Hybrid Democratic Innovations: If and When They Impact Decision-Making

Abstract

Increased citizen participation through democratic innovation is an increasingly popular response to the dual challenges of complex global problems and democratic malaise. Hybrid democratic innovations (HDIs), which combine deliberative and plebiscitary elements, could potentially realise the benefits of both forms, including improving the impact on decision-making. This paper explores the conditions under which a range of hybrid democratic innovations impact decision-making on policy. Using fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis, two sufficient pathways where HDIs achieve impact on decision-making are identified. Strikingly, an active public engagement strategy is present in both of these routes to impact on decision-making, highlighting its importance–although always in combination with other design and contextual conditions. In regional or national-level cases with impact, we find an active public engagement strategy occurs in combination with a tight connection to representative institutions and on issues of low complexity. In local-level cases with impact, an active public engagement strategy occurs in combination with low rates of citizen participation, a finding which downplays the importance of the rate of participation on impact on decision-making. By assembling a comparative mapping of the field of HDIs, this paper helps us better understand when they (can) have an impact.