Innovations, Reinvented Politics and Representative Democracy

HOW SOCIAL MOVEMENTS CAN SAVE DEMOCRACY Democratic Innovations from Below Polity, 2020

The birth of democracies owes much to the interventions and mobilizations of ordinary people. Yet many feel as though they have inherited democratic institutions which do not deliver for the people – that a rigid democratic process has been imposed from above, with increasing numbers of people feeling left out or left behind. In this well-researched volume, leading political sociologist Donatella della Porta rehabilitates the role social movements have long played in fostering and deepening democracy, particularly focusing on progressive movements of the Left which have sought to broaden the plurality of voices and knowledge in democratic debate. Bridging social movement studies and democratic theory, della Porta investigates contemporary innovations in times of crisis, particularly those in the direction of participatory and deliberative practices – ‘crowd-sourced constitutions’, referendums from below and movement parties – and reflects on the potential and limits of such alternative politics. In a moment in which concerns increase for the potential disruption of a Great Regression led by xenophobic movements and parties, the cases and analyses of resistance in this volume offer important material for students and scholars of political sociology, political science and social movement studies.

Acta Politica, 2023

Can democratic innovations (DIs) offer a cure for the widespread loss of support for electoral institutions? This widely held assumption among advocates of DIs should be questioned more thoroughly. Insufficient attention has been paid so far to the impact of different types of DIs on electoral legitimacy, defined as the support for the principles grounding electoral representation. What is at stake is the compatibility and equilibrium between different parts of the new democratic systems that are developing in many political contexts. To address this issue, the article offers an innovative typology, distinguishing five types of DIs based on their relationship with traditional representative institutions. This allows to identify DIs that do have the potential to strengthen electoral legitimacy (initiative, recall, abrogative referendums, deliberative town-halls) from others overtly attacking it (lottocracy, liquid democracy) or potentially challenging it (citizen-initiated referendums and empowered citizens' assemblies). The article shows that it is not because an innovation is conceived as complementary to electoral representative institutions that it cannot challenge the latter's foundations. Finally, it identifies several issues on which empirical knowledge is lacking, opening perspectives for future research.

This article presents and analyzes new forms of political participation and their relationship with the traditional institutions and actors of representative democracy. In spite of the creation of new forms of political participation during the last fifty years, the representative system was until now not able to interact with the new political phenomena in a profitable way. The detachment between these two realities – two distinct groups of actions, actors, organizations and institutions – constitutes important part of the permanent "crisis of democracy". While this detachment lasts, possible political outputs are the advance of populism and the delegitimization of some classical political institutions, like Parliaments.

Paper delivered at the 7th General Conference of the European Consortium of Political Research (ECPR), Sciences Po, Bordeaux, 4-7 September 2013

Recent studies on the quality of democracy have concluded that “the greater the participation, the higher the probability that government and its decisions are responsive” (Levin and Molina 2011). However, quality of democracy indices usually measure political participation based on voting turnout, opportunities to vote and representativeness of institutions. In addition to voting, surveys define participation as organizing, assembling, protesting and lobbying. Access to government offices and membership in groups like political parties and civil society associations are also included in most indices. Those definitions of participation still amount to a minimalist or, at most, pluralist model of democracy; they do not account for the social and political changes brought about worldwide by the increasing dissemination of democratic innovations. This paper claims that an updated and more comprehensive notion of (non-electoral) participation is an integral part of the task of reforming political institutions and assessing the quality of democracy. It proposes a set of criteria to assess democratic innovations, envisaging the improvement of current measurements of the quality of democracy. The paper also argues that an enlarged account of political participation is one of the key elements that distinguish recent institutional reform in Latin America and Europe, and one that may explain the increasing disaffection with democracy in the latter in contrast with the decreasing levels of political distrust in the former.

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This paper discusses both myths of conceptualization and of assumed effects that are implicitly or explicitly presented in analyses of the so called ‘democratic innovations’ –i.e. the new institutions addressed to increase public participation beyond regular elections. It is argued that these myths, together with the (fictitious) confrontation between direct and indirect politics, have generated false oppositions and reductionisms that mask the debate and limit empirical approximations to democratic innovation. A research agenda based on the concept of ‘participatory ecologies’ is suggested for an understanding of the mechanisms of participation in a systemic way.

2019

There is a widespread belief that in order to cure the so-called crisis of democracy, citizens’ involvement in decision-making processes needs to be fostered. However, despite the fact that there is a move towards more inclusive institutions in Europe, changes implementing democratic innovations at the national level remain rare. Why are democratic innovations not implemented more often? In this article, we provide explanations on why inertia seems to win over change through an analysis of party elites’ willingness to enact democratic innovations across 15 European democracies, by using the PartiRep Comparative MP Survey. This research concentrates on party-level factors: party age, time in government and party ideology. Findings suggest that institutional inertia is partially rooted on the fact that party elites’ support for democratic innovations is heavily related to anti-establishment parties, to left-wing parties and to parties with limited access to power.

in "Atti e memorie dell'Accademia galileiana di scienze, lettere ed arti", 135, 2024, pp. 255-283 (lectura del 6 aprile 2023)

Il sonetto 232 (Vincitore Alexandro l'ira vinse) * (Lectura pronunciata il 6 aprile 2023) Vincitore Alexandro l'ira vinse Et fe' 'l minore in parte che Philippo: Che li val se Pyrgotile et Lysippo L'intagliâr solo et Appelle il depinse? L'ira Tydëo a tal rabbia sospinse, Che, morendo ei, si rose Menalippo; L'ira cieco del tutto, non pur lippo, Fatto avea Silla; a l'ultimo l'extinse. Sa 'l Valentinïan, ch'a simil pena Ira conduce; et sa 'l quei che ne more, Aiace, in molti et poi in se stesso forte. Ira è breve furore, et chi nol frena, È furor lungo, che 'l suo possessore Spesso a vergogna et talor mena a morte.