Talk:
“What democracy for tomorrow? – Democratic Innovations and Implications for Public Policy”
by
José Duarte Ribeiro
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Institute of Social Studies
University of Lisbon
jose.ribeiro@ics.ulisboa.pt
Date and Room Info:
Monday, April 21, 2025, 12:30 p.m.
A-130
Abstract:
The study explores the theoretical foundations, institutional designs, and policy implications of democratic innovations—institutions, processes and/or practices intended to deepen citizen participation in public decision-making. Anchored in participatory and deliberative democratic theory, and informed by empirical findings from the Horizon Europe project INCITE-DEM, the research critically assesses the evolving role of these innovations amid democratic backsliding and civic disaffection.
Tracing their historical trajectory through two major periods of development—from postwar participatory demands to contemporary deliberative institutionalization—and illustrating them by key cases such as the Irish Citizens’ Assembly, the Ostbelgien Model (Belgium), and the Participatory Budgeting in Porto Alegre (Brazil)—the study reflects on three core promises of democratic innovations: to complement, improve, and transform democracy.
However, the study also foregrounds risks: the scale of governance and implementation, co-optation by technocratic rationalities, and the tendency to overpromise and underdeliver. When democratic innovations fail to produce meaningful inclusion or institutional uptake, they risk deepening the very malaise they were designed to redress.
Rather than retreating into cynicism or naïve optimism, the study calls for a renewed democratic ethos—one that cultivates the courage and imaginative commitment to deepen citizen participation and collective agency. The future of democracy hinges not only on institutional design, but on reawakening the civic spirit.
Short Biography
José Duarte Ribeiro is a sociologist and a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute of Social Sciences (ICS), University of Lisbon. He is currently working on democratic innovations and citizen participation under the Horizon Europe funded research project “Inclusive Citizenship in a World in Transformation: Co- Designing for DEmocracy (INCITE-DEM)”. He is also working on a nationally funded research project “Democratic Innovations in Portugal” at ICS, aiming to collect, code and map participatory and deliberative practices promoted by Portuguese municipalities in the last 50 years. He also develops his research as a member of the COST Action “Research Network for Interdisciplinary Studies of Transhistorical Deliberative Democracy”.
José earned a PhD degree in Sociology from Middle East Technical University, in 2023, with a study on rural social movements and rural politics in the 21st century Turkey. During his doctorate studies he worked as a Lecturer and as a Research Fellow at the Centre for Latin American Studies of Ankara University.
He has published in refereed international journal and has presented over a dozen papers in international conferences, in English, Portuguese and Spanish, on the fields of rural sociology and rural politics, social movements and citizen participation in democratic policymaking. He also holds the early career seat at the Executive Committee of the European Society for Rural Sociology (ESRS).