Rethinking Democratic Innovation Cultural Clashes and the Reform of Democracy

Rethinking Democratic Innovation takes a fresh look at diverging visions of improving democratic governance and asks whether these existing tensions could be made productive. Could different visions of democratic revitalisation complement and correct each other in ways that are good for democracy? Is it conceivable that combined approaches address a larger part of the democratic challenge, while isolated approaches, centralizing deliberative or plebiscitary democracy, are confined to more limited areas of concern? This book ultimately provides an affirmative answer, outlining the scope for hybrid democratic innovations that thrive on exploiting, not eliminating, tensions between diverging visions of improved democracy.

Supplementing democratic theory with a cultural perspective, this book contributes to a deeper understanding of plans and methods geared toward improving democratic governance. Revisiting Mary Douglas's seminal take on culture as pollution reduction, processes of democratic innovation are understood as instances of cultural cleaning in public governance.

The book recognizes that democratic cleaning will never be finished but can be done in ways that are more productive. Reflecting on varieties of hybrid democratic innovation - deliberative referendums, participatory budgeting-new style, and more - the author posits that more versatile, connective, and embedded innovations stand a better chance of high performance on a broader spectrum than democratic innovations falling short of these qualities.

Frank Hendriks, Professor of Comparative Governance, Tilburg University, The Netherlands

Frank Hendriks is a full professor of Comparative Governance and a former Head of Department at Tilburg University, the Netherlands. He combines Political Science and Public Administration takes on democracy in action, which he has studied widely in the subnational, national, and cross-national realms. Frank leads the research project and consortium REDRESS, focused on hybrid democratic innovations combining practices of deliberation and voting. Frank has published extensively with reputed academic journals and international publishers, including Oxford University Press. He is a council member of the advisory Council for Public Administration (ROB) in the Netherlands, a fellow at the Montesquieu Institute, the Netherlands Institute of Governance (NIG), and was visiting fellow at various universities in Europe and the US.

Part 1: Understanding Variation
1. The layered quality of democratic innovation and reform
2. A cultural perspective on purity and democracy
3. Democratic innovation beyond deliberative reflection
4. Exploring the new plebiscitary democracy
5. Between counters and talkers: grasping the full matrix
Part 2: Advancing Innovation
6. Key values for democratic-governance innovation
7. The deliberative referendum: reflections on a national-level hybrid
8. Participatory Budgeting-new style: reflections on a local-level hybrid
9. Conclusion: on the hybrid-innovations hypothesis