Democratic Innovations and Local Governance: An International Perspective

In the last two decades, two parallel developments could be observed in many countries around the world. One is a so-called ‘democratic deficit’; the other is the proliferation of participatory democracy experiments. The democratic deficit refers to a general dissatisfaction with the institutions of representative democracy. This is expressed in low voter turnouts, low confidence in government and politicians, low levels of political engagement, and a general weakening of the social contract between citizens and their representatives. For instance, in one of the largest polls on this topic, Gallup and BBC (2005) surveyed 50,000 people in 68 countries, and found that 65% don’t think their country is governed by the will of the people. Less than half (47%) feel elections in their country are free and fair, and only 11% trust politicians. Interestingly, politicians were the least trusted group, below military, religious and business leaders. In the USA, a poll conducted by Gallup in June 2015 found that only 8% trusted Congress, below 14 other institutions that included the military, small business, the police, organized religion, the medical system, public schools, banks, organized labor, the justice system, television news, and big business. Another study revealed that a majority of people (55%) believes that ordinary Americans would do a better job of solving national problems than elected officials. Regarding the local level of government, the topic of this paper, in most American cities the average voter turnout typically falls below one quarter of the voting-age population. More often than not, low-turnout elections tend to be dominated by older,white and more affluent voters, and therefore are less likely to be representative of the electorate as a whole (Caren 2007, Hajnal 2010, Holbrook & Weinschenk 2014, McCarthy 2015)