Nordic Deliberation Learning Call: Where Are All the Democratic Innovations?

Across the Nordic region, democratic innovation has grown rapidly in recent years. New
participatory and deliberative methods that enable citizens to contribute, deliberate, and
shape their societies are emerging every day. Citizens’ assemblies, youth councils,
democratic competency building, community organizing, digital participation, and many other
approaches are being developed and tested across municipalities, governments, and civil
society.

Yet this vibrant growth has largely outpaced our collective oversight and understanding of
what these methods achieve. Participation is happening everywhere, but we lack a shared
conceptual understanding and overview of which methods and tools strengthen
democratic participation. We also lack a common language for understanding the democratic
impact, transferability, and contribution to a stronger democratic society. Nordic Deliberation
is developing a practitioner-driven mapping of participatory methods across Denmark,
Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, Greenland, the Faroe Islands, and Åland. But we don’
n’t want to map these methods from a distance. We want to build this initiative together with the people who are developing and
using these methods in their work.

In this Nordic Deliberation Learning Call, we invite practitioners, researchers, public servants
, and democracy professionals to explore two questions together:
1. What participatory and deliberative methods are you developing and testing?
2. How can we build a stronger Nordic practice of participation?

We will briefly introduce our initial ideas about the project and present a few examples, before
, launching a collaborative exploration of different methods and insights regarding their intended democratic
al impact, and the conditions that enable or constrain their use and transferability.

The session is open to everyone and is particularly relevant for you if you are an academic, public
official, democracy professional, civic tech practitioner, or civil society actor working
on participation and democratic innovation in the Nordic region.