Democratic Resilience from Below: Deliberative and Participatory Practices and the Quality of Democracy in Hard Times

Democracies across the world are increasingly challenged by democratic backsliding, polarization, declining trust, disinformation, war, post-conflict legacies and social fragmentation. These pressures have renewed scholarly interest in democratic resilience and the quality of democracy. Yet resilience is often analysed primarily at the institutional level, while less attention is paid to the civic and participatory capacities through which citizens, civil society organisations and local communities may sustain democratic norms in practice (Boese et al. 2021; Merkel and Lührmann 2021; Youngs and Panchulidze 2025). This open panel invites papers that examine whether, how and under what conditions deliberative and participatory practices contribute to democratic resilience and democratic quality. It is particularly interested in citizens’ assemblies, other deliberative mini-publics, civic dialogues, participatory budgeting, civil society-led consultations, local democratic innovations and internationally supported participatory initiatives (Smith 2009; Fishkin 2009; Curato et al. 2021; Paulis and Pospieszna 2024). The panel asks when such practices strengthen trust, political efficacy, inclusion, public reasoning, social cooperation and citizens’ willingness to defend democratic principles. It also welcomes critical contributions examining when participatory processes become symbolic, elite-controlled, weakly followed up, externally driven or disillusioning.
The panel seeks to bring together theoretical, empirical and methodological contributions. Papers may address individual-level effects of participation, institutional embedding and follow-up, public visibility, the role of civil society, democratic innovation in backsliding or polarised contexts, participation in war-affected or post-conflict societies, or the involvement of international organisations and donors in supporting participatory democracy. Comparative, qualitative, quantitative, mixed-methods and experimental approaches are all welcome.
The panel aims to move beyond the question of whether participation is generally “good” for democracy. Instead, it asks under what conditions participatory and deliberative practices become meaningful infrastructures of democratic renewal, and under what conditions they risk reproducing democratic disappointment.