Phase 1 of the Participedia project focused primarily on participatory governance—(a) processes that directly involve citizens in those policies and laws that affect them; (b) ways that political systems can benefit from the knowledge and energies of everyday people; and (c) policies and other collective actions produced in response to citizen needs and interests. This Phase 2 research cluster will build upon and expand the extensive knowledge base that Participedia has developed, but with a closer focus on challenges to democracy.

Rights are key vectors of democracy. When backed by institutions and supportive political cultures, human and political rights support democracy by limiting coercion, providing safe spaces for political organizing, speaking, and expression, and underwriting welfare securities for active citizenship (Moyn 2010, Sikkink 2011). They are very often the topics and sites of political struggles for inclusion. This research cluster will map, theorize, document, and explain innovations in human and political rights, particularly those that support democracy and democratization.

Representativerelationships have long been understood as essential to expanding democratic inclusions over time and space. While competitive elections remain the central institution for accountable representation based on jurisdiction, innovative non-electoral forms of representation, including advocacy groups, representative citizen bodies, and NGOs, are increasingly important to the reach and depth of democracy (Castiglione & Warren 2019, Montanaro 2017, Saward 2010, Hendriks 2019, Gastil & Knobloch 2020). New forms of representation are central to reinventing Indigenous-settler state relationships, and reconciling constitutional orders (Ladner 2003, 2005). They are especially important in developing countries, particularly those with weak state capacities and/or unresponsive institutions (Anciano & Piper 2019).

The Indigenous Right Cluster aims to curate cases on Indigenous practices of political representation and participatory governance for the Participedia website, where democratic innovations worldwide are aggregated. Throughout the year, project members meet to discuss cases of Indigenous political practices and reflect on their broader significance for democratic theory and their challenges to Western views of democracy. 

We usually understand democratic accountability as achieved through competitive elections. But elections often prove to be blunt and ineffective methods for holding political elites accountable to the people they should serve. Competitive elections can co-exist with high levels of corruption, low responsiveness to marginalized groups, inattention to collective goods, and even authoritarianism (Jenkins & Goetz 2006, Gandhi & Lust-Okar 2009). Even in developed democracies with high levels of election integrity, complex, large-scale political and policy environments can make achieving accountability difficult for citizens. Over the last few decades, however, some long-standing mechanisms of accountability are being tried in new contexts (e.g. in Indian states), including traditional constitutional and legislative actors developing and exercising new “horizontal” oversight capabilities, and newer institutional actors (e.g., ombudspersons, comptrollers, auditor generals) that scrutinize executive actions (Gargarella, Domingo, & Roux 2006, Gloppen, Gargarella & Skaar 2004, Tushnet 2008, Ruparelia 2013).

A crucial area of democratic innovation—yet also the most difficult to theorize—are responses to multi-dimensional issues that flow across borders (Rask et al. 2019, Erman & Kuyper 2019, Hale & Koenig-Archibugi 2019). Existing nation-state borders often map poorly onto political problems and transboundary issues: borders are often legacies of wars and/or colonial imposition, and in part because local and regional issues are increasingly interconnected with transnational and global issues. Such issues pose threats to self-government that are broadly existential (like climate change, collective security, trade, or watershed management), or to specific groups/communities, such as Indigenous peoples, displaced persons and refugees (Lightfoot 2016, Ibhawoh 2003, 2020).

Digital strategies that use social media to spread rumours and to micro-target voters represent a clear and present danger to democracy (Tenove et al. 2018). At the same time, innovationsin digital democracy are proving essential to broadening inclusion, scaling smaller deliberative processes to broader publics, and facilitating responsive government (van Dijk 2018, Asenbaum 2019). It is important to track online platforms and projects that still exhibit the potential that excited democratic innovators before the current threats emerged, and to document those digital threats (Dahlberg 2011, Dahlberg & Siapera 2007, Smith 2009, Hacker & van Dijk 2000).

This research cluster is focused on quantitative data and analysis. We aim to address challenges with the quality of the Participedia dataset by developing standards and practice guidelines for future data gathering, including how to collect data initially and then how to merge datasets to generate meaningful results.