Rethinking Democratic Innovations through Feminist Theory and Social Movements

Gender issues remain central to processes of democratic erosion, yet responses often emerge from non-feminist actors, highlighting how feminist concerns resonate across broader social and political contexts. This paper argues for integrating feminist theory and social movement scholarship into the study of democratic innovations to better capture these dynamics in theoretical approaches to resistance and democratic renewal. Democratic innovations, typically defined as institutional or procedural reforms that enhance citizen participation, have often been formalistic, top-down, and procedural, overlooking the relational, affective, and everyday dimensions of politics long emphasized by feminist theorists. This paper develops conceptual tools for empirical research by reorienting democratic innovation scholarship toward bottom-up collective action, inclusive infrastructures, and feminist publics. By bringing feminist epistemologies into dialogue with social movement scholarship more strongly, it redefines innovation not as procedural novelty but as an ongoing effort to reimagine and deepen democracy under conditions of democratic erosion and exclusion. It argues that feminist theory provides essential normative and analytical resources for making democratic practices more inclusive, caring, and resilient. Keywords: feminist theory; democratic innovations; social movements; affective democracy; care and relationality