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When, Where, and Why Might Elected Political Elites Adopt Democratic Innovations?

Democracy
Government
Political Theory
Political Engagement
Edana Beauvais
Simon Fraser University
Edana Beauvais
Simon Fraser University
Sule Yaylaci
University of British Columbia

Abstract

The theory, practice, and study of democratic innovations has grown rapidly over the last couple of decades. By “democratic innovations,” we mean institutions and practices of engaging and empowering citizens outside of the established, legacy institutions of electoral democracy such campaigning and voting for representatives, ballot initiatives, petitioning, and protesting. Democratic innovations include, for example, deliberative minipublics, town halls, citizen juries, online forums, advisory bodies comprised of lay citizens, and many other relatively new ways of including citizens in collective decisions. In theory, these kinds of innovations should be addressing democratic deficits within electoral systems, supplementing them so they function more democratically. The openings for democratic innovations are increasingly found in the circumstances that elections no longer provide the democratic legitimacy necessary for democratic governance. We see the evidence in flatlining trust in government and high levels of citizen disaffection; in policies that are viewed as illegitimate, often by majorities of citizens, even when enacted by elected governments; in the decline of mainline brokerage parties in virtually every electoral democracy; and in the increasing popularity of populist politicians who promise to directly empower “the will of the people.” But although we have a general understanding of the causes and consequences of democratic deficits, we have not systemically theorized when, where, and why political elites, particularly elected ones, might adopt democratic innovations. In this paper, we develop the framework of for a theory. To do so, we focus on (a) kinds of democratic deficits common in electoral systems; (b) situations in which electoral contexts fail to provide either incentives or direction for elected elites; and (c) democratic innovations likely to address the intersection of democratic deficits and ambiguous electoral incentives. We motivate and illustrate the theory with examples drawn from the Participedia Project: a semi-crowd-sourced database of democratic innovations.