Creativity or Institutionalisation? Designing a Middle Way for Democracy

Political creativity and institutionalisation of democratic innovation both seem to aspire to achieve the same goal: ensure that democracy can evolve and thrive over time and generate and embed new modes of functioning that can include more people and respond to emerging needs. However, theoretically the two approaches seem to be apart, as scholars of political creativity take a critical stance towards institutionalisation (Berk, Galvan and Hattam, 2013), whilst those who are researching modes for institutionalisation struggle to account for the messiness of emerging practices that occur unexpectedly from creative human action (Cleaver and Koning, 2015). Drawing on reflections from case studies of democratic innovations, the paper aims to explore whether and how political creativity can be institutionalised, without losing its generative character; as well as whether and how could institutionalisation become more creative, whilst still ensuring continuation and mainstreaming of innovation within an institutional framing. In the first part, the paper will briefly introduce the two approaches (and specifically critical institutionalism and political creativity) and highlight the friction between them, as well as outline the potential benefit for possible collaboration. In the second part the paper will present examples from democratic practice that move beyond the apparent paradox of institutionalising democratic creativity, by highlighting the role of insider bureaucrats in forms of activism and political creativity. In the final part, the paper will put forward an idea for a middle-way of framing institutionalisation of democratic innovation.