New Developments in Democratic Innovation Research

At the 2013 conference in Bordeaux, the section on democratic innovations reflected on four decades of democratic innovation research and took stock of the wide range of theoretical, conceptual and methodological approaches. At the ECPR conference in Glasgow, the focus shifts to new developments in democratic innovation research, including: • New empirical insights. Embedding democratic innovations that increase and deepen citizen participation in decision making is now a common policy of governments in many countries. Citizen participation is usually considered a valuable element of democratic citizenship and democratic decision-making. But what can be said about the contribution of participatory innovations to democracy in the real world? • New topics. Democratic innovation research has always been strongly tied to politics and political institutions. Recently, we have seen major challenges to political institutions, such as citizens’ protests around the world and the emergence of new issues such as climate change, sustainability and future generations. Questions are how democratic innovations can deal with these challenges, and what impact this has on the design of democratic institutions. • New theoretical approaches. Recent years have experienced a shift from micro to macro approaches: instead of analysing the democratic and deliberative qualities of single sites, the new goal is to focus on the entire democratic system and interconnections of the different sites. In particular, the complex relationship between democratic innovations and representative politics needs to be explored. Moreover, democratic innovations also need to be re-connected to agonistic theories, emphasizing the importance of conflict and confrontation for a healthy democratic system. • New methods and research strategies. Case-studies have long been the major research approach to study democratic innovations. But to really understand the functioning and effects of democratic innovations, we need more sophisticated approaches, including meta-studies, comparative case studies, and experimental research. Section Chairs André Bächtiger, is research professor of the Swiss National Science Foundation at the University of Lucerne. His research focuses on the challenges of mapping and measuring deliberation and political communication as well as understanding the preconditions and outcomes of high quality deliberation both in the context of representative institutions and minipublics. His research has appeared in Cambridge University Press, Journal of Political Philosophy, Political Studies, Journal of Conflict Resolution, European Political Science Review, and Acta Politica. He is currently co-writing a book on "Mapping and Measuring Deliberation" (with John Parkinson), forthcoming with Oxford University Press in 2014. He is also co-editor of a book on Deliberative Minipublics (with Kimmo Grönlund and Maija Setälä), forthcoming with ECPR Press in 2014. Ank Michels is Assistant Professor at the School of Governance, Utrecht University in the Netherlands. Her research focuses on the relation between the design of democratic innovations, democratic values, and the democratic system. A selection of her publications include: Examining citizen participation: local participatory policy making and democracy (Local Government Studies, 2010); Innovations in democratic governance – How does citizen participation contribute to a better democracy? (International Review of Administrative Sciences, 2011); Democracy transformed? Reforms in Britain and the Netherlands (International Journal of Public Administration, 2011); and Citizen participation in local policy making: design and democracy (International Journal of Public Administration, 2012).