Democratic Innovation as Democratic Defense

This paper proposal addresses the research focus of S19 "Democratic Innovations in Contested and Constrained Contexts: Strengthening Democratic Resilience?" It examines democratic innovations (DIs)—such as referendums and deliberative mini-publics—through the lens of democratic defense, particularly the defense of liberal-democratic institutions. The central question of this paper—largely a conceptual piece informed by extant literature—is: 'How could democratic innovations (DIs) assist in democratic defense?' This question has not been standard in DI research over past decades. Some would argue that the strength of DIs lies elsewhere—in gathering and processing insights and preferences from society— and that DIs cannot be expected to contribute significantly to democratic defense, understood as sustaining key institutions of liberal democracy. Others might contend that the older literature on democratic reform—focused on developing and safeguarding the constitutional order, including the institutions of political selection and control, checks and balances related to representative democracy—offers more leverage in this domain. While this literature has indeed gained renewed relevance through recent developments, which adds to the reasons for 'bringing democratic reform back in,' it remains valuable to examine DI for its scope for democratic defense. As a starting point, this paper adopts the authoritative classification of DIs by Elstub and Escobar, which distinguishes five forms: referendums and initiatives, deliberative mini-publics, digital participation, participatory budgeting, and collaborative governance. We employ democratic defense as a container concept encompassing strategies and measures aimed at preventing or reversing democratic erosion, and protecting and strengthening democratic resilience. Regarding the latter, we distinguish between civic and constitutional resilience. Civic resilience concerns upholding a vigilant and capable civic culture in the spirit of liberal democracy, while constitutional resilience refers to institutionalized checks and balances fitting principles of constrained governance. Although it is plausible that DIs vary significantly in their scope for democratic defense, a clear overview of theoretical expectations remains wanting. The proposed paper aims to make a tentative contribution to filling this gap, inevitably exploratory and incomplete in nature. The analysis primarily focuses on identifying democratid-defense potential, with the question to what extent this potential materializes in empirical reality constituting an agenda for future research. The initial inquiry asks: how could DIs (I, II, III, ...) possibly assist in democratic defense (for the sake of A, civic resilience/vigilance and/or B, constitutional resilience/counterbalance)? For the DI-variant of initiatives and referendums, for instance, the analysis may highlight how defensive potential resides in bottom-up initiatives and referendums (to be distinguished from top-down variants), and how this can support civic vigilance and constitutional counterbalance. Similarly, we can identify where democratic-defense potential lies for other DI-variants. The result is a reasoned overview of resilience-strengthening potential invested in DIs, which can serve as a useful building block for further theoretical, practical, and critical examination of democratic innovation as defense.