Democratic innovation beyond the deliberative paradigm? Introduction to the special issue

Abstract

This Special Issue addresses mounting concerns about the dominance of an uncritical interpretation of deliberative democratic theory in the study and practice of democratic innovations. While deliberative democracy provides one of the normative undercurrents of the field, its reduction to procedural design and narrow focus on mini-publics risks constraining the democratic imagination and limiting transformative potential. We support a critical turn in the field of democratic innovation by strengthening empowered citizen participation, widening inclusion, confronting political and social domination, and foregrounding systemic change. The contributions in this Special Issue develop this agenda in two directions: by reasserting the critical dimension of deliberative democracy, and by drawing on alternative theoretical traditions to rethink the scope, design, and practice of democratic innovations. The articles in this collection examine diverse contexts and formats, from arts-based practices and post-conflict deliberation to hybrid institutions and assemblage perspectives, as well as a kaleidoscopic view of democratic theory. Together, they highlight the diversity, contextual embeddedness, and plural normative resources of democratic innovation, offering new directions for democratic renewal.

Introduction

Democratic innovations are moving from the margins of experimentation to the centre of debates about the future of democracy. The term ‘democratic innovations’ refers to ‘processes or institutions that are . . . developed to reimagine and deepen the role of citizens in governance processes by increasing opportunities for participation, deliberation and influence’ (Elstub and Escobar, 2019: 11). These processes and institutions take a wide variety of forms, ranging from mini-publics and participatory budgeting to digital crowdsourcing and mechanisms for direct democracy (Smith, 2009). They are increasingly invoked in democratic crisis diagnoses as well as in the rhetoric of think tanks, international organisations, and civil society, where they are presented as responses to challenges such as the growing alienation between elites and citizens, policy failures, representation deficits, or the rise of authoritarian populism (Dzur and Hendriks, 2018; Setälä et al., 2021; Warren, 2025). Support for democratic innovations is growing across diverse communities of practice – from public officials to activists and researchers – and such initiatives are being implemented worldwide to reinvigorate democratic practice by broadening and deepening citizen participation in political processes.

Yet the growing popularity of democratic innovations comes at a price. As their proliferation expands, both the discourse surrounding them and their institutional practice increasingly converge around narrow ‘best practice’ models. This tendency risks constraining the horizon of what democratic innovations are imagined to be, and what they might accomplish. We can illustrate this critique by considering the design, scope and impact of a prominent strand of democratic innovation in recent times: mini-publics. In terms of design, much attention is directed to the procedural aspects of mini-publics: forums in which (quasi)randomly selected citizens deliberate on a specific issue, exchange reasons, weigh diverse perspectives, and consult experts or advocates in order to formulate recommendations (Curato et al., 2021; Ryan and Smith, 2014). Mini-publics are often praised for their inclusiveness, transparency, and epistemic quality, and they have become a dominant reference point in debates about democratic innovation. In terms of scope, however, the role of mini-publics is typically defined as supportive of existing institutions, that is, providing recommendations for policymakers, bringing governmental action closer to citizens, and contributing to the overall legitimacy of political decisions rather than contesting power structures or reconfiguring political authority itself (Lafont, 2015; Qvortrup and Vancic, 2022; Smith, 2009). Finally, in terms of impact, these democratic innovations often remain modest: citizens are usually positioned as advisers to existing authorities, typically without formal decision-making powers, and the fate of their proposals often depends on the goodwill of official power-holders. In this way, innovations that were initially framed as tools for democratic renewal frequently end up reinforcing the procedural and institutional status quo (Böker, 2017; Jacquet et al., 2023).

