Democratic innovations background

Since the turn of the century democratic innovations have slowly spread in Europe. This trend has accelerated in the last few years across all levels of government (OECD 2020). From early attempts, such as the European Citizens’ Initiatives and a host of European Citizens’ Consultations and Citizens’ Dialogues, the EU has moved towards more sophisticated innovations. These include the Conference on the Future of Europe and innovative Citizens’ Panels on topics as diverse as Food Waste, Virtual Worlds and Learning Mobility Abroad. These can be seen as early efforts at institutionalizing participatory and public deliberation mechanisms at the EU level, though critics noted significant shortcomings (Oleart Reference Oleart2023; García-Guitián and Bouza Garcia Reference García-Guitián and Bouza Garcia2024; Oberthür et al. Reference Oberthür2025).

Traditional consultations by governments conveying citizens’ panels, assemblies, and surveys, for instance, to learn from citizens on a range of policy issues, have taken place in many European countries for decades (e. g. Butcher and Pronckutė Reference Butcher and Pronckutė2019). More recently, across Europe there have been numerous, more advanced participatory and deliberative forums of national relevance. Following the trailblazing examples of Ireland, which used deliberative forums to contribute to policy making on constitutional matters (Suiter and Reuchamps Reference Suiter, Reuchamps, Suiter and Reuchamps2016), many countries have opened to the use of national deliberative assemblies. These assemblies have been organized especially with respect to climate change, due to pressure from environmentalist movements, such as Extinction Rebellion. Among others, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Scotland, and the United Kingdom have adopted such innovations. Also these cases, on the strengths and weaknesses of such developments are debated (see Boswell Dean and Smith Reference Boswell, Dean and Smith2023; Machin Reference Machin2023; Lorenzoni, Jordan, Sullivan-Thomsett et al. Reference Lorenzoni, Jordan, Sullivan-Thomsett and Geese2025).

At any rate, national developments represent the tip of an iceberg made of a constellation of local experiments. From participatory budgeting, increasingly adopted by local councils to decide on part of their budgets (see De Vries, Nemec and Špaček Reference De Vries, Nemec and Špaček2022), to a raft of climate assemblies, issued in response to environmental activists’ pressures (Willis, Curato and Smith Reference Willis, Curato and Smith2022), to new digital participatory forums of which Barcelona’s Decidim represents the most famous example (Borge, Balcells, Padró-Solanet et al. Reference Borge, Balcells and Padró-Solanet2023), to permanent citizens’ bodies such as those of the city of Paris (see Abbas and Sintomer Reference Abbas and Sintomer2022) or the Ostbelgien model (Niessen and Reuchamps Reference Niessen and Reuchamps2022), democratic innovations are blossoming across European cities. Even though substantive limitations exist, these forms of participatory governance signal an ongoing effort to bring bout democratic renewal (see Bua and Bussu Reference Bua and Bussu2023).

Before considering the democratic innovation landscape in Italy specifically, some preliminary considerations are needed. First, following John Dryzek (Reference Dryzek2009), we conceive of the Italian case as a democratic system composed by an empowered space – where, in connection with public authorities, collective and binding decisions are made – and a public space – where no decisions are made but open and free discussions can occur, opinions are formed and transformed, and arguments are generated and circulated. According to him, as well as other scholars adopting a so-called systemic approach to democracy (e.g. Mansbridge et al. Reference Mansbridge, Parkinson and Mansbridge2012; Warren Reference Warren2017), all parts of a system ought to contribute to its democratic life, though they perform different functions. Specifically, a system should host spaces for deliberation, characterized by inclusion and impact. This takes different forms in the empowered and public space (Dryzek Reference Dryzek2009). Furthermore, democratic innovations are generally designed to maximise the space for democratic engagement within and to have systemic impact. Yet, we cannot expect that political actors (from movements to institutions) engaging with these forums will renounce their strategic goals (Felicetti Reference Felicetti2021). As we shall see, though we cannot ascertain the intensions of Italian actors, democratic innovations seem to be approached in different ways by different actors. As already discussed with regard to the state-of the-art in Europe, two elements are crucial to understand democratic innovation in Italy. First, we need to consider multiple levels of government. This enables to explore the different situations characterising local, regional and national level democratic innovation. Second, relatedly, we need to look at different actors. Democratic innovation occurs not only in institutions but also in public spheres. So, we should consider not only institutions but also activists as agents of democratic innovations with their own democratic innovation repertoires.

Democratic innovations in Italy in empowered and public spaces

At the national level, Italy presents a dearth of democratic innovations. Italy does not boast a tradition of pioneering democratic innovation, such as, for instance, the Consensus Conferences of the Danish Board of Technology. Nor has it been touched by the recent wave of Climate Assemblies hosted in other European countries. To date, there has been no democratic innovation of national relevance in Italy at all.

