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ABSTRACT
This article investigates democratic innovations of a plebiscitary and action-oriented type that diverge from a predominantly transformative and reflective definition of democratic innovation. Conceptually, the article offers a balanced, extended framework that serves to recognize and understand a range of democratic innovations that includes non-deliberative besides deliberative models and methods. Empirically, the article offers a closer look at three exemplary cases focusing on the rebound of aggregative democracy through the (quasi-)referendum, the advent of collaborative democratic governance through concerted action, and of do-it-ourselves democracy through pragmatic activism. Ultimately, the article calls for a practice and theory of democratic innovation aware of and sensitive to the reality of democratic hybridization.
Acknowledgements
For useful feedback on earlier versions of this article, the author thanks Quinten Mayne, Graham Smith, Marco Verweij, the editors, and the anonymous reviewers of this journal.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Smith, Introduction to the panel “beyond deliberative hegemony” at the ECPR general conference, Prague, 2016.
2 For example, in the community-development approach to participation, interested in direct action, more than in collective reflection. See Mutz, Hearing the Other Side; Baiocchi and Ganuza, Popular Democracy.
3 Mansbridge et al., A Systematic Approach; Warren, A Problem-based Approach.
4 Bächtiger et al., Disentangling Diversity in Deliberative Democracy.
5 Cf. Smith, Democratic Innovation, 2.
6 Parkinson, Why Deliberate?; Brugué and Gallago, A Democratic Public Administration.
7 Bächtiger et al., Disentangling Diversity, 35.
8 Elster, Deliberative Democracy, 1; Goodin, Innovating Democracy, 1–3.
9 Gastil and Levine, Deliberative Democracy Handbook.
10 Gastil, Democracy in Small Groups; cf. Gutmann and Thompson, Why Deliberative Democracy; Mutz, Hearing the Other Side; Chambers, Rhetoric and the Public Sphere; Baiocchi and Ganuza, Popular Democracy.
11 Elster, Deliberative Democracy. Cf. Habermas, Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns.
12 Hendriks, Vital Democracy, 116; Chappell, Deliberative Democracy, 7–10.
13 Bächtiger et al., Disentangling Diversity, 42.
14 Gastil, Democracy in Small Groups, Figure 3.
15 Owen and Smith, Survey Article, 213–4.
16 Smith, Democratic Innovation; Chappel, Deliberative Democracy; Geissel and Newton, Evaluating Democratic Innovations; Chwalisz, The Populist Signal; Escobar, Scripting Deliberative Policy-making.
17 Fishkin, When the People Speak; Bächtiger et al., Disentangling Diversity; Ryan and Smith, Defining Mini-publics.
18 Young, Inclusion and Democracy; Fung, Empowered Participation; Lodge, The Public Management of Risk; Ney and Verweij, Exploring the Contributions.
19 Shapiro, Enough of Deliberation; Mutz, Hearing the Other Side.
20 Cain et al., Democracy Transformed; Green, The Eyes of the People; Green, A Plebeian Perspective.
21 Cf. Stone, Regime Politics; Ansell and Gash, Collaborative Governance.
22 Hill, Digital Revolutions; Noveck, Wiki Government.
23 Fishkin, When the People Speak. Considering a larger set of “democratic goods”, Smith also recognizes the fundamental difficulty to acquire different desirables at the same time; which in his study are more specifically connected to innovations geared at citizen participation. See Smith, Democratic Innovation.
24 Full randomization is one way of doing this. Regularly some sort of stratified sampling is used, to guarantee some underrepresented groups at least a place in the sample.
25 Atlee, Empowering Public Wisdom.
26 Sunstein, Law of Group Polarization; cf. Mutz, Hearing the Other Side.
27 Bächtiger et al., Disentangling Diversity, 36.
28 Parkinson, Legitimacy Problems in Deliberative Democracy; Mutz, Hearing the Other Side; Chambers, Rhetoric and the Public Sphere; Bächtiger et al., Disentangling Diversity.
29 Cf. Fishkin, When the People Speak; Sintomer, Random Selection; Goodin, Innovating Democracy; Setälä et al., Citizen Deliberation; Ryan and Smith, Defining Mini-publics; Olsen and Trenz, From Citizens’ Deliberation; Elstub, Mini-publics.