This narrowing of design, scope, and impact has not gone unnoticed. Growing unease can be observed among scholars of democratic innovation, who warn that the initial aspiration to deepen democracy and reinvent the role of citizens is increasingly being captured by an ‘elite-led engineering of citizen participation’ (Hammond, 2021: 174; Hendriks, 2023; Voß and Amelung, 2016). Such technocratic capture is underpinned and facilitated by an influential uncritical interpretation of deliberative democratic politics, which has had a significant impact on the theoretical and practical development within key areas of the field of democratic innovation. From this perspective, the theory of deliberative democracy is often reduced to a set of normative core values, such as inclusion, equality, and rationality, realised through processes of mutual reason-giving (Bächtiger et al., 2018; Scudder et al., 2022). Reflecting this orientation, debates and practices of democratic innovation have increasingly centred on such deliberative ideals (Asenbaum, 2022: 683; Hendriks, 2023; Opitz, 2024). This emphasis elevates the goal of realising ideal discursive conditions, inspired by Habermas’ discourse ethics, over other dimensions of social transformation Habermas’ (1990) wider theory of democracy was actually geared towards (Hammond, 2025). As Graham Smith (2019) has argued, this emerging ‘deliberative hegemony’ (or, more accurately, the hegemony of uncritical interpretations of deliberative democracy) directs attention predominantly to the ‘deliberative qualities of participatory institutions over other considerations’ (p. 579).

This Special Issue takes this critique as a point of departure. It seeks to explore possible routes beyond the technocratic and design-focused orientation, and towards a more critical-emancipatory account of democratic innovations. We argue that this requires, on the one hand, a broader understanding of the actual practices and diverse forms that democratic innovations assume in different contexts, and on the other hand, a richer theoretical imagination about the range of traditions and perspectives that might inform them. The contributions assembled here pursue this task by pushing against the boundaries of the influential uncritical interpretation of the deliberative paradigm in three directions. First, by emphasising the importance of contextual sensitivity and embeddedness in the everyday practices of citizens, particularly in non-Western settings, which question taken-for-granted design assumptions (Bussu et al., 2025; Curato and Calamba, 2024). Second, by drawing attention to arts-based practices and hybrid democratic innovations which challenge the narrow focus on mini-publics (Cunningham and Hammond, 2025; Hendriks and Kempeneer, 2025). Third, by engaging with alternative theoretical resources, including assemblage theory, political economy and the kaleidoscope of democratic theory, which expand the normative and applied dimensions of the field (Asenbaum, 2025; Bussu et al., 2025; Escobar and Bua, 2025; Hendriks and Kempeneer, 2025). Together, these contributions demonstrate the theoretical and practical pluriverse of democratic innovation that becomes visible once we move beyond the limitations of an overly narrowly understood deliberative paradigm.

Democratising democratic innovations

The contributions to this special issue are driven by a shared concern for the urgent need to revitalise democracy in times of overlapping crises. They rest on the assumption that addressing challenges such as rising inequalities, social marginalisation, environmental degradation, authoritarian populism, and deepening political polarisation requires more meaningful inclusion of citizens in political processes, alongside the creation of diverse fora that can complement representative institutions, tackle domination, and hold political elites accountable. Democratic innovations hold particular promise in this regard, as they are designed precisely to expand opportunities for citizen participation and to reconfigure power relations between citizens and elites. It is for this reason that contemporary democratic innovations emerged during the so-called ‘participation age’ (Biaocchi and Ganuza, 2017), when growing demands for participation and inclusion were channelled into political processes and governance was somewhat reoriented towards the needs and perspectives of citizens. This wave of innovations, from the 1990s onwards, was shaped in particular by two democratic theory streams that shared critical-emancipatory foundations. Participatory democracy emphasised normative ideals such as political equality, community empowerment, and self-governance, while deliberative democracy emphasised discursive and epistemic goals, including rational deliberation, considered judgement, and mutual understanding as resistance against distorted communication (Escobar and Bua, 2025; Lafont, 2019).

Drawing from both streams seemed to offer a productive reconciliation: combining meaningful citizen participation with considered deliberation while addressing age-old anxieties that direct democracy might descend into demagoguery or populist capture. In practice, however, the deliberative strand has gained dominance, functioning as a ‘working theory’ (Chambers, 2003) for designs of participation. While deliberative democracy is certainly not a homogeneous field, what have by now become its mainstream accounts tend to strip it down to a handful of dimensions such as inclusion, equality, and reason-giving (O’Flynn, 2021: 1–21), amenable to measurement through reduction to a technical framework operationalised through tools like the Discourse Quality Index (Steiner et al., 2004). This procedural focus has arguably detached deliberative theory from broader democratic ambitions. Within this trajectory, mini-publics have gained particular prominence. They are carefully designed, often authorised by public institutions, and presented as a means to secure public support and gather knowledge about citizens’ preferences. The promise of these settings lies in the idea that the inclusion of diverse perspectives through deliberation produces better decisions, fulfilling what Lafont (2019) has described as their ‘epistemic filter’ and ‘democratic mirror’ functions (p. 95). Yet, such democratic innovations often leave citizens and democrats frustrated, as they remain consultative in nature and are typically not empowered with decision-making authority (Fung and Wright, 2003: 5). Hence, their potential for transformative change is limited. In many instances, it is not an exaggeration to describe at least many of such initiatives as instances of ‘simulative politics’ (Blühdorn, 2007): they give the impression of meaningful reform in the face of profound crises, while in practice leaving entrenched power dynamics and structures intact.

