A Multiperspectival Approach to Democratic Innovations: Participatory Spaces in Perspective

This paper introduces a multiperspectival approach to democratic innovations. Instead of looking at democratic innovations through only one singular theoretical lens, which in the past has often been the deliberative perspective, the paper applies five different perspectives to democratic innovations, drawing on participatory, deliberative, agonistic, feminist, and transformative democratic theory. The multiplicity of these perspectives broadens the scope of democratic innovations and in doing so problematizes the term itself. To capture the diversity of the democratic processes that are revealed by the various lenses, the term “democratic spaces” appears more appropriate. Hence, the paper cycles through the different worlds of democratic theory, mapping the various democratic spaces that populate a vivid democratic ecology.