From spectator and counter-democracy to interactive democracy

This chapter aims to shed light on the current rethinking and transformation of democracy that tends to link citizens, public administrators and elected politicians in new ways. First, it explains the basic attraction of representative democracy, accounts for its successful expansion and discusses the risk of representative democracy becoming a “spectator sport.” Next, it considers how modern democracy has responded to the rise of competent, critical and assertive citizens, and it discusses the features of the new counter democracy, which seems to co-exist with (albeit largely uncoupled to) representative democracy. The third section examines the discovery of emerging forms of interactive democracy seeking to involve both citizens and elected politicians in the co-creation of public value outcomes. This recasts Arnstein’s famous “ladder of participation,” which had the self-government of the people as the zenith in the development of democratic participation. The fourth section argues that, ideally, interactive forms of democracy should be linked to representative forms of democracy, giving rise to a hybrid democracy combining the best of several forms of democracy. The final section discusses the prospect of expanding hybrid democracy at different levels of governance and sets out an agenda for further research.