Revitalising politics through democratic innovation?

As one response to our current political malaise, the government has published proposals for democratic innovations that aim to increase and deepen citizen participation in the political process. But the rhetoric of engagement is not matched by imaginative and ambitious institutional design and there is a disjuncture between the reform agendas for the local and national levels. As currently laid out, proposals will have little or no effect on the political division of labour between government and citizens and on the causes of popular grievances