How Do Designers of (Hybrid) Democratic Innovations Perceive And Prioritize Different Democratic Values?

Our paper fits well with the second theme of the section. It investigates how democratic innovations promote inclusion by studying how designers understand and deal with the trade-off between inclusion and other important values, as well as how this translates into design choices. As such, this paper studies how DI design can contribute to the promotion of inclusion (and thereby to DI legitimacy). Our paper also suits the fourth theme of the section, because the paper studies various cases of hybrid democratic innovations which combine a digital consultation of the wider public with an in-person deliberative mini-public. Actors keen on improving democracy have started experimenting with hybrid democratic innovations (HDIs), i.e. participatory designs that combine small-scale deliberation in citizens’ assemblies with large-scale voting in wider public consultations (Hendriks & Michels, 2024). If hybrid democratic innovations are to contribute to a better functioning democracy, it is important to evaluate to what extent they realize certain democratic values (Caluwaerts & Reuchamps, 2018). However, we rarely know which values the designers of the process set out to realize when we evaluate participatory processes. Indeed, studies from the perspective of the actors who “carry the task and responsibility of shaping” participatory processes and institutions remain scarce (Allegretti, 2021, p. 730). While existing research on democratic innovation has paid considerable attention to the roles of public servants in facilitating and implementing participatory processes, little is known about their role as designers of participation. Moreover, the role of participation professionals in designing democratic innovations is increasingly relevant yet remains understudied. Therefore, this paper asks what values designers (civil servants and participation professionals) aim to realize and how they make design choices in light of these aims. More specifically, this paper examines how democratic values are prioritized and translated into design choices for hybrid democratic innovations (HDIs) in which a citizens’ assembly is coupled with a wider public consultation. This study is grounded in the theoretical assumption that combining participation modes in hybrid processes may enable the simultaneous realization of multiple democratic values. To capture all of these values, we use the integrated values framework developed by Hendriks (2022). Drawing on interviews supported by Q methodology, our study analyses how designers of HDIs prioritize inherently tension-laden democratic values (inclusiveness, efficaciousness, and appropriateness) and how these prioritizations inform design decisions for three HDIs organized in the Netherlands between 2023 and 2026. By requiring designers to make explicit trade-offs between multiple values, this study extends existing strands of literature which, while addressing a range of democratic values, typically examines them in isolation. By differentiating between civil servants and participation professionals, the paper explores whether and how value orientations and design strategies differ across these actors. Empirically, the findings provide insight into value trade-offs in the design phase and illuminate if and how hybrid designs enable different values to be pursued simultaneously. Conceptually, the paper contributes to debates on democratic and governance-driven innovation by foregrounding designers’ value perceptions as a key, yet underexplored, dimension of democratic innovation.