Democratic Innovation from Below: Social Movements and Situated Practices in Georgia

This paper aims to contribute to the panel ‘Democratic innovations in fragile, hybrid, and (post-)conflict settings’, by discussing democratic practices (Felicetti, 2021) of civil society actors in authoritarian or hybrid regimes as bottom-up democratic innovations. In hybrid democracies marked by weak formal institutions, democratic backsliding, and fragile systems, democratic innovation becomes challenging or even impossible. In these contexts, where formal democratic channels are weakened, captured, or deliberately constrained, social movements, protest, and grassroots self-organisation function as alternative arenas for democratic experimentation. Building on the work of Bua, Bussu, and della Porta (Bua and Bussu, 2023; della Porta, 2015), the paper extends the notion of democratic innovation beyond institutionalised participatory mechanisms to encompass bottom-up and self-organising practices. Theoretically, the article draws on social movements theory, practice theory, and democratic innovation to analyse democratic practices. Concepts of democracy-driven governance (Bua and Bussu, 2023) and democratic innovations in social movements (della Porta, 2015) guide the paper in reframing democratic innovation as a localised, context-dependent, and relational phenomenon. Practice theory provides an analytical lens for the practice-based understanding of democratic innovation, attentive to place, power, and contention in non-consolidated democratic settings. Drawing on fieldwork-based qualitative research, I analyse how local civil society organisations, informal networks, and activists enact democratic practices that are deeply situated, locally embedded, and relational within social movement frameworks. Focusing on civil society–led mobilisations in support of Georgia’s EU candidacy, I show how democratic practices take shape through advocacy, self-organisation, watchdog activities, and protest, and are infused with dynamics of resistance, resilience, and relationality that enable democratic agency under conditions of political fragility. Building on an abductive, immersive approach grounded in interviews, narrative analysis, and observation, I highlight how these practices—ranging from protest and advocacy to horizontal decision-making and network-building—function as democratic innovations by generating new participatory norms, cultivating civic capacities, and sustaining democratic agency under conditions of political fragility. I argue that these democratic practices become innovative precisely through their capacity to reconfigure democratisation from below.