Democratic Innovations and Political Participation: Evidence from a Ten-country survey

In light of the increasing mistrust toward traditional democratic institutions among citizens and decline in conventional political participation, while populist and/or authoritarian political parties are making electoral gains a number of governments across Europe are becoming involved in efforts to introduce alternative mechanisms of decision-making that involve more active participation on the part of citizens. Such, so called, democratic innovations enable citizens to effect or influence decision-making in a more direct and involved manner in an effort to provide a solution for this “crisis of representation”. However, while the supply side of politics appears to be becoming more amenable to the idea of involving citizens in the process of decision-making, it is less clear what citizens think of such schemes and how willing they are to take part, where they are available, i.e. the demand side of politics. Similarly nebulous is the situation when it comes to the antecedents of citizen participation with the existing literature offering contradictory findings, even when considering known drivers of traditional participation, such as education and political efficacy (internal and external). We attempt to add to the existing literature by providing findings from a large-scale survey conducted in 2022 in 10 European countries (Cyprus, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Spain and the UK) with roughly 3,000 respondents per country with quotas for gender and age groups. Our focus in this paper is to examine the public’s awareness of, as well as actual and prospective participation at the local level in four major forms of participatory schemes: Participatory Budgeting, referendums, citizen assemblies and citizen juries; thus, respondents were asked whether they have ever heard of the aforementioned schemes, whether they have already participated in this manner and whether they would consider doing so, if given the chance separately for each of the four forms of democratic innovations. Preliminary analyses are in accordance with expectations from previous work in the field with a) varying degrees of awareness between countries, ranging from over 55% on average for the better known forms of local referendums and citizen assemblies to under 30% for citizen juries and participatory budgeting, b) high willingness to participate, over 60% averaged across countries and forms but c) low rates of participation, between 5% and 15%, except for local referendums (25%). In addition, we examine a number of potential determinants of actual and prospective participation at the individual level, including demographics, political orientation (e.g. populist attitudes), membership in voluntary associations, interest and knowledge of local political issues, institutional trust and the perceived effectiveness of participation.