This book examines democratic innovations from around the world, drawing lessons for the future development of both democratic theory and practice.

Democratic innovations are proliferating in politics, governance, policy, and public administration. These new processes of public participation are reimagining the relationship between citizens and institutions. This Handbook advances understanding of democratic innovations, in theory and practice, by critically reviewing their importance throughout the world. The overarching themes are a focus on citizens and their relationship to these innovations, and the resulting effects on political equality. The Handbook therefore offers a definitive overview of existing research on democratic innovations, while also setting the agenda for future research and practice.

Representative democracy is often seen as a stable institutional system insusceptible to change. However, the preferences of the broad public are changing and representative, group based democracy has lost importance. This development made it necessary to change established ways of decision making and to introduce participatory democratic innovations. Many national and sub-national governments followed this route and implemented various kinds of participatory innovations, i.e. the inclusion of citizens into processes of political will-formation and decisionmaking. The authors analyse and evaluate the various effects of these innovations in Europe, providing a bigger picture of the benefits and disadvantages different democratic innovations can result in.

In the face of increasing political disenchantment, many Western governments have experimented, with innovations which aim to enhance the working and quality of democracy as well as increasing citizens’ political awareness and understanding of political matters. This text is the most comprehensive account of these various democratic innovations. Written by an outstanding team of international experts it examines the theories behind these democratic innovations, how they have worked in practice and evaluates their success or failure. It explains experiments with new forms of democratic engagement such as: Direct Democracy Deliberative Democracy Co-Governance E-Democracy Drawing on a wide variety of theoretical perspectives and with a broad range of case studies, this is essential reading for all students of democratic theory and all those with an interest in how we might revitalise democracy and increase citizen involvement in the political process.

Participatory Budgeting—the experiment in democracy that could redefine how public budgets are decided in the United States. Democracy Reinvented is the first comprehensive academic treatment of participatory budgeting in the United States, situating it within a broader trend of civic technology and innovation. This global phenomenon, which has been called "revolutionary civics in action" by the New York Times, started in Brazil in 1989 but came to America only in 2009. Participatory budgeting empowers citizens to identify community needs, work with elected officials to craft budget proposals, and vote on how to spend public funds. Democracy Reinvented places participatory budgeting within the larger discussion of the health of U.S. democracy and focuses on the enabling political and institutional conditions. Author and former White House policy adviser Hollie Russon Gilman presents theoretical insights, indepth case studies, and interviews to offer a compelling alternative to the current citizen disaffection and mistrust of government. She offers policy recommendations on how to tap online tools and other technological and civic innovations to promote more inclusive governance. While most literature tends to focus on institutional changes without solutions, this book suggests practical ways to empower citizens to become change agents. Reinvesting in Democracy also includes a discussion on the challenges and opportunities that come with using digital tools to re-engage citizens in governance.

Offers a comparative study of the origins, performance, and reform of contemporary mechanisms of direct democracy.

This volume focuses on the issue of change in democratic politics in terms of experimental or actual innovations introduced either within political parties or outside the party system, involving citizen participation and mobilization. Including a wide and diverse range of alternatives in the organization of groups, campaigning, conducting initiatives and enhancing practices, they not only question the relevance of traditional institutions in representing citizens’ values and interests, but also share a common goal which is precisely – and perhaps paradoxically – to reshape and invigorate representative democracy This book is of key interest to scholars and students of party politics, elections/electoral studies, social movement and democratic innovations and more broadly to comparative politics, political theory and political sociology.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1966.

Public authorities from all levels of government increasingly turn to Citizens' Assemblies, Juries, Panels and other representative deliberative processes to tackle complex policy problems ranging from climate change to infrastructure investment decisions. They convene groups of people representing a wide cross-section of society for at least one full day – and often much longer – to learn, deliberate, and develop collective recommendations that consider the complexities and compromises required for solving multifaceted public issues.

Democratic Innovations in Central and Eastern Europe expands research on democratic innovations by looking specifically at different forms of democratic innovations in Central and Eastern Europe. The book covers direct democracy (referendums in particular), deliberative democracy practices and e-participation - forms which are salient in practice because they match the political realities of our time. Expert contributors show how the recent actions of ordinary citizens in several Central and Eastern European countries have challenged the contemporary political order, and grassroots movements and diverse forms of mobilization have challenged the notion of weak civil societies in the East. The empirical evidence presented attempts to deepen citizen involvement in political contexts sometimes quite different from the democratic political systems in the Western world. Using lessons from a still largely underexplored part of Europe, the book both complements and revises theoretical approaches, or complements empirical results in existing studies on democratic innovations. Democratic Innovations in Central and Eastern Europe will be of great interest to scholars working on democracy, political systems, political engagement, and Central and Eastern European politics. The chapters originally published as a special issue of Contemporary Politics.