Citizen Imaginaries of Democratic Innovations for Inclusive Sustainability Governance

The imperative to address complex sustainability challenges such as climate change, environmental degradation, and rising inequalities endures. Future uncertainty is exacerbated by wars, democratic backsliding, and societal polarisation - all threatening to overturn achieved progress towards sustainability (Xiang, 2024). In this era, dominant sociopolitical narratives have proven insufficient in leading us towards desired ways of living, with a shared responsibility for the environment, and towards a society that embraces inclusivity and sustainability (Stoddard et al., 2021).

To reverse the negative trends, inclusive governance recognises that engaging citizens and communities is critical for a societal transformation (Annahar et al., 2023), including the development of democratic innovations that aim to transform policy making. Innovations, such as participatory budgets and citizen assemblies are designed to enhance citizen participation, thus re-imagining citizen roles in governance (Elstub & Escobar, 2019). Nevertheless, there is still limited insight into what citizens expect from such inclusive participation, and what their imaginaries are.

Further, the adoption of democratic innovations is largely dependent on top-down initiatives, guided by established sociotechnical imaginaries, informed by science, policy and industry-led visions of desired and social and technological futures. It is, therefore, critical to expand the diversity and scope of transformative sustainability visions (Beck et al., 2021), yet learnings of how citizens imagine democratic participation are fragmented. Addressing the gap, this study brings together diverse groups of citizens in three European cities (Lisbon, Potsdam, Rome) who participated in Democracy Labs (see Campos et al., 2024), where they co-created imaginaries for inclusive democratic participation. The analysis of collected survey data (i.e., 78 responses), field diaries (79) and collective imaginaries (15) combines qualitative thematic analysis, sentiment analysis and topic modelling. Citizen expectations and their underlying narratives are examined and assessed against new physical and virtual spaces, new decision-making procedures and novel technologies.