for the dossier "Democratization and dedemocratization at the local level: challenges for democratic urban governance in regions and municipalities"

In the last decade, specialized literature has pointed to an accelerated process of dedemocratization in contemporary political systems. Crisis has become a central analytical category of Western democracies, not only reflecting institutional deterioration, but also limiting the capacity to react to practices that could reverse this scenario. The theoretical consensus on democratic fragility highlights the erosion of the relationship between citizens and traditional institutions, often linked to the crisis of the left and the rise of populist and extremist movements. These groups, driven by the widespread dissemination of new information technologies, especially among popular classes, question institutional legitimacy. As a result, democratically elected leaders progressively undermine the formal and informal foundations of the democratic order by weakening mechanisms of social control, delegitimizing political plurality, and strengthening groups that operate outside institutions. This approach, however, focuses attention on national systems, obscuring relevant phenomena that occur at the regional and municipal levels, since local systems are more vulnerable to democratic regression, requiring increased attention to the conditions that sustain or threaten the democratic process in its dimension closest to everyday life. This proposed dossier aims to help overcome this methodological gap. We are interested in receiving papers (completed or ongoing research) that analyze the processes of democratization — and dedemocratization — at the local, regional and municipal scale, identifying the emergence of new actors that dispute power in this space and the resistance they arouse, in addition to the conditions of metropolitan regions and municipalities to implement democratic and participatory governance systems, including challenges for the resumption of participatory institutions (councils, conferences and participatory budgeting), popular and community mobilization at this scale.