Against this backdrop, we argue that the time is ripe for a new critical turn in the field, one that moves beyond narrow deliberative designs and towards the broader project of democratising democratic innovations. By democratising we mean fostering empowered channels for citizen participation in democratic governance, enhancing democratic inclusion, bringing democratic innovations closer to the lived experiences of people, opposing domination in political, economic and social life, and increasing capacity for democratic collective action and systemic change. We see two programmatic roads for this endeavour. The first is to revive the critical edge of deliberative democracy itself (Hammond, 2018), reclaiming its inherent emancipatory ambition. The second is to move beyond the focus on deliberative democracy, exploring alternative theoretical resources that can open up new imaginaries for the scope, design, and impact of democratic innovations. These two routes are neither exhaustive nor mutually exclusive. Research on democratic innovations has always been in close dialogue with normative democratic theory; indeed, one might say that it translates normative ideas into practice. Democratic theory therefore continues to offer much potential for this field by broadening the horizon of democratic ideals that innovations seek to realise. Against this backdrop, the two routes outlined below are intended as a starting point for a necessary discussion and as analytical guidance for reimagining the future of the field.

Rekindling the critical edge of deliberative democracy

The history of deliberative scholarship can be understood as the unfolding of a tension between two orientations: one critical and emancipatory, the other uncritical and procedural. In its critical orientation, deliberative democracy foregrounded a project of anti-domination (Dryzek, 2002): a vision of politics grounded in communicative freedom and the democratic transformation of power through which citizens could resist the colonising effects of markets and bureaucracies on everyday life (Habermas, 1989, 1996, 2023). Deliberation was not simply a method for reaching consensus but a collective process through which equality and autonomy could be realised (Bohman, 1996). This orientation thus advanced a form of critique: an effort to make social power visible and to democratise it through inclusive communication (Dryzek, 1990; Young, 2000).

Given this heritage, to speak of uncritical deliberative democracy is almost an oxymoron. The paradigm originated in critical theory that grounded struggles against arbitrary authority and systemic domination in communicative reason suited to modern, mediatised societies (Dryzek, 1990; Habermas, 1996). For early proponents, deliberation was not a neutral decision procedure but a critical response to distorted communication and structural inequalities (e.g. Bohman, 1996; Dryzek, 1990, 2002). Its animating principle was that power must always be publicly justified and open to contestation, and deliberation was conceived as a communicative practice of emancipation, revealing how discourse can both sustain and disrupt domination (see Hammond, 2018). This was deliberation’s critical promise – to transform politics by foregrounding the justification and contestation of power as central democratic acts.

Over time, this radical impulse was somewhat blunted. At the turn of the century, the deliberative paradigm underwent an empirical turn, seeking proof of concept through mini-publics such as citizens’ juries and assemblies, deliberative polls, consensus conferences and other sortition-based citizen fora (see Elstub and McLaverty, 2014). This turn expanded the field’s applicability and methodological rigour but also encouraged a proceduralist design orientation. Chambers (2009) argued that deliberative theory was at risk of giving up on democratising mass democracy in favour of small-scale, well-designed forums. Such processes made deliberation legible to policymakers but detached it from the structural conditions of domination that critical theory had aimed to expose and subvert. In effect, what began as a theory of democratic empowerment and emancipation increasingly resembled a procedural technology of legitimacy (see Hammond, 2021) at risk of becoming a governance tool rather than a vehicle for systemic critique and change (Dryzek, 2002).

