ABSTRACT
Direct democracy and non-hierarchical modes of organization — in a nutshell, horizontalism — are among the defining features of the anti-austerity protests that many countries have experienced in the last few years (Castells 2012; Cruells and Ibarra 2013; Fernández et al. 2012; Glasius and Pleyers 2013). 1 Some authors even claim that these features, as embodied in the model of the assembly, prefigure “the possible infrastructure of the common” and represent a point of convergence for left-wing forces (Thorburn 2012: 256). Why do activists adopt such horizontal and participatory organizational forms rather than another? And how do they settle on a particular form of horizontalism rather than another?
