ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the key political theories which have influenced, directly and indirectly, the group of architects in question, and specifically aided in grounding the demands for citizen participation. It focuses on the political theories relevant to the loose movement; it raises an urgent concern regarding the architects' approach to the state and to neo-liberalism. Radical democracy was significant to many of the May 1968 protesters, and has been associated with the ultra-left. It was also an idea and term in circulation among the scholars of the Frankfurt School and, surprisingly perhaps, within the Italian Communist Party, when restructuring itself after the Second World War. A less consensual trajectory is taken by activists, artists, and architects who propagate subversive and transgressive practices. But other practices are controversial and highly partisan and introduce a level of conflict by, for example, spatial occupations and appropriation, by cultural activities which are not condoned by the local government or community.
