A wave of innovation has been unfolding over the last 18 months, but many governments are not taking advantage. The problem: The pandemic has intensified the challenges that democracies around the world were already facing: how to meet the rapidly changing expectations of citizens. Why it matters: Trust between institutions…

Three major trends, each involving both an escalating crisis and a corresponding set of responses, are inspiring new innovations in democracy. The problem: People today have different expectations and capacities than their predecessors of a generation ago, yet in many places, the options for engaging with government have not evolved…

Around the world, democratic innovations help societies address the historical legacy of racial injustice. The problem: Many societies have a deeply painful legacy of race-based injustice, which negatively affects its capacity to address the impact of that legacy and so undermines the present and future of that society. Why it…

The field of deliberative and participatory democracy has developed strong ideals of inclusion and equality. Yet these ideals have mostly been developed from a Western-centric angle. What does democracy beyond the West look like? What can be learned from democratic practices around the world? This special series on the Agora…

As a crowdsourcing website for participatory democratic innovations, Participedia.net has some great bells and whistles that allow anyone to collaboratively publish and edit relevant entries. In addition to providing a pleasant and inspiring reading experience about how people throughout the world are responding to problems of democracy, Participedia’s entries also…

Participedia, a global resource for participatory democracy now based at McMaster University, has received a $2.5 million grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) to expand its reach and impact. Participedia was co-founded in 2009 by Archon Fung at Harvard University and Mark Warren at the University…

This profile of Participedia was originally prepared for OpenDemocracy.ca, an organization and network that shares community organizing knowledge, profiling ideas and actions. OpenDemocracy.ca convenes online and in-person across political orientations and borders to contribute to the growth of Canada’s democracy sector. Tell us about Participedia. How would you describe its purpose and what makes it unique?

By Antonin Lacelle-Webster The COVID-19 pandemic has reconfigured our social and political environment and disrupted how we engage with one another. It has increased political uncertainty, placed a premium on trust in government, exposed gaps in governing capacities, and in many places challenged democratic governance. Above all, it has exposed…

By Julien Landry and Ann Marie Smith, with Patience Agwenjang, Patricia Blankson Akakpo, Jagat Basnet, Bhumiraj Chapagain, Aklilu Gebremichael, Barbara Maigari, Peggy Saka In early 2020, COVID-19 swept across the globe, prompting widespread government responses with far-reaching implications for civic space and actors working to strengthen transparency, accountability, participation and…