Learning from Democratic Practices: New Perspectives in Institutional Design

Contemporary democracies feature an increasingly diverse and complex variety of democratic practices. The systematic observation of these practices offers a valuable yet neglected source of insight for current debates on democratic systems and for institutional design. Taking democratic practices as the starting point for theorization counters the tendency to think that democracy has some sort of fixed core around which a political system should be organized. Drawing from literature on democratic practices in social movements and democratic innovations, I illustrate three ways to advance institutional design in the wake of the systemic turn. First, I call for greater attention to the role of political actors in institutional innovation. Second, I show how to better address issues of temporality in institutional design. Third, I introduce the concept of democratic assemblage as a means to understand and reform democracies.