Resetting the Boundaries: from Democratic Innovations to Participatory (Self-)Governance

In recent years we have witnessed a growing wave of deliberative and participatory institutions taken up by governments and gaining traction in the public space, especially in (but not limited to) the Global North. These processes are gradually becoming embedded in government structures and designed to impact policymaking, fuelling hopes that democratic innovations can fix challenged democracies, or even replace representative institutions. Other voices are increasingly stressing their limitations; for example, due to their reliance on lottocracy, while also signalling the dominance of resource-rich cases, contexts, and researchers in the field and the problematic absence of truly equitable exchanges between ‘the West and the Rest’. This Section encourages us to broaden the scope of discussion to reflect the diversity of institutional, non-institutional, and anti-institutional forms of citizen participation. It also asks how non-participants and participants alike evaluate and are included in these processes. Section Chairs invite Papers creating conversations among different types of participatory processes (be it mini-publics, referenda, participatory budgeting, e-democracy mechanisms, consultations or civic engagement spaces), various modes of participation (organised with, without or despite state institutions), and we aim to build bridges across geographic contexts and individual circumstances of those participating.