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This introductory article toDemocratic Theory’s special issue on the marginalized democracies of the world begins by presenting the lexical method for understanding democracy. It is argued that the lexical method is better than the normative and analytical methods at finding democracies in the world. The argument then turns to demonstrating, mainly through computational research conducted within the Google Books catalog, that an empirically demonstrable imbalance exists between the democracies mentioned in the literature. The remainder of the argument is given to explaining the value of working to correct this imbalance, which comes in at least three guises: (1) studying marginalized democracies can increase our options for alternative democratic actions and democratic innovations; (2) it leads to a conservation and public outreach project, which is epitomized in an “encyclopedia of the democracies”; and (3) it advocates for a decolonization of democracies’ definitions and practices and decentering academic democratic theory.

The study of democratic innovations has long been situated in the deliberative paradigm. Today, however, a new scholarly generation conceptualizes democratic innovations from various theoretical angles. This article reviews participatory, agonistic and transformative accounts of democratic innovations. This multiperspectival analysis presents democratic innovations in a new light. The term changes its meaning, going beyond institutions designed by experts to include the remaking of the structures that govern our everyday lives. Democratic innovations interrupt established modes of governance and create spaces for systemic transformations.

Research on deliberative democracy has been flourishing over the past decades. We now know more about the conditions that enable or hinder inclusive and consequential deliberation, and how different actors, such as politicians, activists, and citizens, perceive and experience deliberative practices. Yet there are still many unknowns that drive research in deliberative democracy, especially as the field continues to develop in new directions and seeks to offer remedies for the problems democracies face today. This chapter unpacks what deliberative democracy research is, what it involves, and how we might go about conducting it. It discusses how the normative theory interacts with empirical research and how the deliberative ideals shape the practice and purpose of research. The chapter makes a case for methodological and epistemological diversity and outlines thirty-one different methods for theorizing, measuring, exploring, or applying deliberative democracy.

Since its inception, a core aspiration of deliberative democracy has been to enable more and better inclusion within democratic politics. In this article, we argue that deliberative democracy can achieve this aspiration only if it goes beyond verbal forms of communication and acknowledges the crucial role of non-verbal communication in expressing and exchanging arguments. The article develops a multidimensional approach to deliberative democracy by emphasizing the visual, sonic and physical dimensions of communication in public deliberation. We argue that non-verbal modes of communication can contribute to public deliberation when they (1) are used as part of reason-giving processes, (2) enable the inclusion of marginalized actors in public debates and (3) induce reflection and encourage new ways of thinking about the public controversies at hand.

Current radical democratic politics is characterized by new participatory spaces for citizens’ engagement, which aim at facilitating the democratic ideals of freedom and equality. These spaces are, however, situated in the context of deep societal inequalities. Modes of discrimination are carried over into participatory interaction. The democratic subject is judged by its physically embodied appearance, which replicates external hierarchies and impedes the freedom of self-expression. To tackle this problem, this article seeks to identify ways to increase the freedom of the subject to explore its multiple self. Understanding the self as inherently fugitive, the article investigates participatory, deliberative and agonistic concepts of self-transformation. As all of them appear limited, it introduces a transformative perspective in democratic thought. Enriching the transformative perspective with queer and gender theory, the article generates the concept of a politics of becoming, which, through radical democratic practices of disidentification, advances the freedom of the subject to change.

What is democratic theory? The question is surprisingly infrequently posed. Indeed, the last time this precise question appears in the academic archive was exactly forty years ago, in James Alfred Pennock’s (1979) book Democratic Political Theory. This is an odd discursive silence not observable in other closely aligned fields of thought such as political theory, political science, social theory, philosophy, economic theory, and public policy/administration – each of which have asked the “what is” question of themselves on regular occasion. The premise of this special issue is, therefore, to pose the question anew and break this forty-year silence.

To understand what digital democracy is, this article suggests looking at the individual level of democratic subjectivity. Who is the democratic subject and how is it constituted in digital democracy? It revisits the poststructuralist-inspired debate about cyberdemocracy in the 1990s, which conceptualized the democratic subject as disembodied discursive self, reifying through textuality in cyberspace. In contrast, current debates on new materialism offer novel perspectives with attention to the materiality of bodies and things. New materialist thought has been fruitfully incorporated for social interaction online, but they have yet to be applied to political participation. By discussing three examples of political online participation in which users materialize their classed, raced, and gendered bodies, this article contributes to a novel understanding of embodied democratic subjectivity in the digital age.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how a systemic view of democracy can provide insights into the myriad ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic affects democracies worldwide. This enables the authors to offer practical suggestions for strengthening democracy through meaningful participation in the spaces where deficits are most apparent. Design/methodology/approach The authors use the systems approach that has emerged from the deliberative and participatory democracy literature in recent years to map out the impacts of COVID-19. In this paper, the authors set out this approach as an agenda for future, more comprehensive research. Findings The authors’ preliminary overview suggests that democratic spaces are reconfigured during COVID-19, with participatory spaces shrinking, overlapping and invading each other. Based on the systemic overview, the authors suggest participatory interventions to address particular points of weakness such as accountability. Originality/value Taking a systemic approach to analysing COVID-19’s impacts on democracy enables the authors to understand the pressure points where democratic values and participation are under strain and where citizens’ participation is essential not only for strengthening democracy but also addressing the public health challenge of COVID-19.

