Exploring the Democratic Merits of Hybrid Democratic Innovation: Combining Deliberation and Voting in Participatory Budgeting New Style

In this paper we theorize hybrid democratic innovations (HDIs) which combine concentrated deliberation with large-scale voting. We focus on a field of hybridization that has not been investigated extensively yet: the rise of Participatory Budgeting-new style, characterized by an increased emphasis on large-scale voting—using technologies that became widely available in the 2010s— combined with continued attention to deliberative participation. We investigate an exemplary case—Antwerp’s Citizens’ Budget—to assess this type of HDI in terms of democratic values, specifically input, throughput, and output values. We conclude with implications for further debate on HDIs and an agenda for future research.