Effects of Participatory Innovations on Representative Democracy – Preliminary Findings

Although participatory innovations are currently en vogue, we know very little about the effects of these innovations on representative democracy. How do participatory innovations influence institutions of representative democracy (e.g. parliament, political parties) and what are the effects on elected representatives? Do participatory innovations weaken representative democracy as we might expect in the wake of Schumpeter? Or do they strengthen representative democracy as authors like Pogrebinschi suspect? In this paper I will discuss expectations as well as first empirical results. I will focus mainly on the local level, but will also refer to the regional level and compare experiences at the national level in different countries.