Ricerc@Sapienza

The setting of urban agendas is analyzed with the aim of interpreting the depoliticization dynamics of issues, actors and actions of urban policies that are caused by economic interests and actors when they use cognitive and normative resources. The main hypothesis is that the initiatives carried out by economic firms and private producers and retailers of knowledge to deal with urban problems have the effect of weakening the political connotation of public actors and actions, if not to replace them.

This introduction presents the aim of a collective effort of a book on depoliticisation and repoliticisation. The meaning of the concepts use by the authors is explained referring to two generations of academic debate in political science and sociology, and even through examples concerning the field of education policies. Depoliticisation is a key to understanding the transformations occurring in the relationships between political and non-political actors who take part in the policy processes.

In the existing literature on depoliticization, the increasing use of law as a medium to tackle social and political issues is deemed to be detrimental to the legitimacy of political processes. Against this view, I argue that this trend – which some scholars call ‘juridification’ – can be key to giving life to new forms of politics. First, I show why juridification is a political more than a legal process. Second, I illustrate recent critiques of the dangers inherent in the particular type of juridification that involves the growing use of rights.