Democratic Innovations, Participation and the Media

Abstract

The phenomenon of frustration toward formal politics among the citizenry, reflected in declining trust in democratic institutions, rates of electoral participation and heightened sense that political systems are unresponsive to people’s needs has been a recurring theme in the history of established democracies albeit under different guises from “democratic malaise” to “the crisis of representation”. Commenting on the “crisis of liberal democracy” in the interwar period of the early 20th century, John Dewey pointed to the fact that “democratic forms are limited to Parliament, elections and combats between parties” as the root of the problem, suggesting that “unless democratic habits of thought and action are part of the fiber of a people, political democracy is insecure”. Attempting a solution, democratic theorists have suggested the development of methods and instruments that involve citizens in governance in more active and direct ways than those provided for through institutions of representative democracy. Such participatory schemes, often called democratic innovations take various forms, some being closer to the principles and logic of representative democracy, such as referendums while others are closer to the ideals of deliberative democracy, like citizen juries and mini-publics. A wave of such attempts at reinventing democracy has taken place during the last decade at all levels of governance but particularly at the local and regional levels, where distance from authorities is reduced, the scale of implementation is smaller and stakes are lower. Accordingly, a body of literature has been growing steadily concerning the popularity of such participatory schemes among the public and possible drivers of participation in them. At the present moment, however, analyses remain expectedly fragmentary, concerning for the most part specific applications of democratic innovations offering often contradictory findings. Significantly less is known concerning perceptions of democratic innovations among stakeholders other than citizens, like local authorities, civil society, NGOs, the media etc. and the conditions under which such actors and institutions would consider the reversal of the delegation of decision-making from political elites back to a self-governing demos a legitimate and valuable strategy. The present panel invites papers that examine perceptions of democratic innovations among any of the aforementioned relevant stakeholders, including citizens, with a particular focus on their application at the regional and local levels of governance using empirical data. Examinations of any form of democratic innovation are welcome as are both quantitative and qualitative methodological approaches. Indicatively, questions that papers might address include but are not limited to the following: a) What is the level of support among the population toward democratic innovations and what differentiates supporters from skeptics? b) What are the drivers of interest toward and antecedents of citizen participation in such schemes? c) How do non-citizen stakeholders view such efforts? d) How do the latter perceive their role in such processes?

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