Leadership in democratic innovation

The drivers behind democratic innovation - a rather special type of institutional innovation, with often high thresholds for change - are still ill-understood (Smith, Democratic innovation, 2007). In this paper, I will focus... [ view full abstract ]

The drivers behind democratic innovation - a rather special type of institutional innovation, with often high thresholds for change - are still ill-understood (Smith, Democratic innovation, 2007). In this paper, I will focus on the role of individual drivers behind democratic innovation - on the scope for individual leadership in forging reform. Using own research in addition to secundary sources, the paper will explore leadership in three distinctive types of democratic innovation. Firstly, experiments with deliberativey mini-publics (G1000 and the like) Secondly, new forms of practical do-ocracy (e.g neighborhood cooperatives). Thirdly, emerging forms of electronic aggregation (liquid feedback and the like). Exploring the role of leadership in these efforts, I will zoom in on two particular aspects: the (re)framing, and the (re)organizing impact that effective leadership theoretically may have. A great deal of the literature on democratic reform looks at institutional path-dependency, which continues to be important, but also needs to be complemented with due attention to individual change agents who have been able to work with, or around, path-dependency in strategic ways. Not because this represents common behavior, but because this signals scarce capacity that deserves better understanding. The aim of the paper is the development and refinement of theoretical propositions regarding leadership in democratic innovation. This is not conceived as a sterile exercise, but as one that intertwines empirical observation with hypothesis-generation.