Hybrid democratic innovation supported by digital tech: from idea to action

This paper proposal fits the fourth subtheme – ‘theoretical advancements (…) and novel approaches to confront the challenges faced by democratic innovations’ – and also connects to the third subtheme – digital tech and DI. All democratic innovations – deliberative and plebiscitary, talk-centric and vote-centric – have strengths and weaknesses in realizing democratic values. The quality of dialogue (deliberation) is one of the strong elements of deliberative DI’s. But, they tend to involve a relatively small portion of citizens (inclusion) – the participating mini-public – and often have difficulty making changes on a larger scale or higher level (impact). Plebiscitary DI’s, at the other end of the spectrum, usually involve a larger group of citizens, can be highly consequential on the larger scale and higher level of decision making, but are less able to organize high quality dialogue. Relatedly, an important design challenge is to develop institutional designs that combine the strengths and mitigate the weaknesses of competing formats (Gastil & Richards, 2013; Hendriks & Wagenaar, 2023). This paper sets out to further explore such ‘hybrid democratic innovations’, focusing on a field of hybridization that has not yet been investigated extensively as such: tech-supported hybrid innovation. The paper reviews two cases that can be viewed as frontrunners, one national, V-Taiwan, and one urban-local, Decidim-Barcelona. While there is interesting and useful research taking a tech and innovation perspective on such cases (see a.o. Noveck, 2015; Susskind, 2018; Bernholz et al., 2021), the hybrid innovation and democratic values perspective that will be added here is in dire need of further development. Decidim-Barcelona is an integrated digital platform used as a space for monitoring public policy, initiation, deliberation, and voting on proposals. Decidim is designed to do this from the neighbourhood to the encompassing city level, straddling notions of deliberative exchange and plebiscitary voting. V-Taiwan integrates mini-hackatons and similar collaborative processes with the use of Pol.is, a digital platform where users can enter statements, on which other users can express their positions. Using AI, the platform helps to cluster users and identify areas of consensus. The paper explores the hybrid characteristics of such cases, and the expected consequences for key democratic values, distinguishing between input, throughput, and output values (Smith, 2009; Hendriks, 2021, 2023). References: Bernholz, L. et al. (eds), Digital Technology and Democratic Theory, Chicago University Press, 2021. Gastil, J. & R. Richards, Making Direct Democracy Deliberative through Random Assemblies, Politics & Society, 2013, 41, 2, pp. 253-281. Hendriks, F., Rethinking Democratic Innovation, Oxford University Press, 2023 Hendriks, F., Key Values for Improving Democratic Governance, Public Administration, 2021, 100, 4, pp. 801-1186. Hendriks, F. & C. Wagenaar, The deliberative referendum: an idea whose time has come? Administration & Society, 2023, 55, 3, pp. 569–590 Noveck, B., Smart Citizens, Smarter State, Harvard University Press, 2015. Smith, G., Democratic Innovation, Cambridge University Press, 2009. Susskind, J., Future Politics: Living Together in a World Transformed by Tech, Oxford University Press, 2018.