Future-Oriented Democratic Innovation

Abstract

Politics tend to be short-termed without much regard about the future. However, various democratic innovations might be better suited to take long-term interests and consequences into account. Empowering citizens to take part in decision-making might enhance long-term decision-making as well as increase learning, trust and efficacy on the individual level even though individuals vary greatly in their dispositions to value long-term utilities. There is also need to critically imagine, as Isaiah Berlin encourages, what democratic futures could be like if democracy in future meant the common use of one or more of today’s democratic innovations: what preconditions or changes to one’s societal conditions would for instance be needed for, say, deliberative democracy to become the dominant model of democratic practice? Further to this, which factors explain individual-level differences about democracy's future? This panel is especially focused on participatory or deliberative practices in conjunction to political processes in the real world and welcomes both theoretical and methodological implications from such practices.