Democratic Innovation for Whom? Contestation in New Spaces of Participation

Several recent contributions to the literature on democratic innovation have explored the place and role of contestation over whose interests, whose views, and whose position of power specific innovations advance. This research has suggested that whether a specific democratic innovation opens up or closes down spaces of contestation depends on (1) whether innovation proceeds top-down or bottom-up and (2) whether significant decision-making authority is delegated to empower citizens. However, these factors do not, on their own, explain why some democratic innovations become open and dynamic spaces of participation while others become closed and static. This paper examines eight concrete cases of democratic innovation to understand how democratic innovations affect citizens’ opportunities to not only cooperate but also co-produce forms of participation. It shows that contestation plays a significant part in bottom-up as well as top-down-initiated innovations and both “empowered” and “non-empowered” forms of participation. Context-dependent institutional conditions and political interests help explain these variations. In particular, this paper highlights the significance of policy-makers’ interest in democratic legitimacy; civil society actors’ prior experiences of both contentious and collaborative forms of engaging political elites; and the roles played by “street-level” democratic administrators. All three of these factors vary considerably across cases of democratic innovation.