Community-based initiatives in different democratic perspectives

Community-based initiatives (CBIs) are currently presented as saviours of democracy: they can funnel the dissatisfaction of citizens into positive action, they can make citizens more involved in the democratic process and make citizens more trusting of the government, according to its proponents (Bherer, Dufour & Montambeault, 2016). However, CBIs are regularly a source of frustration for both the citizens and the civil servants that are involved with them (Hendriks & Dzur, 2021). We argue this frustration stems from the government using contradictory conceptions of democracy to judge these CBIs in different phases in their development: representative democracy, deliberative democracy and do-democracy. We use four questions that are crucial aspects of democracy to explain these differing evaluations of the democratic legitimacy of CBIs: 1) whose interests are to be taken into account, 2) who is actively and substantially involved in the decision-making process, 3) how are decisions translated into action and 4) how do people account for those actions? The capriciousness of the evaluation of the democratic legitimacy of their initiative by local government actors situation is not just frustrating, but actively discouraging to the most active citizens and involved civil servants. Ultimately, this could have ramifications for the trust in democratic institutions, which is ironic, as the diminishing trust in democratic institutions is one reason why these democratic innovations are implemented in the first place. If local governments are more clear about and consequent in their evaluation of the democratic legitimacy of CBIs, this frustration could be substantially mitigated. This article is based on literature research and data gathered in two municipalities in the Netherlands, both interviews and policy analysis.