Perceived constraints and missed opportunities: Exploring the tensions between adopting open science and innovating democracy

There is an ongoing vibrant debate within different research communities about the merits and challenges of adopting open science practices in scholarly research. In a parallel movement democratic innovations have become one of the fastest growing subfields in political science. Democratic Innovation research has brought together political philosophers, political scientists, sociologists and practitioners who use diverse research methods to produce knowledge about the effectiveness of institutionalized forms of democratic experiments. Work in the field has generated significant impact with several governments working with scholars to implement high-profile citizens’ assemblies, participatory budgeting, innovative plebiscites, and other participatory democratic programs. Given the societal relevance and crucial implications for rapidly adopted forms of policy making, the rigor and trustworthiness of the science of democratic innovations is therefore of paramount importance. Spada and Ryan (2017) have recently found that the overwhelming majority of studies published in top five journals in the political science focused on best practices with very few studying the so-called failures, alluding to the existence of potential publication bias within the field. This paper provides three significant contributions to debates. First, we apply the lens of open science critique to the study of democratic innovation. We discuss whether overselling and spin, post-hoc storytelling, as well as non-disclosure, and problematic treatment of outliers are prevalent practices, and to what extent they are (if at all) problematic in democratic innovations research. Second, we discuss opportunities and challenges for adopting open-science practices. Such practices include providing detailed, transparent and open information about analytic and interpretive choices the researcher takes, pre-registration of hypotheses, and analysis plans, and sharing the data with the scholarly and lay citizens. We argue these practices can enhance the validity and rigor of research and can consequently contribute to improving the policy and practice of democratic innovations. We nevertheless recognize perceived constraints on creative discovery and discuss whether open research really conflicts with aspects of exploratory discovery. Thirdly, we provide a first comprehensive assessment of the adoption of open science practices within the field. We rely on two kinds of data. First, we systematically review the published and unpublished scholarship in the field of democratic innovations for the last five years with regards to their application of open science practices, such as sharing data, preregistering studies, etc. Further, we complement this data with survey data collected from a random sample of scholars working on democratic innovations. Following Christensen et al., (2021) we examine the general attitudes towards adopting open science practices within the field of democratic innovations. We conclude by discussing how democratic innovations scholars can contribute to designing institutions for open science. Much of the difficulties for adopting open science lie in collective action problems and institutional constraints. Democratic Innovations scholars are well-placed to understand how institutional engineering and experimentation can overcome perverse incentives to suboptimal engagement with reason-based exchange. We apply the lessons of democratic innovation to explain how scholars can overcome pathologies in dysfunctional decision making and institutional inertia.