Lessons From Democratic Innovations

Democratic innovations, variously described as ‘empowered participation’ or ‘civic innovation’, are designed to increase and deepen citizen participation in the decisions that affect them directly. This chapter reviews current understanding of participatory processes such as citizens’ assemblies, citizens’ juries, deliberative polling, participatory budgeting, study circles, town meetings, and online dialogues; and considers their impact along with an analysis of the implications of different participatory designs on democratic qualities and policy outcomes. One of the limitations of the burgeoning literature on democratic innovations is the tendency to focus on exemplary cases, which often underplays the variety of conditions that need to be in place for the success of these forms of public engagement. Close attention is given to the different approaches taken with participatory budgeting and randomly selected mini-publics in diverse contexts, to illustrate both the substantial potential of democratic innovations to improve democratic politics and their vulnerabilities to misapplication.

Myths of Plague

This chapter delves in greater detail into the culture, politics, and ideologies of plague protest principally in India, distinguishing it from cholera riots in Europe and assertions by colonial magistrates and foreign newspapers that religious fatalism, prejudices against Western medicine and science, and mythologies of poisoning sparked the Indian protests. Instead, this chapter catalogues the abuses suffered by Indian communities and their efforts to negotiate with governments to reform outdated and damaging anti-plague preventive measures. Demonstrations, town meetings with concrete resolutions, and petitions united castes, classes, and the subcontinent’s two major religions. The chapter then compares the Indian ideologies and protests with those in China, Europe, and San Francisco.