30 “The People’s Verdict” was the way in which the Maclean’s Forum, an experiment with deliberative democracy in Canada, was named and framed.
31 Atlee, Empowering Public Wisdom, 217–32; Goodin, Innovating Democracy, 16–18; Smith, Democratic Innovation, 72–110; Gastil and Levine, Deliberative Democracy Handbook, 80–138.
32 Caluwaerts and Reuchamps, Strenghtening Democracy; Lucardie, Democratic Extremism, 114–53; van Reybrouck, Against Elections, 106 ff; Smith, Democratic Innovation, 144–6; Meijer et al., Political Innovation.
33 van Reybrouck, Against Elections; cf. Fishkin, Democracy When the People are Thinking.
34 Elster, Deliberative Democracy, 9.
35 Shapiro, Enough of Deliberation; cf. Hibbing and Theiss-Morse, Stealth Democracy; Helms, Democracy and Innovation; Ringen, Nation of Devils.
36 Dryzek has called for “consequentiality” of deliberation, putting the matter more abstractly, granting that “impact need not be direct”. See Dryzek, Democratization as Deliberative Capacity Building, 1382. In a sense, concretization is a practice- and action-oriented version of what Smith called for: popular control. See Smith, Review of ‘When the people speak’.
37 Mansbridge et al., A Systematic Approach. The recent turn to “deliberative systems” implies a partial move away from some of the preoccupations developed during previous waves of deliberative democracy. However, as Hendriks points out, the deliberative systems approach “remains a work in progress, and the concept is by no means settled”. See Hendriks, Coupling Citizens and Elites, 43. The implications of a general-systemic approach for the more specific debate on democratic innovations still need to be specified. See Warren, A Problem-based Approach, 51.
38 Warren, A Problem-based Approach, 41. Warren distinguishes “seven generic practices” (of which deliberation is just one, besides voting, representing, recognizing, resisting, joining, exiting) that may serve three general functions in democratic systems (empowered inclusion; collective agenda and will formation; collective decision-making). Hands-on democratic action is not explicitly mentioned.
39 Warren, ibid., 4.
40 Hornblower, Democratic institutions in Ancient Greece.
41 van de Wijdeven and Hendriks, A Little Less Conversation; Lee, Do-it-yourself Democracy; Mutz, Hearing the Other Side.
42 Chwalisz, The Populist Signal.
43 Fung, Empowered Participation.
44 van de Wijdeven and Hendriks, A Little Less Conversation. Cf. van Hulst et al., The Work of Exemplary Practitioners.
45 In an overview article, Ansell and Gash display the wide scope of collaborative governance. It is remarkable, and illustrative of the separation of research fields, that they hardly refer to democracy (searching on “democra” gets only one hit in the main text); on the other hand, they highlight issues not prioritized in the innovations literature focusing on deliberative reflection (issues such as public-private networks, pooling of resources, negotiations, leadership). See Ansell and Gash, Collaborative Governance.
46 On elite deliberation in the Federalist tradition, see Fishkin, When the People Speak. On elite consensualism and consociationalism: Lijphart, Consociational Theory and Practice; Steiner and Ertman, Consociationalism and Corporatism.
47 Noveck, Wiki Government, 170–72.
48 Cain, et al., Democracy Transformed, 23–58; Smith, Democratic Innovation, 111–41.
49 Mansbridge, Beyond Adversary Democracy; Zimmerman, The New England Town Meeting; Reinisch and Parkinson, Swiss Landsgemeinden.
50 Halupka, Clicktivism.
51 Chambers, Rhetoric and the Public Sphere, 331; cf. Green, The Eyes of the People.
52 Gastil and Richards, Making Direct Democracy Deliberative.
53 Although lottery appointment for concrete tasks (category 3d in ) fits the profile of an action-oriented option for democratic innovation, underconceptualized in the democratic-innovations literature (in contrast to the widely-covered variants of randomized deliberation: 3a, 3b, 3c in ), it fails on the criterium empirically salient and present in the central country-case of the Netherlands (or other country cases for that matter) to be detailed as a within-case study in this section.
