Innovating Democracy?

Since democratization Latin America has experienced a surge in new forms of citizen participation. Yet there is still little comparative knowledge on these so-called democratic innovations. This Element seeks to fill this gap. Drawing on a new dataset with 3744 cases from 18 countries between 1990 and 2020 it presents the first large-N cross-country study of democratic innovations to date. It also introduces a typology of twenty kinds of democratic innovations which are based on four means of participation namely deliberation citizen representation digital engagement and direct voting. Adopting a pragmatist problem-driven approach this Element claims that democratic innovations seek to enhance democracy by addressing public problems through combinations of those four means of participation in pursuit of one or more of five ends of innovations namely accountability responsiveness rule of law social equality and political inclusion.