Agonism and Democratic Innovation

Abstract

Much of the discourse (both academic and practitioner) on democratic innovations has been dominated by the conceptual/analytic tools and prescriptions of deliberative democracy. This has had a profound effect on case selection, the type of evidence proffered and the prescriptions that have emerged for improving the design of democratic institutions. This panel aims to broaden the analysis of democratic innovations through critical engagement with agonistic political theory (c.f. Conolly, Critchley, Honig, Kalyvas, Mouffe and Tully, for example). Theoretical and/or empirical contributions are particularly welcome that provide insights into how an engagement with agonism might reshape existing conceptual and analytical strategies (both in terms of discursive similarities and differences to deliberative theory) and/or generate different evaluations and prescriptions for the practice of democratic innovations.