Political participation and commons: The case study of the “Water Common Good” referendum

Abstract

Purpose

The crisis of confidence in political institutions has become a phenomenon with uniform trends across Europe. Nevertheless, citizens still express interest in politics and are engaged in political and social activities. What are the issues that still motivate them to go to the polls and/or engage in non-institutional forms of political participation? The case study of the Italian referendum in favour of the “Water Common Good” (June 2011) is particularly appropriate to explore these issues and motivations. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper proposes a multidisciplinary common good’s framework focusing on its social and political challenges. As the referendum succeeded also thanks to the rhetorical effectiveness of the “common good” epithet, a survey on 120 Roman citizens who voted in favour of the “Water Common Good” was conducted. The hypothesis was that the referendum success could be associated with social needs to defend strategic resources (“commons”) by actively participating in the deliberations on them. A quantitative non-probabilistic research was carried out face-to-face, through a standardized and semi-structured questionnaire.

Findings

The main findings refer to the leading role that distrust in political institutions, civil society activism and common good rhetorical effectiveness played.

Originality/value

The most original contribution of this paper is the explanatory and stipulative definition of common good, which reduces the semantic uncertainty of the concept including common sense meanings. This novel conceptualization has practical implications in policy terms, as it explicates the social need to change the way of conceiving the relationship with strategic resources and decision-making processes concerning them.

Citation

Belotti, F. (2015), "Political participation and commons: The case study of the “Water Common Good” referendum", International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, Vol. 35 No. 9/10, pp. 649-665. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJSSP-10-2014-0093