Advancing Sustainability Governance through Democratic Innovations

This book offers a critical historical overview of the intersection between democratic innovations and sustainability, considering to what extent these practices have co-evolved to address complex and persistent problems and the global challenges of our time.

It critically examines how democratic innovations are designed and implemented within modern democratic regimes, drawing on empirical insights from case studies and assessing their transformative potential in deconstructing unsustainable policy pathways. To this end, the book provides first-hand accounts of experiments with a new approach — the Democratic Labs — which are then presented and analysed from diverse perspectives, including novel visions for the future, the relevance of principles for inclusive and transformative processes, and advanced analytical insights to explore opportunities to enhance their impact.

This book will be of key interest to students, scholars, and practitioners engaged in democratic innovation, democracy, and sustainability and, more broadly, to comparative politics, environmental politics, and global governance.