Existing initiatives can hardly be considered as successful instances of democratic innovation. The National Forum for Sustainable Development (Forum Nazionale per lo Sviluppo Sostenibile) represents a consultative initiative with participatory ambitions (see Moini and Esposto Reference Moini and Esposto2021) that came to a stall after a difficult start. The main initiative for digital participation, represented by the ParteciPa portal has failed to gain any traction (Balduzzi and Siclari Reference Balduzzi and Siclari2024). The adoption of a Public Debate procedure (Dibattito Pubblico – DP) represents the most important initiative from a democratic innovation standpoint. The DP was introduced in 2016 together with a National Commission for Public Debate (Commissione Nazionale per il Dibattito Pubblico) in the context of the Italian governments’ engagement in the Open Government Partnership. Briefly looking at its development helps understanding its failure.

The Italian DP is essentially an adaptation of the French Débat Publique (Timo Reference Timo2019) – a consolidated participatory forum dating back to 1995 with its own limitations (e.g. Fourniau Reference Fourniau2011; Blatrix Reference Blatrix2009). Heralded as a potentially welcome development for democratic participation in Italy (Frediani Reference Frediani2020), the DP was designed with some problematic features that weakened its democratic potential, in comparison to its French counterpart. In particular, the DP has limited legal scope, and the National Commission for Public Debate was given limited autonomy, it being essentially subject to the central administration (Timo Reference Timo2019). That aspect grants the organizing body a dominant role, undermining the democratic potential of the DP and casting doubt on the possibility of genuine engagement. Its use being foreseen only with respect to major infrastructural and architectural projects of social relevance, the DP seems also unfit to deal with environmental and social policy making. This is unlike its French counterpart, which is based on an extensive understanding of social and environmental problems, in line with the Aarhus convention (UNECE Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making, and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters) (Molaschi Reference Molaschi and Caruso2023). Indeed, a lean version of the DP, cutting the process’ length from four months to 45 days, is possible on an ad-hoc basis for those instances in which the construction project under debate is particularly pressing (Dentamaro Reference Dentamaro2022). Ongoing legislation further curtails the powers of the National Commission and restricts criteria for participating in the Dibattito Pubblico, effectively slashing the process.

The first DP experience in Italy dates back to 2009, long before the innovation was formally recognized in the law in 2018. It was used to discuss a project of a highway bypassing the city of Genoa (Bobbio Reference Bobbio2010; Pomatto Reference Pomatto2020). Already in this early adoption some crucial problems with the DP surfaced. As the participatory process was opened, conflict sparked not over how to build the infrastructure, which is all that could be discussed in the DP, but over whether to build it at all. The ‘zero option’ (i.e. do not build the infrastructure) was the real kernel of the controversy, with some pursuing that end and others (the organizers) ignoring this possibility. The ending result, a non- binding proposal on how to reduce the impact of the infrastructure could easily be denounced as a mockery by the former actors and sold as a victory by the organizers. A similar dynamic occurred, on occasion of the 2016 DP on the Passante di Bologna, in a highway expansion project that has been approved despite heightened contention and substantive popular opposition that continues to date. This tendency and the consequent exacerbation of conflict and disillusion kept emerging time and again, as in the case of the DP on an outer dam in Genoa and a highway in the Gargano area. The process often boiled down to information giving (Di Martino and Mersini Reference Di Martino and Mersini2022), rather than participation, let alone deliberation. The DP represents a case of top-down innovation that lacks both impact and democratic innovation potential, devoid of ‘embeddedness’ in the political context (see Bussu et al. Reference Bussu2022).

Importantly, despite their intended use for adoption in connection with major public projects of national relevance, DPs are employed as participatory devices at the local level, where the specific project is going to have an impact. In this sense, it risks becoming a case of instrumental use of democratic innovation. Rather than to give local concerns a national stage, the DP is used as a means for the national government to weight into local disputes and quash resistance to infrastructural projects. In this way, far from playing a democratizing function in a participatory or deliberative way, the DP effectively affirms an unabashedly hyper-majoritarian understanding of democracy, which democratic innovations are, instead, expected to mitigate.

The problem here is that whereas the DP should not be expected to give substantive warranties regarding the conclusions the process comes to, it fails to even deliver procedural ones, the expectation that it will be fair. There is a substantive duty of justification that organizers must give as to the decisions they take that consider the opinions of participants. That, however, does not suffice to grant any meaningful democratic achievement to the extent that the government and the building enterprises, which organize the process, systematically warrant approval to the project, cherry-picking suggestions on how to reduce their impact (see Font, Smith, Galais et al. Reference Font, Smith, Galais and Alarcon2018). The DP tends to reinforce opposition, rather than build a path to envisage common ground (Dentamaro Reference Dentamaro2022).