54 Yin, Applications of Case Study Research, 33–5. Cf. Thomas, A Typology for the Case Study, 514.
55 George and Bennett, Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences.
56 Flyvbjerg, Making Social Science Matter, 77–81; Peters, Strategies for Comparative Research in Political Science, 68.
57 van Vree, Meetings, Manners and Civilization; Lijphart, Consociational Theory and Practice; Hendriks, Democratic Reform; Heijstek-Zieman, Exploring the Impact.
58 Peters, Strategies for Comparative Research in Political Science, 68. “Least-likely” is generally interpreted as among the least likely, not exactly the least likely of all. Although “less-likely” would be a good alternative, I have opted for the generally-accepted phrasing.
59 The Economist, Referendumania.
60 Qvortrup, Referendums in Western Europe; Holtkamp, “Direktdemokratische Hochburgen in Deutschland.”
61 Hill, Digital Revolutions; Halupka, Clicktivism.
62 The build-up to the Brexit-referendum was accompanied by a plethora of pre-votations and (electronic) polls, as was the aftermath, including an e-petition demanding a second referendum and post-Brexit polls showing majorities for the opposite.
63 Hendriks, et al., “Democratisch zegen of vloek,” 19–53.
64 See: https://www.volkskrant.nl/nieuws-achtergrond/het-succes-van-geenpeil-in-12-lessen~b25cfda5/ based on interviews with insiders.
65 Cain, Democracy Transformed.
66 Altman, Direct Democracy Worldwide; Qvortrup, Referendums in Western Europe.
67 Cf. Stone, Regime Politics; Steiner and Ertman, Consociationalism and Corporatism.
68 Stone, Regime Politics, 11.
69 Schaap and van Ostaaijen, Good Multi-level Governance: Brainport-Eindhoven.
70 See: https://www.volkskrant.nl/nieuws-achtergrond/-eindhoven-leent-zich-voor-experimenten-~b1a668cd/ based on interview with Eindhoven’s mayor at the time, Rob van Gijzel.
71 Stoker, Regime Theory and Urban Politics; Stone, Regime Politics.
72 Hilhorst and van der Lans, “Sociaal doe-het-zelven.” Cf. Lee, Do-it-yourself Democracy. Lee’s focus on yourself, instead of ourselves, does not quite capture the phenomenon described here.
73 See: van de Wijdeven, Bewonerscoöperatie Biest-Houtakker. This case study is part of “The Rural Alliances Project”, facilitated by Interreg IVB North West Europe. See: http://www.rural-alliances.eu/downloads/Skills-Plotting-Tool-Version-4-(Nov-13)-(NL)-final.pdf.
74 Fishkin, Democracy When the People are Thinking.
75 van de Wijdeven, Bewonerscoöperatie Biest-Houtakker, 54–55.
76 Cf. Mutz, Hearing the Other Side.
77 Tormey, The End of Representative Politics, 105–25.
78 van de Wijdeven,Bewonerscoöperatie Biest-Houtakker, 88–90.
79 Mansbridge, Beyond Adversary Democracy. Cf. Zimmerman, The New England Town Meeting; Reinisch and Parkinson, Swiss Landsgemeinden.
80 Hendriks, Vital Democracy. Cf. Heijstek-Ziemann, Exploring the Impact.
81 van der Kolk, “Kiezen voor een nieuw kiesstelsel,” 47.
82 Ansell and Gash, Collaborative Governance; Noveck, Wiki Government.
83 Cf. Chappell, Deliberative Democracy: A Critical Introduction. As argued, deliberative designs differ in their vulnerability to this general point. For instance, in Gdansk, Poland, 2016, a citizen assembly has, quite exceptionally, developed binding recommendations; these are less likely to be divorced from policy practice.
84 Cf. Saward, Making Democratic Connections; Hendriks, Vital Democracy; Mansbridge et al., A Systematic Approach; Warren, A Problem-based Approach.
85 Rosanvallon, Counter-Democracy, 314.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Frank Hendriks
Frank Hendriks is professor of comparative governance at Tilburg University. He authored “Vital Democracy: A Theory of Democracy in Action”, Oxford University Press, 2010, co-edited “The Oxford Handbook of Local and Regional Democracy in Europe”, OUP, 2011, besides many other journal and book publications on the topic of democratic governance and innovation.