Between Party Democracy and Citizen Democracy

Abstract

As a response to the perceived legitimacy crisis that threatens modern democracies, local government has increasingly become a laboratory for democratic renewal and citizen participation. This article studies whether and why local party chapters support democratic innovations fostering more citizen participation. More specifically, we analyse the relative weight of ideas, interests and institutions in explaining their support for citizen-centred democracy. Based on the Belgian Local Chairs Survey in 2018 (albeit restricting our analysis to Flanders), the central finding is that ideas matter more than interests and institutions. Ideology is alive and kicking with regard to democratic innovation, with socialist and ecologist parties and populist parties being most supportive of participatory arrangements. By contrast, interests and institutions play, at this stage, a minor role in explaining support for participatory innovations.

Is It Interests, Ideas or Institutions? Explaining Elected Representatives' Positions Toward Democratic Innovations in 15 European Countries

“…Thirdly, we were limited by the formulation of the questions in the survey, which did not allow us to distinguish between binding and advisory innovations. Previous research (e.g., Caluwaerts et al, 2020;Jacquet et al, 2020) found that the binding nature of the innovation matters greatly, with support for binding referendums or mini-publics being lower than for advisory ones. However, the formulation of the items in the questionnaire remains vague on this issue, in the sense that it is not clear whether the referendums or mini-publics needed to be binding or advisory.…”