When looking at the sociological context of European cities, they present some problems that the States have difficulty tackling, for example, housing emergency, cost of living, or precariousness of jobs. In this scenario, cities emerge as potential institutional actors in developing public policy. In this context, some municipalities innovated by implementing a policy innovation (PI) in the social policy context. This policy entails some features of the basic income (UBI), like unconditional and unlimited. A more developed minimum income scheme. In this process (of innovating), the ability of the policy entrepreneurs involved, to explore and experiment, is a highly referred issue by the literature, along with other factors which can explain the emergence of policy innovations: a) the role of epistemic communities; b) the progressive alliance of the left; c) the participation of cities in transitional municipal networks; d) the evolution of the political agenda of the EU. By tracing the process of the PI (with qualitative methods from semi-structured interviews, focus groups, and documental analysis) in a two-case selection in Europe – Barcelona and Dutch municipalities (two different municipal contexts with a similar PI), we were able to find what factors lead to policy innovation in the social policy context: a) Historical and strong participation in the European networks of municipalism; b) Radical change in the government structure, presenting a great match between municipalism and European union in local policymaking. Moreover, by applying a two-theoretical approach (MSF and ACF) to a multilevel reinforcing dynamics context of three levels (local, national and EU-level), the study also shows the agency role of public officials in opening policy windows on other levels of governance and also the role of science and expertise in advocacy coalition activities, playing a role as strategic policymakers.

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new municipalism,basic income-inspired policies,european union,multilevel reinforcing dynamics,advocacy coalition actors

• Sociology - Social Sciences
• Political Science - Social Sciences