Democratic Innovations in Contested and Constrained Contexts: Strengthening Democratic resilience?

Over the past two decades, democratic innovations have become central to efforts to renew democracy by engaging citizens more directly, rebuilding trust in institutions, and strengthening democratic practices. Yet as democratic backsliding, populism, polarisation, disinformation, and conflict spread, participatory and deliberative initiatives increasingly operate in contested and constrained environments. The 2026 ECPR General Conference offers an opportunity to reflect on how democratic innovations can bolster democratic resilience and adapt to contexts marked by illiberalism and disruption. The Standing Group on Democratic Innovations invites panel and paper proposals from scholars at all career stages and across disciplines. The Section will be organised around four thematic streams, each addressing a distinct facet of the evolving landscape of democratic innovations. 1) Democratic innovations as instruments of renewal, resistance, and resilience. Across Europe and beyond, democratic innovations are increasingly mobilised to counter declining trust, rising political and cultural polarisation, and the manipulation of public opinion through disinformation. Research suggests that democratic innovations can help rebuild civic agency, nurture more cooperative political cultures, and strengthen societies’ resistance to authoritarian tactics that divide and destabilise. We welcome contributions that explore how democratic innovations help resist illiberal tendencies—including populist variants—in both consolidated and newer democracies. Key questions include: How do innovations function under varying degrees of democratic consolidation and state capacity? How do they operate amid shrinking civic space and legal or administrative constraints? 2) Democratic innovations and their legitimacy, institutionalisation, and risks of instrumentalization. As innovations move from pilot or one-off projects to more institutionalised forms, questions of contestation, legitimacy, and instrumentalization come to the fore. Participatory processes can become arenas of political struggle—criticised for elite bias, exclusion, or limited impact—and at times instrumentalised by political actors or dismissed as mere “participation-washing.” We invite reflections on how democratic innovations can preserve their legitimacy, inclusiveness, and depolarising potential under pressure. How can design choices, facilitation methods, and communication strategies sustain credibility and perceived fairness? What happens when innovations are implemented in constrained or contested settings, where trust and consensus are hardest to achieve? We particularly welcome studies of societal, institutional, and policy impacts—showing when and how citizen participation contributes to democratic repair and strengthening. 3) Democratic innovations in fragile, hybrid, and (post-)conflict settings. DDemocratic innovations can support democracy in fragile and emerging democracies, hybrid regimes, and (post-)conflict or (post-)authoritarian settings. While recent scholarship has focused on Western Europe and consolidated democracies, democratic experiments—often backed by regional and international organisations as well as non-state actors—have taken root across the globe under very different institutional, cultural, and social conditions. These initiatives are organised by diverse actors, from governments and parliaments to parties, social movements, schools, and corporations. Informal democratic practices may also exist for long periods without being recognised as such. The local level remains a fertile ground for experimentation, yet comparative perspectives linking local experiences to broader structural dynamics are still rare. We invite contributions that look beyond familiar cases to test the transferability of existing findings and identify the contextual limits of current theories. What can we learn from experiences outside the Western context about embedding participatory practices in diverse systems of governance? 4) Digital, spatial, and interdisciplinary turns in democratic innovations. Digital technologies, artificial intelligence, and algorithmic systems are profoundly transforming politics. These tools open new possibilities to expand participation and deliberation across scales, yet also introduce challenges related to manipulation, misinformation, surveillance, and unequal access. As technology increasingly mediates public life, democratic innovations must integrate digital infrastructures in ways that strengthen inclusion, transparency, and deliberative quality. This digital turn also requires thinking beyond technology—to consider how infrastructures, environments, and more-than-human actors shape democratic spaces and practices. Doing so reveals hidden dynamics of power, exclusion, and agency within complex socio-technical and spatial contexts. We invite contributions exploring how digital, hybrid, and spatial formats can expand democratic agency, and research that bridges disciplines or experiments with innovative methods and perspectives. These thematic streams may be approached either in a contextualised way—attentive to local, national, or regional political dynamics, including in Central and Eastern Europe, Latin America, Africa, Asia, and beyond—or in a transversal manner, tracing broader patterns, theoretical insights, or methodological innovations across cases. We therefore welcome research that engages deeply with particular contexts as well as contributions that develop comparative, cross-regional, or conceptual perspectives. Taken together, the Section seeks to move beyond the “democratic innovations bubble” and promote a more systemic, contextual, comparative, and global understanding of how these practices can strengthen democratic resilience in times of crisis. By bringing together scholars from diverse backgrounds, we aim to map emerging frontiers of participatory and deliberative democracy under strain and reflect on what democratic renewal can look like amid polarization, autocratization, and digital transformation. **Note for panel proposals** When submitting a panel proposal, please leave at least one paper slot (out of the five) open where possible to allow the inclusion of additional contributions and ensure broader participation. We also encourage panel chairs to consider diversity and balance in their panel proposals, including gender, career stage, and geographic representation. **Note for paper proposals** You are permitted to present only one paper in the section; however, you may be listed as a co-author on other proposals.