Democratic innovation through recognition

Introduction Democratic Innovation

General introduction of approach

Democratic innovation builds inclusivity in central decision- and policy-making efforts such as budgeting, science, conflict management and confrontation across scales of status, community design, and housing committees, particularly in the promotion of equality and justice in urban sustainability. At the heart of democratic innovation is recognition in which certain societal segments gain inclusion in decision- and policy-making processes with the assumption that political decisions and policies can thereby reflect a wider spectrum of perspectives and concerns with due attention to issues of equality. Participatory and action research methodologies are often highlighted with an emphasis on improving the lives of subordinated or traditionally excluded groups (e.g., SocIEtY, CITISPYCE) as well as confronting or transforming existing power dynamics (e.g., TRANSLATE DEMOCRACY). For example, SocIEtY and CITISPYCE draw important attention to garnering and integrating youth perspectives more in related political processes. In this context, new perspectives and information emerge by tackling different issues ranging from restorative justice (ALTERNATIVE) to air quality (CITI-SENSE). While there are implications for governance and participation processes, democratic innovation directly builds in recognition of targeted segments of society in a way that enhances or expands democracy.

Shapes, sizes and applications

Democrative innovative approaches establish diverse participatory forums predominantly applied at a small scale in multiple settings. While some approaches (e.g., TRANSLATE DEMOCRACY and ALTERNATIVE) are geared toward managing conflict and tensions inherent in democratic contexts, others emphasize procedural inclusivity with practical implications for establishing goals or agenda setting (e.g, URBANSELF), generating knowledge (e.g., CITI-SENSE), and producing various outcomes such as budgetary plans for a local municipality (TRANSIT). The strength of these approaches, based on the examined projects, is found in the inclusive practical applications whereby disadvantaged, subordinated, or excluded participants experience meaningful participatory forums. While some have concrete outputs, others are more about establishing cooperative civic relationships. In many cases, it is difficult to ascertain, however, the sustainability of the projects contributions and findings once the projects have ended. In some cases, procedural expertise is needed for transferability, particularly in the approaches that are geared toward transforming conflict and power dynamics.

Relation to UrbanA themes: Urban, sustainability, and justice

While these innovations are not necessarily applied in urban contexts, small community contexts or large convenings of a particular group (e.g., youth) generally provide the platforms for exploring and testing democratic innovation. Hence, in urban contexts, the approaches may be considered for neighborhoods or for larger urban efforts depending on the approach. This cluster of approaches address justice in different ways, but particularly procedural justice with potential implications for distributive justice. The approaches mainly address justice from the standpoint of recognition and inclusivity. Democratic innovation promotes recognition by working with subordinated groups or challenging power dynamics through recognition building in a way that either directly impacts sustainability, as in the case of Citizen Observations (COs), also known as civic science, or creates potential for sustainability measures by generating experiences that build civic capacities and expectations.

Narrative of change

It is well known that policymaking tends to be driven by powerful special interests. Democratic innovation creates openings in that dynamic through which formerly excluded perspectives and contributions can emerge directly impacting decision- and policy-making often by confronting the power dynamics that sustain exclusionary mechanisms within democratic polities and processes.

Transformative potential

The different approaches in this cluster each have an inherent aspect that builds the potential for change. They do this in several ways: 1) inclusivity 2) procedural opportunities and 3) engagement in a common endeavor that is about life satisfaction and quality, and dealing with conflict/tensions or power dynamics. In particular, the TRANSLATE DEMOCRACY project directly addresses power dynamics in which “differences and misunderstandings can be a springboard for more inclusive and effective decision making.”

Illustrations of approaches

The approaches in this cluster have a common methodology characterised by recognition in which particular segments of society take on new roles and are engaged in decision- or policy-making processes or forums that are traditionally predominated by others, such as experts or adults. It is this aspect that makes them particularly innovative in contradistinction to the usual cast of characters in the usual roles.

Citizens engaged in science for the purposes of addressing sustainability issues is an innovative approach that circumvents that idea that science is strictly the realm of experts. It recognizes that laypersons can also contribute in the process of garnering important knowledge as part of the process of making decisions and policies. Citizens’ observatories” (COs) were employed in the project CITISENSE to empower citizens to contribute to and participate in environmental governance, to enable them to support and influence community and societal priorities and associated decision making. In this process, a community-based environmental monitoring and information system using innovative and novel Earth Observation applications was developed, tested and demonstrated. In CITI-SENSE, citizens gathered air quality data through sensors that provided real-time information on air quality in Barcelona, Belgrade, Edinburgh, Haifa, Ljubljana, Oslo, Ostrava, Vienna. The data was subsequently made available through widgets and mobile phone applications allowing people to comment and further share information. While there were some challenges in the project associated with, for example, data privacy, ethical and security issues, and scientific standards such as quality and reliability, the CO approach could increase awareness about environmental risks at minimal cost. Key aspects were identified as follows: “Based upon the review of different ongoing COs and of CO-related programmes in the environmental domain, we have identified key elements and qualities which are essential for a CO programme: (i) Be a unique virtual place to gather and share data from a variety of sources: novel sensor-technologies, open environmental data from public and national sources, and personal per- ceptions and textual/graphical contribution; and (ii) Ex- tract and make use of relevant citizens-related data and provide multimodal services for citizens, communities and authorities.” (See Liu et al.: A conceptual approach to a citizens’ observatory – supporting community-based environmental governance. Environmental Health 2014 13:107, pp. 10.)

Recognizing the important role of young disadvantaged people in policymaking brings in new perspectives that promote equality and quality of life from the perspective of a formally excluded segment of society. The project SocIEtY developed innovative ways for specifically enhancing the participation of disadvantaged youth in policymaking. This project established a forum for allowing young people to articulate their concerns and needs regarding quality of life issues that could be shared with stakeholders, politicians and non-governmental entities. The project specifically, “explores how young people aged 15-24 live in different European countries today; and examines what can be done to create social and institutional opportunities which will better enable them to live the lives they have reason to value” (see http://www.society-youth.eu). CITISPYCE, in a similar effort, also engaged disadvantaged and marginalized youth from major European cities in forums supported by socially innovative resources and technologies to assist policymakers across local, national and EU scales to address inequality.

References

http://www.society-youth.eu http://www.citi-sense.eu Liu et al.: A conceptual approach to a citizens’observatory – supporting community-based environmental governance.Environmental Health 2014 13:107. https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/96441/reporting/en http://www.citispyce.eu http://www.transitsocialinnovation.eu