Rethinking Democratic Innovation: Cultural Clashes and the Reform of Democracy

Rethinking Democratic Innovation explores the potential for hybrid democratic innovations to address the democratic challenge by exploiting tensions between diverging visions of improved democracy. It suggests that combining approaches can address a broader range of concerns and that more versatile, connected, and embedded innovations are more likely to achieve high performance.

Format: Hardback
Length: 288 pages
Publication date: 05 September 2023
Publisher: Oxford University Press

Rethinking Democratic Innovation delves into contrasting perspectives on enhancing democratic governance, raising the question of whether these tensions can be harnessed for productive outcomes. Can diverse visions of democratic revitalization complement and rectify each other in ways that benefit democracy? Is it feasible that combined approaches address a more significant portion of the democratic challenge, while isolated approaches, such as centralizing deliberative or plebiscitary democracy, are limited to specific areas of concern? This book ultimately offers a resounding affirmative answer, outlining the potential for hybrid democratic innovations that thrive on exploiting, rather than eliminating, tensions between diverging visions of improved democracy. By integrating a cultural perspective into democratic theory, this book contributes to a deeper understanding of strategies and methods aimed at improving democratic governance. Drawing upon Mary Douglas's seminal notion of culture as pollution reduction, processes of democratic innovation are interpreted as instances of cultural cleaning in public governance. The book acknowledges that the task of democratic cleaning will never be complete but can be approached in more productive ways. Reflecting on various forms of hybrid democratic innovation, including deliberative referendums, participatory budgeting, and new-style participatory democracy, the author suggests that innovations that exhibit greater versatility, connectivity, and embedding are more likely to achieve high performance across a broader spectrum than democratic innovations that fall short of these qualities.

Weight: 596g
Dimension: 164 x 241 x 23 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780192848291