Journal Article

Institutionalization of Participatory Democratic Innovations: Understanding the Roles of Established and Emerging Actors

Fiket, Irena, Drasko, Gazela Pudar

2026

Overview

While existing research has increasingly emphasized the need to embed democratic innovations within formal political structures to ensure their sustainability, analytical frameworks are largely rooted in normative democratic theory and often lack tools for understanding the processes of institutionalization of democratic innovations. We draw on the framework developed for analyzing the institutionalization of National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs), using it as an analogy to better understand the mechanism of these processes, with a specific focus on the roles of the socio-political actors involved. While we acknowledge the structural differences between NHRIs and democratic innovations, we argue that this analogy provides a valuable perspective and theoretical model that could be used for analyzing mechanisms and the roles actors may play in these processes, especially in the context of increasing international support for participatory norms. Ultimately, we contend that successful institutionalization depends on the parallel efforts of state actors, civil society, participation professionals, academics, and international organizations, whose actions may unfold independently yet contribute collectively to the institutionalization of democratic innovations and suggest that the model we propose should be further refined and validated through empirical research.

• Subject: actors / democratic innovations / Institutionalisierung / National Human Rights Institutions