Participatory Innovation – What Do We Talk About?

In the field of transitions towards renewable energies acceptance and participation are – at least – of two types: On one hand, participation is needed to produce (local) acceptance. In this perspective acceptance is needed for the political implementation of energy transitions in a decentralized (energy supply) system. Vice versa, on the other hand, acceptance is needed to produce participation. In this perspective acceptance is a precondition for political participation informing a discourse on basic democratic needs in times of global governance. This paper discusses the often presumed but not sufficiently studied relationship between acceptance and participation as a crucial element of a comparative agenda. Participation and acceptance are often mentioned in the same breath without reflecting that they might mean very different things. The ambivalent relationship corresponds with the manifold theoretical perspectives on participation and acceptance. Even in the field of political science cooperative governance, participatory governance and democratic innovation seem to overlap, but also have differing understandings of who is going to participate, how and why. These questions are relevant due to the multitude of instruments applied for participatory innovation in the field of sustainable development. This paper argues that we can gain a deeper understanding of participation and acceptance as an essential element of innovation, when we re-connect the participation-instruments with its theoretical roots. In a first step this paper maps the different approaches to participation to allow for categorizing the differences. It then chooses a participation-instrument and analyses the particular understandings of participation and acceptance along their theoretical roots and aims, performance processes and evaluation criteria. The paper aims on ‘operationalizing’ the variables acceptance and participation by showing their different meanings and their relation to one another as a constituting element of discussing and comparing participatory innovation.