Democratic Innovations and representative democracies

Abstract

Our democracies are facing deep challenges, from economic systems that are failing many citizens to global environmental, security, and migration issues that flow across borders. Elections increasingly fail to return governments with capacities sufficient to meet these challenges, leaving broad segments of citizens disaffected, our systems of representation in deficit, and populist authoritarians with widening constituencies. Can we supplement electoral representative democracies with innovations that speak to these democratic deficits? While electoral democracy is increasingly challenged, “democracy” is not in crisis. In most countries, democratic values are strong and strengthening. We need to think about democratic innovations systematically, in terms of the kinds of values they capture, and the performance weaknesses they might address. When we do so, we can refine an agenda for the field of democratic innovations focused on the democratic project beyond the legacy institutions of electoral democracy.