This article is written by Matt Ryan, PhD researcher, University of South Australia and a former Deputy Chief of Staff at the Office of the Premier of South Australia.

  • The problem: Democratic innovations aimed at shoring up declining trust in representative democracies often wrongly cast politicians as the villain.
  • Why it matters: Democratic innovations are growing in popularity, but many successes are short-lived because they lack reliable political support.
  • The solution: We need to put aside preconceptions about political representatives and constructively engage them to make sustainable change.

With half the world population eligible to vote in 2024, Time magazine has billed it as a “make or break” year for democracy. But whether democracy survives has a lot to do with what happens between elections too.

This is why getting everyday people directly involved in public decision-making — sometimes called ‘democratic innovations’ — is growing in popularity as a way to address low trust in politics and government.

‘The people’ as the solution?

Whether deliberating on tough policy questions through citizens’ assemblies, deciding how to spend public funds in participatory budgeting exercises or engaging through digital platforms, democratic innovations present ‘the people’ as the solution to many of democracy’s problems.

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But presenting ‘the people’ as the solution often implies ‘the politicians’ are the problem. Almost every case for democratic innovations starts with reference to one of countless number of surveys or reports about the lack of trust in politics and politicians. It may win assuring nods and applause from many, but it puts politicians on the defensive.

Unintentionally or otherwise it reinforces the stereotype that they are power-hungry, privileged ‘elites’ operating in exclusive ‘bubbles’ far-removed from the things that concern the great majority of us. No doubt that stereotype is sometimes true. In my research and my direct experience, most of the time it’s not.

My experience as a policy advisor

As a policy advisor to the South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill, I oversaw the development of a wide-ranging programme of democratic innovations that began in 2010: six citizens’ assemblies, $A40m+ committed to participatory budgeting, open innovation challenges and digital engagement.

The initiatives were hailed as ways of ‘doing democracy’ better, praised in the New York Times, profiled as leading examples of democratic innovation in OECD and other international reports and won UN and national awards. Amidst a global democratic ‘recession’ and a revolving door of Australian prime ministers, South Australia was a beacon of hope. But less than a decade later, barely any of the initiatives survive.

So what went wrong?

In unpacking the South Australian case with politicians, my research found two key problems that confront efforts to sustain democratic innovations.

First, it’s easy to be too reliant on a single political champion. Advocating for a ‘debate and decide’ governing style where reasoned public discussion brought about sensible policy compromises, Premier Jay Weatherill was the ‘go to’ politician for all things deliberative and participatory democracy. It was woven into his politics, helping him secure the party leadership and an unlikely election victory. But therein lay the downfall of Weatherill’s style of governing. After political opponents won office they were quick to disassemble the initiatives that had won him popular support.

Don’t fall into the trap of making politicians part of the problem with democracy. Make them part of the solution.

Second, over-reliance on Weatherill’s philosophical predisposition for adopting democratic innovations weakened the focus on making the practical case for democratic innovations. How they saved taxpayers’ time and money and stimulated other community investment in civic life were messages that got lost amidst a hyper-focus on solving a more vaguely defined problem of trust and legitimacy that eluded solution. If a more compelling practical case had been made it seems unlikely Weatherill’s opponents would have discarded the programme of democratic innovations so hastily.

Three strategies to make democratic innovations sustainable

So what is needed to make democratic innovations sustainable for politicians? I suggest there are three strategies that today’s innovators could adopt:

  1. Prioritise authentic engagement with politicians. Politicians can have legitimate doubts about the design of some participatory initiatives that shouldn’t be dismissed as unwillingness to share power. For example, in deliberating on nuclear waste storage a South Australian citizens’ assembly was seen to be infiltrated by members of interest groups and not genuinely deliberative. Unable to remedy the problem for fear of creating impressions of ‘jury tampering’, politicians felt powerless to intervene and have been reluctant to commission deliberative processes ever since.
  2. Make democratic innovations part of every politician’s collaborative leadership skillset. Don’t fall into the trap of making politicians part of the problem with democracy. Make them part of the solution by integrating it with their inherent skills in coalition building and agreement-making, capture hard evidence about how it improved outcomes and be sure to give politicians visible public credit for delivering them.
  3. Find politically safe places to experiment. Innovation is risky. While democratic innovations are still in their proving stages — and most are — work with politicians and their staff to find issues where the stakes are lower or the risk is shared broadly across the political spectrum.

Democratic innovations offer much promise for revitalising civic life. If 2024 is truly a make-or-break year for global democracy then we can’t afford to squander this promise by failing to engage our political representatives constructively.

Author’s note: This article is based in part on my (open access) article published on 5 December 2023: ‘Debate and Decide: Innovative Participatory Governance in South Australia 2010–2018’ available at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com and in part on as yet unpublished research that investigated how South Australian politicians perceived the usefulness of democratic innovations.

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