Innovation and Power: Exploring Democratic Innovation and its Main Actors

In this workshop we aim to explore the power struggles that emerge in the context of democratic innovations. In particular, we aim to better understand how different political actors in a democracy make sense of and relate to innovation processes. Sustained and ambitious efforts for innovation have long been deemed as a necessary to revitalize democratic life (Smith, 2009). Towards this end, different kinds of democratic innovations have been developed and deployed in a variety of contexts (Elstub and Escobar, 2017) and at different levels of governance (Smith, 2013). As a growing number of democratic proposals turn into real-life political practices and institutions, a rich body of scholarship has started to provide us with evidence about strengths and weaknesses that characterize the contemporary landscape of innovation (Baiocchi and Ganuza, 2016, Hendriks, 2009). At the micro level, the existing analyses are shedding light on the conditions under which successful deliberation may occur in mini-publics, or effective participation takes place in the context of participatory budgeting processes (Gronlund et al., 2014, Bassoli, 2012). From a macro-perspective we are starting to understand how democratic innovations are best connected to other components of democratic systems to improve their overall deliberative qualities (Curato and Böker, 2016). Whilst democratic innovations are often conceived with systemic goals in mind, it is not clear what actors are effectively benefitting from these processes and how actors themselves might be adversely affected by them. We know, for instance, that social movements’ approach to innovation processes might change dramatically (Della Porta and Felicetti, 2017). Likewise, politicians seem to have varying support for democratic innovations (Hendriks and Lees-Marshment, 2018) and that potential to use democratic innovations in political parties varies greatly (Invernizzi-Accetti and Wolkenstein, 2017). Finally, recent research shows that citizens’ support for democratic innovations also changes depending on the type of innovation and the political context under examination (Jacquet, 2018). Theoretical and empirical analyses of how these and other actors relate to democratic innovations, however, are just starting to emerge. Civil servants, experts, media, firms are just some of the actors that might have stakes in the processes of democratic innovations and from a democratic point of view, all these actors might play an important role in making such processes more or less successful. To examine these issues more systematically and to better understand the way different actors make sense of democratic innovations, this workshop will engage with following questions: What is democratic innovation for? What and whose interests does it serve in theory and practice? How do different political actors relate to democratic innovation processes? How do these actors engage with experiments that are diffuse in space and time? What are the implications of different innovative experiments for democracy? under what conditions may democratic innovation strengthen democratic life? We welcome theoretical and empirical papers investigating how different actors in democracies engage with innovations processes. Contributions from a wide range of disciplines including but not limited to democratic theory, comparative politics, social movement studies, party politics, media studies, political psychology are highly welcome. In order to obtain a comprehensive perspective of how different actors relate to democratic innovation processes this workshop has three goals: 1. Developing a better understanding of the actors involved in the politics of democratic innovation. 2. Shedding light on the attitudes and contextual aspects that shape the relationship between different actors and democratic innovations. 3. Developing recommendations on how political actors might engage in innovation processes so as to make these processes beneficial both for themselves and for the wider democratic system. Relation to existing research: In the first place this workshop builds upon and contributes to extant scholarship on democratic innovations. Micro-and-macro analyses of innovations as well as scholarship on democratic systems are central to the themes we wish to explore. However, democratic innovation processes have also attracted attention of other fields of inquiry, which include social movement studies, comparative politics, political behaviour, business ethics, political communication, among others. Our intention is to strengthen the study of democratic innovation processes in these fields and foster multidisciplinary debates that may lead to more complex knowledge about this phenomenon. • Type of Papers required: We encourage four types of papers: 1. Theoretical conceptualizations of the relevant political actors and institutions involved in (or excluded from) democratic innovation processes. 2. Empirical investigations of how different democratic innovation processes interact with different political actors. 3. Multidisciplinary works shedding a new light on the issue of power in democratic innovation. 4. Historical work tracking the trajectories of power in democratic innovation. 5. Investigations about the conditions in which these innovations happen and about their democratic implications. Both single case studies and comparative analyses (small, medium and large N), are invited. Qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods are welcome. Whilst we expect contributions to focus on existing democracies, studies referring to the problems of democratization in states or governance networks are also welcome.