This essay asks how the democratic ideal of inclusion can be achieved in societies marked by power asymmetries along the lines of identity categories such as gender and race. It revisits debates of difference democracy of the 1990s, which promoted inclusion through a politics of presence of marginalized social groups. This strategy inevitably entails essentializing tendencies, confining the democratic subject within its physically embodied identity. Difference democrats did not take notice of the parallel emerging discourse on cyberfeminism exploring novel identity configurations on the Internet. This essay augments the politics of presence with digital identity reconfigurations. Neither difference democrats nor cyberfeminists distinguish between various participatory sites. Drawing on conceptions of participatory spaces from development studies and deliberative democracy, this essay generates a typology differentiating between empowered spaces such as parliaments, invited spaces such as citizens' assemblies, and the claimed spaces of social movements. The democratic functions these spaces fulfil are best facilitated by three different modes of identity performance: identity continuation, identity negation, and identity exploration. A pluralization of participatory sites and modes of identity performance facilitates inclusion while tackling the essentializing tendencies in difference democracy.

Although anonymity is a central feature of liberal democracies—not only in the secret ballot, but also in campaign funding, publishing political texts, masked protests, and graffiti—it has so far not been conceptually grounded in democratic theory. Rather, it is treated as a self-explanatory concept related to privacy. To overcome this omission, this article develops a complex understanding of anonymity in the context of democratic theory. Drawing upon the diverse literature on anonymity in political participation, it explains anonymity as a highly context-dependent identity performance expressing private sentiments in the public sphere. The contradictory character of its core elements—identity negation and identity creation—results in three sets of contradictory freedoms. Anonymity affords (a) inclusion and exclusion, (b) subversion and submission, and (c) honesty and deception. This contradictory character of anonymity's affordances illustrates the ambiguous role of anonymity in democracy.

New laboratory formats worldwide, including policy labs, innovation labs, and living labs, invite political engagement of multiple stakeholders. Although this format shares the basic characteristics with democratic innovations such as citizens’ assemblies, it has yet to be acknowledged by this field of study. This article fills this gap. It finds that labs are torn between the logic of democratic agency and technocratic control, and argues that this power nexus is indicative of a likely future of democracy. Beyond this ambiguous character, labs point to playfulness and creativity as two aspects that established democratic innovations rarely incorporate. Hence, we extrapolate these two aspects to propose alternative formats: democratic playgrounds and democratic ateliers. Instead of the output-orientation of democratic innovations for expected change, playgrounds and ateliers follow the logic of democratic serendipity, an exploratory, open-ended mode of participatory engagement, which promises to open democracy for unexpected change.

This article develops the concept of cyborg activism as novel configuration of democratic subjectivity in the Information Age by exploring the online collectivity Anonymous as a prototype. By fusing elements of human/machine and organic/digital, the cyborg disrupts modern logics of binary thinking. Cyborg activism emerges as the reconfiguration of equality/hierarchy, reason/emotion and nihilism/idealism. Anonymous demonstrates how through the use of contingent and ephemeral digital personae hierarchies in cyborg activism prove more volatile than in face-to-face settings. Emotions appear as an essential part of a politics of passion, which enables pursuing laughter and joy, expressing anger and experiencing empowerment as part of a reasoned, strategic politics. Anonymous’ political content reconfigures nihilist sentiments, frustration and political disenchantment, on one hand, with idealist world views, on the other. This enables the cohabitation and partial integration of a great diversity of political claims rooted in various ideologies.

