{"id":4086,"date":"2025-03-17T09:30:51","date_gmt":"2025-03-17T09:30:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.manchester.ac.uk\/mancept\/?page_id=4086"},"modified":"2025-09-02T11:54:50","modified_gmt":"2025-09-02T10:54:50","slug":"the-city-as-a-normative-political-space-institutions-relations-and-republicanism","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.manchester.ac.uk\/mancept\/mancept-workshops\/list-of-panels-a-z-2025\/the-city-as-a-normative-political-space-institutions-relations-and-republicanism\/","title":{"rendered":"The City as a Normative Political Space: Institutions, Relations, and Republicanism"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The City as a Normative Political Space: Institutions, Relations, and Republicanism<\/h1>\n

Room –\u00a0ALB G.019<\/em><\/p>\n

Verena Frick (University of G\u00f6ttingen); Nir Barak (Ben Gurion University); Daniel Guillery (LSE); Alessandro Piazza (Politecnico di Milano); Ben Rogers (LSE)<\/strong><\/p>\n

While mainstream political theory has long focused predominantly on the nation state, it has largely been silent about the city. Slowly, however, the city is gaining prominence in political theory, particularly concerning classic themes such as democratic innovations, citizenship, commoning, social movements, migration, environmentalism, and justice and inequality. As the world urbanises, and cities play a greater role in world affairs the city demands greater theoretical attention.<\/p>\n

The workshop is thus guided by the assumption that the city is not merely a microcosm of the national community or a nation-state en miniature, but rather a distinct entity with its own governance structures, power dynamics, and forms of injustice. Building on this premise, it assumes that the distinction between \u2018seeing like a city\u2019 and \u2018seeing like a state\u2019 is essential for understanding how urban spaces shape political issues \u2013 particularly those surrounding political action, community, and social equality. This new perspective calls for a reassessment of our normative political theories in relation to urban life, moving beyond the mere application of established theories to urban contexts. It instead invites us to address the city\u2019s distinct socio-spatial dynamics and examine how they shape the constitutive conditions of living together and acting politically in the city. By taking the socio-spatial character of cities seriously, and the values and relationships they make possible, our workshop aims at interrogating and, if necessary, revising established concepts and theories and developing criteria for making normative judgments about urban political practices.<\/p>\n

We welcome papers that engage with city-focused analyses in contemporary political theory, exploring how prioritizing the political and institutional form of the city reshapes our theoretical frameworks. Contributions may address, but are not limited to, the following themes:<\/p>\n