Citizen Engagement by Regulators: Enhancement or Detraction of Regulators’ Legitimacy?

Regulatory agencies across different sectors, countries and jurisdiction are increasingly engaging citizens in their decision-making. This challenges the received wisdom about the technocratic nature of the contemporary regulatory state. We suggest that this calls for a broader discussion about if and how direct engagement with citizens by regulators challenges the democratic legitimacy of agencies supposedly build on expertise and outcome legitimacy. To do so, we link several cases of citizen engagement by regulators to democratic theory and the literature on democratic innovations. The two-subfields of the study of politics (regulatory governance and democratic innovation) are rarely brought together, and we highlight the necessity of doing so to understand the legitimacy challenges facing the contemporary administrative state. For Panel P5, but also possible for other panels, e.g. P6, P7 or P10.