Introduction In academia and in civil society as a whole, there are two debates containing at least some emancipatory potential for democratic transformations. One is the somewhat elitist or technocratic debate on e-democracy and democratic innovations online. This debate concentrates on democratic reform, trying to counter the lacking participation but ultimately geared to stabilise the current capitalist system (Grunwald et al. 2006: 62 ff). The other debate is mostly led by civil rights activists and journalists concerned with freedom on the Internet. They counter the claim for real name policies online and defend online anonymity as democratic right to free participation (Ruesch/Marker 2012: 111f). This debate contains clear emancipatory potential, but remains defensive and is lacking a vision of democratic change. The arguments and ideas of both debates can be tracked back to the discussion on cyberdemocracy of the 1990s. In the context of the spread of internet access in Western societies ideas of new democratic utopias arose imagining cyberspace as a place free of domination (Poster 1995; Poster 1997; Rheingold 1993; Landow 1992; Holmes 1997; Tsagarousianou et al. 1998; Fang 1995). However, the Internet proved to be governed by private commercialisation, state censorship and the reproduction of social hierarchies of the “offline world”. In retrospect, the ideas of the democratic e-topias were soon perceived as naiv. The justified concerns and the criticism of hierarchy online incorporated the cyberdemocratic ideas as a moment of disciplination: E-topia could never be realised. This position, however, confines debates to defensive or conservative argumentation. Thus this research project picks up on the cyberdemocratic discourse and tries to renew these ideas from the perspective of current democratic movements online. First the discourse on cyberdemocracy will be revisited, then a social movements elaboration and renewal of these ideas will be developed by online document analysis and interviews with key activists. The goal is to make a theoretical contribution to the somewhat conservative debate on e-democracy and to further its emancipatory potential. A the same time I wish to contribute to clarifying the ideas of social movements concerned with freedom on the Internet and support them in boldly promoting ideas for democratic online participation. Methods First the debate on cyberdemocracy is revisited. Literature containing the term “cyberdemocracy” is considered. In this first step the main arguments of the debate are identified. Then the argument that’s of most importance to this research project, the idea of flexible identity construction and anonymity online, is tracked further in the contemporary debates. After this, ideas of social movements for freedom on the Internet are examined. For this purpose two movements are selected, that are specifically concerned with online-identity/anonymity: Anonymous and Cyberfeminism. First the ideas of these movements concerning identity/anonymity are gathered by online document analysis. Second qualitative interviews with key activists in these movements are conducted. The analysis of the data is not aimed at identifying a political agenda representative for the respective movements, but at generating ideas concerning identity/anonymity online for democratic transformation. Results and Discussion The results of the study show a vibrant discussion of some ideas already debated under the term cyberdemocracy some twenty years ago. This is not to say, however, that these ideas haven’t changed and adapted. Anonymity is valued by some and seen as an essential part of democracy and democratic transformation. Anonymous activists criticise the production of fixed social identities as capitalist mode of hierarchisation and commodification. Thus the possibility of dissolving or hiding identity online means liberation, which is also an essential part of a democratic alternatives for the future. Some cyberfeminists agree and advocate concepts of disembodiment as means of leaving patriarchic and heteronormativ identities behind and engaging in free communication. As cyberfeminism is a heterogeneous movement representing all diversity of feminist discussions, many activists are sceptical of anonymity and stress the value of diversity. Nevertheless they advocate concepts of identity tourism for temporarily changing identity and creative processes of construction of the digital self. Activists of Anonymous and Cyberfeminism see great potential in flexible identity creation and/or anonymity online for democratic change. However, they are also sceptical of the possibilities of realising these potentials in the light of current commercialisation and surveillance on the Internet. Conclusions While current academic discussions on e-democracy declare democratic transformation by the means of ICTs as failed and work on reformist ideas, the renewal of cyberdemocratic thought by social movements reveals clear alternatives. Reforms that increase participation are steps in the right direction, but they should be percieved as part of a process of democratic transformation that implies systemic change. Hierarchies tied to social identity cannot be done away with by simply hiding them or making them flexible online. This can, however, temporarily counter social inequalities and demonstrate potentials for future alternatives. References Grunwald, Armin/Banse, Gerhard/Coenen, Christoph/Hennen, Leonhard (2006): Netzoffentlichkeit und digitale Demokratie – Tendenzen politischer Kommunikation im Internet, Berlin: edition sigma. Fang, Nien-Hsuan (1995): The Internet as a Public Sphere – A Habermasian Approach, Dissertation, Buffalo: State University of New York. Holmes, David (Hg.) (1997): Virtual Politics – Identity & Community in Cyberspace, London: Sage. Landow, George (1992): Hypertext – The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology, Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. Poster, Mark (1997): Cyberdemocracy – The Internet and the Public Sphere, in: Holmes, David (Hg.): Virtual Politics – Identity & Community in Cyberspace, London: Sage, 212-228. Poster, Mark (1995): The Second Media Age, Cambridge: Polity Press. Rheingold, Howard (1993): Virtual Community – Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier, Boston: Addison Wesley. 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