Democratizing Democratic Innovations

The CfP of the Democratic Innovations Standing Group’s Section for the 2022 ECPR General Conference is now open!

Deadline: 10th of February 2022

Section Description

This section invites scholars, advocates, and critics of democratic innovations to take part in a difficult but necessary conversation about the call to democratise democratic innovations. As innovative forms of citizen participation like citizens’ juries, citizens’ assemblies, and civic tech gain ground around the world, questions emerge about the extent to which institutional tinkering can actually deliver the promise of equal voice and self-government. Some make a case for the institutionalization of innovative forms of citizen participation, so the positive impacts of democratic innovations can be scaled up and made permanent. For others, democratic innovations need to better engage issues of racial inequality and epistemic injustice, especially when deliberating on polarising issues. Meanwhile, critics make a case for the replacement of democratic innovations to a more radical democratic agenda, for democratic innovations, as they are currently understood, only serve to reinforce legacies of the Anthropocene and white settler colonialism which continue to harm minoritized communities, future generations, and the environment. 

This section invites theoretical, empirical, and methodological papers that engage some of the sharpest critiques and blind spots in the field today. Presenters from fields outside democratic innovations will be invited to foster a critical exchange of ideas. 

Among the themes this section seeks to ask are the following: 

• The lived experience of democratic innovations. How do ordinary citizens, particularly minoritized communities experience democratic innovations? How can these processes be better designed or radically transformed to address deep-seated issues of exclusion and powerlessness? 
• Redesigning democratic innovations. How can the design and implementation of democratic innovations be further democratised? How can the integrity of these processes be monitored? 
• Climate assemblies and ecological injustice. Climate assemblies are among the most popular forms of democratic innovations today but to what extent do these assemblies make a valuable contribution to help societies address the climate emergency? How do these assemblies give voice to communities as well as non-human others most affected by climate change?
• Beyond democratic innovations. What can democratic innovations learn from broader transformative democratic agendas and political projects?  

Ultimately, this section seeks to advance the scholarship on democratic innovations by getting to the heart of the field’s most challenging questions. 

The section is co-convened by Lucy J Parry (Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance, University of Canberra) and Alice el-Wakil (Cluster “The Politics of Inequality” and Zukunftskolleg, University of Konstanz).

Call for Panel and Paper Proposals

Guidelines for panel submissions

We invite all the members of the Democratic Innovations Standing Group (including those provisionally proposed as part of the Section proposal) to submit their full panel proposals per e-mail to the section co-conveners by February 10, 2022. They will receive further information on how to submit their panel on the ECPR platform shortly thereafter and before the final deadline on February 16, 2022.

Panel proposals should include 

• Title of the panel
• Chair(s) 
• Abstract 
• 3-5 paper presenters, title of the paper, abstract
• Discussant(s)

We encourage panels that promote intellectual diversity in terms of methods, approaches, theory, geography, institutions, career stages. We also encourage cross-section panels. Manels will not be accepted. We request that panel co-chairs should not come from the same institution. Please send your panel proposals per email to section co-conveners Alice el-Wakil and Lucy Parry (subject “Panel ECPR GC22”) before/on February 10, 2022. 

Guidelines for paper submissions

Individual paper proposals are also welcome (i.e. papers that do not yet belong to a panel). They can be submitted directly on the ECPR platform by the deadline on February 16, 2022, following the procedure described here.

Conditions of participation

The 2022 ECPR General Conference will take place on August 22-26, 2022, in Innsbruck. Please note that, following the ECPR GC regulations, 

• Individuals may perform the function of Section Chair, Panel Chair and Discussant only once.
• Paper presenters can present no more than two papers.

All ECPR GC 2022 guidelines and deadlines, including about registration and funding, are available here: https://ecpr.eu/Events/Event/Content?ID=1039&EventID=185

For queries, please get in touch with deminno@outlook.com.