Recently, however, new work is rekindling deliberative democracy’s critical foundation. For example, Curato et al. (2019) advance a ‘power turn’ in deliberative theory: a renewed focus on addressing domination, resistance and inequalities (see also Wojciechowska, 2019). Curato (2019) repositions deliberation as a response to suffering and injustice. Hammond, (2018, 2021) recounts the deliberative paradigm as critical theory to advance citizen empowerment and emancipation. Asenbaum (2022) incorporates an ecumenical take on democratic theory, including affect and agonism, to re-centre transformation. And Habermas (2023) has revisited questions of political economy in the structuration of the public sphere. He argues that democratic publics face profound forces of social disintegration, including the socio-economic disruptions of globalised capitalism and the rise of a digital public sphere shaped by private, profit-driven logics. The latter’s quasi-private communication architecture accelerates the commodification of the lifeworld itself.

Rekindling deliberative democracy as a critical paradigm means restoring its emancipatory imagination and reconnecting it with struggles against domination, commodification and structural inequalities in all their social, economic, political and cultural forms. In this light, deliberation is not merely a procedure but a practice of resistance and reflexivity to challenge the power relations that shape who speaks, who is heard, and whose interests prevail. Rekindling deliberation’s critical edge thus returns it to its radical purposes: opening decision-making’s black boxes, countering the brute force of money, coercion, and exclusion, and democratising politics not only in institutional settings but across society. This recognises that deliberative praxis is a struggle over meaning as much as policy – a practice that unsettles as much as resolves. In reclaiming its critical heritage, deliberative democracy resists its own domestication and recovers its transformative potential: to make power visible, authority answerable, and to continually re-open the spaces where citizens can challenge the terms of their own governance. This orientation can give the field of democratic innovation a stronger focus on systemic change (Escobar and Bua, 2025).

Looking beyond deliberative democracy

While there are ways to diversify perspectives on democratic innovation based on different interpretations of the deliberative paradigm and, in particular, a revival of critical deliberative democracy, there is also growing interest in tapping into the resources of other theoretical traditions. Deliberative democracy is the dominant theoretical framework for research on democratic innovations, but it is not the only one with a longer tradition of stimulating thinking about ways to create novel processes and institutions in which people can interact and make political decisions. For example, participatory democracy, which focuses on possibilities of realising democratic ideals in people’s everyday interaction (Asenbaum et al., 2025), has long combined considerations on deepening democratic practices with considerations on new institutional designs.

Carole Pateman’s (1975) seminal work, and especially her case for democracy in the workplace, represents a milestone in this tradition of political thought. Recent scholarship develops it further by showing how new forms of organising democratic life are emerging in various ‘unlikely places’ (Dzur, 2019). Participatory democracy is a tradition of political thought – about the possibilities of citizen participation processes in the social contexts that shape people’s lives – that has distinct foundations from deliberative democracy. However, this Special Issue shows that it can also be drawn on to address weaknesses of democratic innovation based on uncritical interpretations of the deliberative paradigm (see Escobar and Bua, 2025).

However, participatory democracy is not the only alternative tradition of political thought with the capacity to expand the imagination for democratic innovation beyond the deliberative paradigm. It has been shown that agonistic political thought (Lowndes and Paxton, 2018; Paxton, 2020; Westphal, 2019), feminist political thought (Wojciechowska, 2019), and plebeian political thought (Arlen and Rossi, 2021; Harting, 2024; Prinz and Westphal, 2024) inform ways of theorising and designing democratic innovations that take seriously the depth of disagreements and the various forms of power asymmetries and structural disadvantages that shape social relations. Such approaches do not necessarily propose entirely different types of democratic innovations, but they describe ways of defining the purpose and designing procedures and selection mechanisms in a manner that differs from the proposals typically made by deliberative democrats. Hans Asenbaum (2022, 2025) argues that further tapping into the distinct ways in which agonistic, feminist, participatory, and transformative approaches can inspire different paths for institutional design is a useful strategy for multiplying and diversifying the imagination of possible futures for democratic innovation. As such, it can supplement the strategy of reviving critical interpretations of deliberative democracy and expand theorists’ capacity for creative thinking about democratic innovations, partly in similar ways, but sometimes also in ways that cannot be achieved through different interpretations of the deliberative paradigm.

