Democratic Innovation Beyond the Norm: Thinking Economically 

There are at least four widely recognized reasons for adopting more inclusive democratic practices: representation, legitimacy and decision quality, civic trust, and accountability with transparency. Engaging diverse citizen perspectives, including those from marginalized or underrepresented groups, enhances social cohesion and supports comprehensive solutions to complex challenges. Additionally, inclusive participation fosters transparency by increasing scrutiny, making it harder for authorities to act without oversight, thereby reducing the risk of corruption. 

But if we take a more critical perspective, achieving truly inclusive democratic practices requires addressing critical challenges, such as avoiding tokenistic participation, overcoming barriers to accessibility, strengthening institutional support, raising civic awareness, and combating misinformation. Perhaps most crucially, structural inequality and power imbalances within society and democratic processes must be confronted. 

Structural inequality often persists because the very institutions practitioners seek to transform are deeply tied to political systems that leave interconnected inequities intact. With good reason, practitioners want to create more trust in democratic structures. However, efforts often fail to address systemic issues rooted in economic disparities and perpetuated by existing economic frameworks, which continues to undermine equity within democratic processes. 

To create meaningful change, democratic innovation must extend beyond institutions and into the economic realm, fostering a more democratic economy. By addressing systemic inequalities at their root, we can move closer to realizing the transformative potential of inclusive democracy. 

Here’s where we might consider diverging from the typical set of democratic innovations when applying it to economic processes and regulations. While tools like citizens’ assemblies and participatory budgeting are undeniably valuable and necessary, we should also prioritize elevating and amplifying practices that are already doing interesting and good work. For all the notable research and support behind the canon of democracy innovation, there are a myriad of other innovations waiting to be scaled and implemented in new contexts. 

Here are some alternative ways to consider democracy and economic innovation as pathways to support quality of life and well-being.  

  1. Economic Democracy through Workplace Governance: Community Energy Cooperatives (Germany): Citizen-owned energy cooperatives manage renewable energy projects through democratic decision-making.  Also, Enercoop, a citizen-owned renewable energy cooperative, enables its members to democratically control energy production and consumption decisions. 
  2. Stakeholder Ownership Models like the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend (US): Oil revenue is distributed to all residents annually, creating a shared economic stake. 
  3. Participatory Economic Planning in Kerala People’s Plan Campaign (India): Local government planning involving citizens in resource allocation for development. 
  4. Democratic Data Commons like Data Trusts (Canada): Pilot projects exploring community governance of data as a shared resource. 
  5. Community Wealth Building (UK): Redirecting public procurement budgets to support local businesses, cooperatives, and social enterprises, like in Preston, England (and Cleveland, OH). 
  6. Time Banking Economies (Japan): A time-banking system where participants earn credits by providing care to elders, redeemable for their own care later.  
  7. Universal Basic Services (UBS) with Democratic Oversight (Spain): A publicly owned energy company governed by citizen councils, as well as processes involving universal basic income 
  8. Mutual Aid Networks with Cooperative Scaling (US): Cooperation Jackson, Mississippi’s grassroots mutual aid organization, is building cooperatively owned businesses. 
  9. Democratized Currency and Banking, including Banco Palmas (Brazil) and North Dakota (US): A community bank with its own currency used to strengthen the local economy. The Bank of North Dakota, a state-owned bank, reinvests public revenues into local economies through loans to businesses, infrastructure, and education. 
  10. Digital Cooperative Platforms like Driver’s Seat based in the US: A cooperative where rideshare drivers own and manage their data for fairer earnings. 
  11. Managing common pool resources such as Indigenous land stewardship (global) and community land trusts in North America: housing is purchased from the private market, governed collectively by a community, and made affordable.  
  12. Public-Common Partnerships (PCPs) such as in the Amsterdam Commons Network (Netherlands): Projects to create shared governance of resources like water and urban spaces. 
  13. Citizen’s Economic Councils (UK): The Royal Society for Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) piloted Citizens’ Economic Councils to engage the public in discussions about fiscal policy and macroeconomic frameworks around industrial strategies. 
  14. State-Owned Enterprises with Democratic Oversight (South Africa): Eskom Transformation Proposals have emerged to extend public accountability into the management of state-owned enterprises, ensuring alignment with social goals. 

While high-profile democratic innovations, such as Climate Citizens’ Assemblies for Industrial Transition, have rightly captured attention for the meaningful progress they’ve achieved, they represent just one piece of the broader landscape of democratic organizing, practices, and designs. Expanding democratic practices to include innovative economic decision-making opens new pathways for transformative change. 

The alternatives outlined above aim to empower citizens as planners and co-owners, addressing structural inequalities while fostering systems that prioritize collective well-being over individual profit. These approaches are innovative and promising, and we need more of them to build a truly inclusive and equitable future. 

You can learn more about these practices in the US from interesting organizations like the Democracy Collaborative, Center for Economic Democracy and the Roosevelt Institute 

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