Interaction as solution? How to connect practices of deliberation, representation and direct democracy

Deliberative as well as other participatory practices are proliferating worldwide increasingly interacting with practices of traditional representation. Many scholars, politicians and citizens expect that these interactions would improve democracy, e.g. enhance political equality or reconnect citizen will-formation to decision-making. Several effective cases seem to prove the success. But can we really infer from these successful cases that such interactions ‘work’? Are the expectations realistic when we leave the realm of few success stories? Empirical evidence is up to now scarce. I will provide ideas for a research project on this topic, discuss a framework for examining these interactions and provide first results of very preliminary research. The normative yardsticks for measuring success are ‘inclusion’ and ‘the reconnection of citizen will-formation and decision-making’.