A theoretical resource that not only multiplies and diversifies possibilities for democratic innovation, but also stimulates new ways of theorising the relationship between different spaces of democratic engagement, is assemblage theory (Asenbaum and Bussu, 2025). Assemblage theory (e.g. DeLanda, 2016) highlights the interconnectedness of various components in the world, both human and non-human, and draws attention to the dynamic nature of these connections. As some of the contributions to this Special Issue show, these ideas can serve as a useful basis for describing the various connections between participatory spaces as well as their temporality and contextual embeddedness (Bussu et al., 2025; Hendriks and Kempeneer, 2025).

There are some similarities between an assemblage theory-based approach to theorising the complex ways in which democratic practices and spaces are connected and the turn to systems thinking in deliberative democracy (e.g. Mansbridge et al., 2012). But it is important to consider the differences. While the deliberative systems approach is interested in the diverse practices that a political system needs to do justice to deliberative qualities, the assemblage theory-based approach draws attention to the diverse dynamics between participatory practices that do not necessarily follow a deliberative logic and highlights the nonlinear, creative, and often unpredictable ways in which democratic innovations transform the political contexts in which they are implemented. In this way, assemblage theory, like the other theoretical traditions referred to above, has the potential to shed new light on democratic innovations and opens perspectives that are not available with an exclusive focus on the deliberative paradigm.

Contributions to the special issue

The contributions gathered in this Special Issue take up this agenda in diverse ways, advancing the project of democratising democratic innovations while highlighting distinct perspectives, contexts, formats, and theoretical resources. Several return to deliberative democracy, but do so with the aim of reclaiming its critical force and democratic ambition. Escobar and Bua stress the need for participatory correctives to counter overly stylised deliberative approaches, while Cunningham and Hammond reappropriate Habermas’s notion of the public sphere to argue for democratic innovations that build critical publics rather than serve technocratic ends. Curato and Calamba likewise push the deliberative paradigm from within, subjecting mini-publics to the test of practice in post-conflict Philippines and questioning taken-for-granted design principles such as random selection when confronted with local realities. Other contributions chart new directions beyond deliberative democracy. Bussu and colleagues mobilise assemblage theory to conceptualise democratic innovations as complex and embedded in interactions with both human and non-human actors. Hendriks and Kempeneer also turn to assemblage theory, but to make sense of hybrid formats that combine different modes of citizen involvement. Asenbaum, in turn, employs the metaphor of a kaleidoscope of democratic theory to bring diverse traditions into conversation and to distil practical guidance for the design of democratic innovations.

We now outline the contributions in more detail to illustrate how each advances the overall aims of this Special Issue: Oliver Escobar and Adrian Bua in their programmatic paper are especially concerned with democratic innovations having become too system-affirming due to the hegemony of a non-critical version of deliberative democracy. This, they argue, collides with the broader societal and political need for transformative change, especially in the field of economic relations and capitalism. They call for redirecting democratic innovations towards processes and institutions that have the capacity to advance change. As a participatory corrective to deliberative hegemony, they argue for enlarging the capacity of democratic innovation, for example by working on the democratisation of the economy. In doing so, they call for a shift away from ‘the monoculture of mini-publics in deliberative democracy’ (p. 9) towards power-sharing institutions that empower citizens and recognise the pluriversality of democratic innovations beyond centralised institutions and narrowly defined political sites.

Malaika Cunningham and Marit Hammond reflect this direction of travel by presenting the case of a participatory performance in the UK, called The People’s Palace of Possibility, which explores arts-based practices and socially engaged arts as democratic innovations. In doing so, they challenge the dominant focus on institutional design that has often reduced democratic innovations to officially orchestrated settings. Their study highlights how artistic performances in public spaces can foster playful, imaginative, reflective, and collective democratic spaces. Connecting to Habermas and Arendt, they show the normative upshot of these practices: the potential to reinvigorate a critical public sphere ‘as the precondition for spontaneous, citizen-led, critical-disruptive political action’ (p. 10). They place this at the centre of a more critical understanding of deliberative democracy, which the contribution seeks to revitalise.

