In person icon Systematising Comparison of Democratic Innovations: Advanced Explanations of the Emergence, Sustenance and Failure of Participatory Institutions

In response to a perceived ‘democratic malaise’ (Dalton 2004, Stoker 2006) the institutionalization of new mechanisms through which citizens can directly take part in the democratic process has become increasingly popular amongst public authorities at different levels of governance. This ECPR Joint Sessions workshop falls on the 25th anniversary of the instigation of participatory budgeting in Porto Alegre. It is also over ten years since Archon Fung’s seminal survey article called for greater attention from political theorists and scientists to ‘mini-publics’ that create instances of ‘more perfect public spheres’ (2003). Following these developments a growing research community has begun to analyze such participatory reforms, paying particular attention to their deliberative quality, democratic outcomes and impact on the policy process. However, the question of why participatory reforms have been implemented by some authorities and not by others has been largely neglected. Smith has recently provided a valuable argument for the need to address a gap in the literature, namely the conspicuous absence of systematic comparisons of democratic innovations (c.f. 2009: pp. 8-12). This workshop will contribute to bridging the gap between theory and practice in the field. Three related questions, all of which remain under-examined by the current literature, will be addressed. First, how can we explain adoption of different types of participatory process (e.g. mini-publics, participatory budgeting, etc.)? Second, what institutional, societal and/or political characteristics are associated with the presence and absence of effective participatory governing strategies? And third, what factors affect adoption (or abandonment) of participatory strategies by political authorities? We invite papers from different methodological and theoretical perspectives and on different types of participatory reform. Comparative papers at any level of governance are most welcome, but we are also very interested in theoretical papers and contributions that concentrate on single cases aimed at contributing to or challenging a comparative agenda.