When the Future of Democracy Breaks into the Present: Labs as Democratic Innovation?

Democracy is currently undergoing deep transformations. These transformations might appear slow under the impression of a lack of responsiveness and problem-solving abilities of political elites. We believe, nevertheless, that democracy is at a breaking point – a state in which the future, at times, breaks into the present. Such transformations are captured by the study of democratic innovations, which investigates new forms of participation such as minipublics, participatory budgets, referendums, and online engagement. While the variety of participatory formats examined by scholars of democratic innovations is impressive, one particular format has escaped the attention of this scholarship. In response to multiple crises – in particular in response to the ecological challenges of securing a sustainable future – so called “labs” have sprung up all around the world. They bring together different stake holders such as civil society actors, citizens, state representatives, and academics to find new solutions to intricate societal problems, such as climate change. Rather than “just talking” these formats invite participants to be creative by doing, experiencing, and – above all – experimenting. While these participatory formats share a lot of the typical features of democratic innovations, they have yet to receive attention from this field of scholarship. In this paper we raise the question whether labs can be regarded as democratic innovation. Beyond this, we ask what labs can tell us about the future of democracy. We propose a framework to capture labs and explain them as moments in which the future of democracy breaks into the present. This look into the future is characterized by a tension between novel participatory engagement and technocratic elite control.