Embedding participatory governance: taking a systemic perspective

Democratic innovations (Smith 2009) are gaining ground around the world and across different polities from the local to the EU level. Whilst there is currently much focus on the role that deliberative mini-publics can play to help address issues of polarisation and decreasing legitimacy of representative institutions, other democratic innovations, such as participatory budgeting or coproduction, also continue to grow in popularity to connect the voices of everyday people to decision-makers. Several criticisms have been levelled against many of these often top-down approaches to public participation, which are often conceived in terms of ancillary, consultative spaces, with limited impact on decisions, and which risk being perceived as apolitical remedial action, encouraging citizen mobilisation focused around short-term, often individualised, action and premised on fragmented participation (Lee et al. 2015; Pateman 1970). Even where there is a political will to genuinely engage with citizen input, efforts at translating ad hoc citizen participation into actual policy change often clash against organisational cultures and capacity which limits citizen influence. This paper presents the findings from a scoping review of recent academic and grey literature (2010-2020) and a series of expert interviews to reflect on recent developments towards embedding participatory governance, with a focus on the impact of rapid digitalisation and bottom up processes through civic tech or the commons. We find that the growing numbers of democratic innovation designs continue to encounter the same socio-economic, administrative and political barriers to meaningful participation. This demands a deeper understanding of interactions and flow of power across different participatory spaces, digital and analogue, top down and bottom up, taking a more systemic lens. The most recent practice shows how practitioners and activists are starting to take a systemic approach to participatory design that shifts the focus from isolated spaces and initiatives to a participatory infrastructure that aims to democratise not only political institutions, but also the economy and the wider society.