In the face of that situation, public space actors, such as activists, have become beware of institutional innovations such as this one, and participatory processes in general. For instance, the critique of the DP articulated by the well-known collective Wu-Ming. Speaking of the above-mentioned DP in Bologna, these activists cast doubts not only on the political and business community actors involved in the organization of the DP but also on the facilitating firm selected to run this and other similar processes. In a scant critique of the process, they refer to the Dibattito Pubblico as:

These objections to the DP should not suggest that activists in Italy are against democratic innovation as such. Activists in Italy have displayed a rich tapestry of democratic innovation repertoires by producing internal, innovative forms of democratic engagement or by encouraging it in the context in which they acted. This capability was documented extensively during the wave of mobilization in the European Social Forum (Andretta Reference Andretta and della Porta2009) where Italian activists developed conceptions and practices of democracy which were like those presented in other European countries (see Doerr Reference Doerr2012).

In some cases, a longstanding preference for participatory values might lead to a criticism towards deliberative bodies (even those who have no significant deliberative component such as the DP, as seen) (see Felicetti, Niemeyer and Curato Reference Felicetti, Niemeyer and Curato2016). Furthermore, activists with agonistic democracy views naturally are wary of collaborative forms of participation, especially when these are introduced in a top-down fashion. Yet, on different occasions, social movements have been the carriers of deliberative and participatory qualities, calling for innovation of old institutions struggling to counter social injustice and to meet democratic demands. For instance, movements have often sought, sometimes successfully, decentralization of power, consultation channels between institutions and citizens on certain topics; they have appealed against administrative decisions, acted as witnesses before the judiciary and representative institutions, as counter-experts. These interactions can take different forms. As an illustration of that, Doerr and Porsild Hansen (Reference Doerr and Porsild Hansen2024) show empirically how these dynamics are more oriented towards civic participation and deliberation in Denmark and more conflictual and direct-democracy engagement in Germany. Once stigmatized and considered as public order problems, repertoires of collective action have slowly become legitimate and legal (della Porta and Reiter Reference della Porta and Reiter1998). Movements contribute also to the creation of new spaces for public policy development, such as expert commissions. Consultation, delegation of power, incorporation in committees have offered opportunities for conflictual cooperation, where movements and institutions work together towards a common goal notwithstanding conflicting interests or disagreements (Giugni and Passy Reference Giugni, Passy, Giugni, McAdam and Tilly1998).

How democratic innovations are being used

The previous section has showed the variety of the democratic innovation landscape in Italy, depending on the type of actor and level of government under consideration (see Table 1). While social movements tend to be more dynamic in their democratic innovation repertoire, the ability of institutions varies. At the national level the use of democratic innovations seems limited. They also seem to be used in a rather instrumental way, rather than a democratizing one. At the regional level there is a more dynamic context with a few regions adopting legislation aiming to promote new participatory and sometimes deliberative forums. Locally, there exists a wealth of experiments of different kinds spanning from participatory budgeting to deliberative forums.

Table 1. Overview democratic innovation landscape in Italy

This suggests that different actors tend to engage with democratic innovations without renouncing to their strategic objectives (Felicetti Reference Felicetti2021). The impression is reinforced by the investigation of what happens when all of the above levels of government and related actors come together in the context of democratic innovations, for instance, in the case of a participatory forum Osservatorio sull’Alta Velocità that was organized to address the conflict surrounding the construction of the high-speed train line between Lyon and Turin. This mega infrastructural project was supported by the Italian government, the European Union, investors, and faced opposition from a constellation of local and national activists, and some local administrations (see Favari, Guardiani and Fierro Reference Favari, Guardiani and Fierro2023).

The Osservatorio is a prominent case of democratic innovation where national, regional and local actors, institutions and movements, come together. The process, endorsed by the promoters of the megaproject, including the national government and infrastructure ministry, was objected to since the first day of its public presentation by activists. On that occasion, while in the main hall of the University of Turin, organizers, academics, facilitators discussed the virtues of the process, activists who were not allowed to enter the building patrolled by the police, protested on the street (see Ricca Reference Ricca2018). As showed by Esposito, Felicetti and Terlizzi (Reference Esposito, Felicetti and Terlizzi2023), as the process met with growing resistance even from local administrations, the organizers decided to exclude those actors that would not subscribe to a declaration endorsing the realization of the project. Also, it lacked any substantive deliberative quality and connection with the local populace. The process essentially exacerbated conflict, curtailing space for democratic engagement. The kind of democratic forum deliberately in support of the project offered by institutions in no way aligned with the movements’ calls for a push for democracy from below, overtly against the megaproject under discussion (see della Porta and Piazza Reference della Porta and Piazza2008). This case also shows the limitations of the Osservatorio in the context of a megaproject quintessentially transnational in nature. Indeed, even if it let emerge substantive criticisms to the project, which it didn’t, the process would hardly be in a condition to face the transnational pressures surrounding the project (see Burnside-Lawry and Ariemma Reference Burnside-Lawry and Ariemma2015).

