Participatory Digital Democracy – A Realist and Materialist Perspective for Meaningful Participation in the Digital Age

This paper presents the model of “participatory digital democracy” (e-participation) as a framework for conceptualising meaningful citizen participation in the age of digitalisation. It ask the following questions: What is participatory democracy? How does digital media transform participatory democracy? What are the features of a realist and materialist understanding of participatory digital democracy (e-participation)? This paper presents research results from INNOVADE: INNOvative DEmocracy Through Digitalisation, https://innovade-democacry.eu. INNOVADE is a three-year long interdisciplinary research project funded by Horizon Europe (grant agreement 101178306). The project’s overall aim is to better understand and improve digital democracy. Paderborn University’s research team is one 11 project partners. In INNVOADE, the Paderborn team focuses on critical social theory and critical social research aspects of digital democracy. This presentation outlines some of the team’s. We build on the on the theoretical tradition of participatory democracy, which identifies self-management, the extension of democracy beyond formal institutions into all realms of society, and the provision of material resources and skills as the prerequisites of meaningful participation. This paper illustrates how these three key elements of participatory democracy can be leveraged for the purpose of rethinking digitally mediated participation across all spheres of society: politics, economy, and culture. The paper conceptualises participatory digital democracy (e-participation) as the digital mediation and support of participatory democratic practices across these societal spheres. It outlines how such practices can take place in each dimension. Examples include cooperatively owned and managed digital platforms in the economic sphere; online consultations and participatory budgeting in formal politics; grassroots e-activism and petition platforms in civil society; and online communities that facilitate sustained dialogue and collaboration among citizens. The central arguments are that the implementation of participatory practices must be grounded in the material reality of citizens to avoid triviality, and that participatory politics must be based on respect for human and civil rights to prevent their appropriation and co-optation for undemocratic purposes. Finally, the paper discusses (digital) participatory budgeting as a best practice for implementing participatory digital democracy, emphasising design principles such as hybrid online-offline formats, non-trivial areas of decision-making (what we, based on Archon Fung, term “the digital park bench problem”), and resource allocation.