CoDesign

Designing Democratic Innovation: Co-Design and the Futures of Participation in Governance

Design approaches are increasingly being mobilised to support democratic innovation, particularly in contexts of public participation, policy design, deliberative governance, and systemic transformation. As co-design becomes more established in public sector and policy settings, research has highlighted both its potential to support collaborative framing, institutional learning, and relationship-building, and the structural and cultural challenges that shape this work (Richardson et al., 2025; Broadley, Prosser, and Stewart, 2025; Kimbell et al., 2022). Yet despite co-design’s growing influence in public governance, there remains limited sustained engagement with democratic theory and a gap in understanding how co-design shapes – and is shaped by – political legitimacy, inclusion, power, and deliberation.

At the same time, the field of democratic innovation – including participatory budgeting, citizens' assemblies, co-production processes, and digital deliberation – is experiencing renewed attention. Research highlights the need for democratic innovation to address not only participatory mechanisms, but the institutional, cultural, and epistemic conditions through which democratic systems function (Escobar and Bua, 2025; Escobar, 2022; Bua and Escobar, 2018; Smith, 2009). Although both design research and democratic innovation engage questions of participation, learning, and legitimacy, connections between their respective methods, politics, and conceptual foundations remain underdeveloped.

Research at the intersection of design and governance demonstrates how co-design contributes to democratic practice by mediating relationships between institutions and publics, enabling more inclusive forms of evidence work, and surfacing tacit or marginalised knowledge within policy processes (Saward, 2021, 2025; DiSalvo, 2022; Broadley and Dixon, 2022; Dixon, 2020a, 2020b). These insights, combined with recent developments in democratic innovation, highlight a timely opportunity to examine how co-design contributes to democratic change, how democratic contexts shape co-design practices, and what new forms of democratic engagement and institutional responsiveness may emerge from this convergence.

This special issue invites contributions from scholars and practitioners working at the intersections of co-design and participatory design, democratic innovation and deliberative systems, public administration and policy experimentation, and community empowerment and participatory governance. We welcome submissions that explore, interrogate, or reimagine the following types of questions – from theoretical, empirical, or practice-based perspectives:

• How can co-design enhance the legitimacy, accountability, or responsiveness of democratic innovations?
• What forms of infrastructuring are required to sustain long-term democratic participation, and how do designers contribute to this work?
• What democratic theories underpin co-design practices in governance, and how do they shape the way publics, institutions, and political action are configured?
• In what ways do co-design processes challenge, reinforce, or transform existing power dynamics, exclusions, or inequities within democratic settings?
• How do artefacts, visualisations, prototypes, or digital platforms mediate participation, deliberation, inclusion, or decision-making?
• How can co-design contribute to deliberative systems thinking, including mediation between formal and informal spaces of participation?
• How should democratic design processes be evaluated, and what tensions arise between impact, rigour, iteration, and representation?
• How might design practice inform the development of emerging democratic innovations or new participatory and deliberative approaches?
• How might rethink democracy itself as a system and/or culture of co-design?

References and Related work

Björgvinsson, E., Ehn, P., and Hillgren, P. A (2012) “Agonistic Participatory Design: Working with Marginalized Social Movements.” CoDesign, 8 (2-3): 127–144. DOI:10.1080/15710882.2012.672577.

Blomkamp, E (2022) “Systemic Design Practice for Participatory Policymaking.” Policy Design and Practice 5 (1): 12–31. DOI:10.1080/25741292.2021.1887576.

Broadley, C., Prosser, Z., and Stewart, L (2025) “Co-design is not enough: reflections on creative collaborative public sector innovation to deliver net zero policy outcomes in Scotland.” Policy Design and Practice, 8(2), pp.258-271.

Broadley, C., and Dixon, B (2022) “Participatory design for democratic innovation: participation requests and community empowerment in Scotland”. Policy Design and Practice, 5 (4): 444–465.

Bua, A., Bussu, S., and Davies, J (2023) “Democracy-driven governance and governance-driven democratisation in Barcelona and Nantes.” Reclaiming Participatory Governance. Taylor & Francis.

Bua, A., and Escobar, O (2018) “Participatory–deliberative processes and public policy agendas: Lessons for policy and practice.” Policy Design and Practice, 1 (2), pp.126–140.

DiSalvo, C (2022) Design as democratic inquiry: Putting experimental civics into practice. MIT Press.

Dixon, B (2020a) Dewey and design. Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing.

Dixon, B (2020b) “From making things public to the design of creative democracy: Dewey’s democratic vision and participatory design”. CoDesign, 16 (2): 97–110.

Dixon, B (2023) Design, Philosophy and Making Things Happen. Routledge.

Dixon, B., McHattie, L.S. and Broadley, C (2022) “The imagination and public participation: a Deweyan perspective on the potential of design innovation and participatory design in policy-making”. CoDesign, 18 (1), 151–163.

Dore, M (2023) “Governing through design: The politics of participation in neoliberal cities.” CoDesign, 19 (3), pp.253–268.

Dryzek, J. S (2000) Deliberative Democracy and Beyond: Liberals, Critics, Contestations. Oxford University Press.

Escobar, O., and Bua, A (2025) Democratic innovation for change: A participatory corrective to deliberative hegemony. Politics. https://doi.org/10.1177/02633957251349635

Escobar, O (2022) “Between Radical Aspirations and Pragmatic Challenges: Institutionalizing Participatory Governance in Scotland.” Critical Policy Studies, 16 (2): 146–161.

Hillgren, P. A., Light, A., & Strange, M (2020) “Future public policy and its knowledge base: Shaping worldviews through counterfactual world-making.” Policy Design and Practice, 3 (2), pp.109–122.

Huybrechts, L., Benesch, H., & Geib, J (2017) “Institutioning: Participatory design, co-design and the public realm”. CoDesign, 13 (3), pp.148–159.

Huybrechts, L., Van Den Eynde, D., Kabendela, G., Knapen, E., Kimaro, J., & Magina, F (2024) “Institutioning as action: Mediating grassroots labour and government work for sustainable transitions”. International Journal of Design, 18 (3).

Kimbell, L., Durose, C., Mazé, R., and Richardson, L (2023) “Design and Policy: Current Debates and Future Directions for Research in the UK.” Policy Design and Practice.

Kimbell, L., Richardson, L., Mazé, R., and Durose, C (2022) “Design for public policy: Embracing uncertainty and hybridity in mapping future research”. In D. Lockton, S. Lenzi, P. Hekkert, A. Oak, J. Sádaba, & P. Lloyd (Eds.), Proceedings of the Design Research Society International Conference 2022, pp.1–15. DRS.

Richardson, L., Durose, C., Kimbell, L., and Mazé, R (2025) “How do policy and design intersect? Three relationships.” Policy & Politics, 53 (2), pp.1–21.

Saward, Michael (2021) Democratic design, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Saward, Michael (2025) “Design/democracy.” Design Issues. ISSN 1531-4790. (In Press)

Smith, G (2009) Democratic innovations: Designing institutions for citizen participation. Cambridge University Press.

Teli, M., Foth, M., Sciannamblo, M., Anastasiu, I., & Lyle, P (2020) “Tales of institutioning and commoning: Participatory design processes with a strategic and tactical perspective.” In Proceedings of the 16th Participatory Design Conference, pp.159–171. ACM.

Vaz, F., Koria, M., and Prendeville, S (2022) “‘Design for policy’ from below: Grassroots framing and political negotiation.” Policy Design and Practice, 5 (4), pp. 410–426.

Warren, M. E (2025) “Democratic innovation and representative democracy.” Perspectives on Politics, 23(1), pp.7–14.