As della Porta and Felicetti (Reference della Porta and Felicetti2017) argue, synergies between movements and democratic innovations can be built when they are based on popular demand, when rooted in grassroots campaigns and inclusive of critical voices. As seen, none of these developments occurred with the Osservatorio. To the contrary, this elite-driven process was effectively weaponized against critical actors in the public sphere as a device to sideline opposition to the project. This process parallels a concerted media effort to advocate for the megaproject even using pseudo-experts (Tipaldo and Panié Reference Tipaldo and Paniè2013) to dwarf critical knowledge and criminalize activists (Di Ronco and Chiaramonte Reference Di Ronco, Chiaramonte, Pali, Forsyth and Tepper2022).

Concluding notes

Important limitations notwithstanding, democratic innovations are spreading across many European countries. In this context, at the national level Italy is a laggard case. Empowered space actors, at this level, show a disinterest in and inability to promoting nationwide democratic innovation. Institutional actors tend to engage with democratic innovations through ‘protective’ forms of participation, that is, in Carole Pateman’s definition (Reference Pateman1975): democratic practices furthering the interest of élites. When national institutions deploy democratic innovations locally, they have generally done so instrumentally, to bypass or repress contestation. The national level seems disengaged from ongoing developments in the field of democratic innovations.

The situation, however, changes considerably when we look at other levels of the empowered space. When not encroached by governmental initiatives, which have attained little more than sowing distrust, some regions and municipalities have sustained in many instances meaningful forms of participatory and deliberative innovations. In this respect, Verhoeven and Duyvendak’s (Reference Verhoeven and Willem Duyvendak2017) idea of governmental activism, understood as a form of contentious governance, is particularly interesting. To them, in the context of more decentralized governmental apparatuses, regional or local governments have more room of manouvering vis-à-vis for policy-makers at higher levels. This is particularly the case with regional governments in Italy, and to some extent also with city governments, especially in bigger cities. Greater collaboration with non-governmental actors might be instrumental to that end. Democratic innovations might be a field where local empowered space can meet public space actors to promote contentious forms of governmental activism. Indeed, the above developments have been paralleled by a rather dynamic landscape of democratic innovation by social movements. Many such innovations have been possible thanks to the pressure from critical public space actors. At the same time, activists have also proved capable of developing participatory and deliberative innovations within themselves.

Overall, there is a stark contrast between the national level, on the one hand, and, on the other, the local one and the activists’ trajectories of democratic innovation. Thus, there is a difference between the way national and local actors in the empowered space approach democratic innovations, with the former hindering democratization and the latter being more open to it. This provides both challenges and opportunities for democratic innovation in Italy. The presence of a state that largely ignores democratic innovations or uses them to deflect their democratic potential means that, at a minimum, opportunities are being missed and, what is worse, scepticism towards democratic innovation is being fuelled. This is more concerning in a context of resurging majoritarian conceptions of democracy (Genovese and Vassallo Reference Genovese and Vassallo2023) and a confrontational stance towards organized civil society (della Porta, Bertuzzi, Chironi et al. Reference della Porta, Bertuzzi, Chironi, Milan, Portos and Zamponi2022).

At the same time, however, participatory and deliberative practices are being experienced in a constellation of contexts across the country. This means that actors can learn about the strengths and weaknesses of democratic innovations and build networks of actors interested in their promotion. If the belated opportunity of a supportive national environment for democratic innovation appears, it is conceivable that some local actors, activists and civil society will be prepared for it. They can play a much needed critical and constructive role to help innovations to be effectively put to democratic use.

Using central categories in social movement studies (della Porta and Diani Reference della Porta and Diani2020), the challenges to democratic innovation in the Italian case can be explained by some long-term and medium-term characteristics in the political opportunities at institutional level as well as in the resource mobilization as far as social movements are concerned. As for the former, political parties have lost their capacity to provide spaces of participation to the citizens, so working as brokers between the state and the society. While losing members and loyal electors, they maintained however a strong grip on the administration. Their very weakness made them consider other forms of participation as too much of a potential challenge; therefore, they resorted to them more as an instrument for channelling and disciplining opposition than as a true opening to grassroots contribution. This was reflected, as far as social movements have been concerned, in a limited availability to participate in institutional forms of democratic innovation (Talpin Reference Talpin2011). With some possible exception, a general lack of mutual trust is likely to hamper the spreading of democratic innovation based within institutions. While some of these are general trends in Europe, they assume even more relevance in Italy given the long-term impact of the discovery of very large-scale political corruption in the country (della Porta and Vannucci Reference della Porta and Vannucci1999). Changing the trend of reciprocal mistrust would require deep transformations in the political systems that democratic innovation could contribute to, but is also dependent upon.