How template-type thinking in democratic innovations fails in real-life contexts is illustrated by Nicole Curato and Septrin Calamba's case study of two mini-publics in the fragile context of Philippine communities recovering from armed conflict and police brutality. Focusing on sortition and long-term deliberation, the study shows how these design ideals collide with participants’ lived experiences, including deep-rooted mistrust of government data and concerns for personal and family safety. Curato and Calamba demonstrate how the running of the mini-publics needed to be adjusted to the rhythms of participants’ everyday lives, which in turn altered their overall function: rather than generating policy recommendations, the mini-publics became spaces for community healing and ‘demonstrated the power of deliberation in empowering people to be the authors of their own community’s narratives and build horizontal relationships’ (p. 11).

While Curato and Calamba’s contribution puts the spotlight on context-dependency and the need for more fine-grained, ethnographic insights into the actual practice of democratic innovation on the ground, Sonia Bussu, Marta Wojciechowska, Catherine Forde and Tayrine dos Santos Dias take this epistemological and methodological claim further. They argue that scholars need to look beyond deliberative theory to account for embeddedness, contextual dynamics, social structures, and everyday relationality in both the design and practice of democratic innovations. Drawing on assemblage theory, they highlight how democratic innovations emerge through complex interactions with human, more-than-human, and material actors and outline implications for the study of democratic innovations. Their assemblage perspective cautions against the ‘interventionist approach’ that has dominated the field and points instead towards ‘co-design of democratic innovations with participants and communities, rethinking democracy as relational, situated, and practice-centred’ (p. 14).

Frank Hendriks and Shirley Kempeneer put assemblage theory to the test with the example of participatory budgeting in Antwerp, a hybrid democratic innovation that combines different modes of citizen involvement. In this case, deliberative (talk-centric) and plebiscitary (vote-centric) practices are connected to representative democratic institutions. The authors show how assemblage theory is helpful in making sense of the hybrid nature of participatory budgeting, its interconnected cycles, and multiple fora. At the same time, they find that the approach has limits, particularly in addressing questions of agency and power within the process. To overcome the shortcomings of a ‘deeply descriptive’ (p. 6) assemblage focus, they propose combining assemblage theory with institutional theory and cultural theory, not only to better understand the actual practice of participatory budgeting, but also to gain insights into the consequences and functioning of different settings.

The agenda of the Special Issue is both rounded up and pushed further by Hans Asenbaum’s contribution, which broadens the focus by taking the reader through what he calls a ‘kaleidoscope’ (p. 2) of democratic theory. His central claim is that only by looking at democratic innovations through multiple theoretical lenses can we perceive their full richness, depth, and complexity. Cycling through participatory, deliberative, feminist, agonistic, and transformative democratic theory, Asenbaum demonstrates how such approach sheds light on alternative and innovative democratic spaces while also drawing attention to overlooked aspects of already familiar innovations. From each of these five traditions, he distils lessons and develops concrete recommendations for the design of democratic innovations. Importantly, his aim is not to merge these perspectives into one super-theory, but rather to invite the field to broaden its imagination in order to enrich the practice of democratic innovation.

Taken together, the contributions in this Special Issue underline that democratising democratic innovations requires theoretical pluralism, a critical perspective, and contextual sensitivity. Whether through a critical reappropriation of deliberative ideals or through the mobilisation of alternative theoretical resources, they share a commitment to expand the scope of what democratic innovations can achieve, to situate them in the lived realities of citizens, and to resist their reduction to technocratic exercises. In this way, the Special Issue demonstrates how democratic innovations can be reimagined as sites of empowerment, contestation, and creativity rather than mere instruments of top-down governance design.

Our hope is that this collection contributes to galvanise the critical turn already under way in the field of democratic innovation. By illustrating the potential of alternative approaches, we are seeking to carve out space for a new generation of studies and practices that foreground currently overlooked areas, for example: the democratisation of the economy; the role of arts-based approaches in expanding the democratic imagination; how alternative democratic theories can inform existing innovations and inspire new ones; how to support cross-fertilisation between transformative paradigms, such as the commons, and democratic innovation; how to connect with decolonial struggles and learn from democratic innovation in indigenous communities; and how the field can contribute to advance systemic change.

If we make the field of democratic innovation more capacious, the possibilities are endless. And endless possibilities are precisely what our troubled times demand.