This text is the most comprehensive account of various democratic innovations. Written by an outstanding team of international experts it examines the theories behind these democratic innovations, how they have worked in practice and evaluates their success or failure.

1. Curing the Democratic Malaise with Democratic Innovations Ken Newton 2. Implementing Popular Prefernces: Is Direct Democracy the Answer? Ian Budge 3. Direct Democracy - the Swiss Experience Hanspeter Kriesi 4. Evaluating New vs Old Forms of Citizen Engagement and Participation David Beetham 5. Deliberative Polling: Reflections on an Ideal Made Practical James S Fishkin 6. Deliberative Democracy and Mini-Publics Graham Smith 7. Deliberation as an Ideal and Practice in Progressive Social Movements Dieter Rucht 8. Making Better Citizens? Ken Newton 9. Impacts of Democratic Innovations in Europe: Challenges of Evaluation Brigitte Geissel 10. When Democratic Innovations Let the People Decide: An Evaluation of Co-governance Experiments Julien Talpin 11. Democratic Innovations - Theoretical and Empirical Challenges of Evaluation Brigitte Geissel

Brigitte Geissel is Professor of Political Sciences and Political Sociology at Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, and is currently a fellow at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, Harvard Kennedy School.

Kenneth Newton is Emeritus Professor of Comparative Politics at the University of Southampton, UK.