Democracy, System, Design: A Workshop

Held on 11-13 June, 2025 at the University of Warwick

Organizers: Anke Gruendel (Humboldt University) and Michael Saward (Warwick)

Democratic politics and government today are beset by seemingly intractable problems, putting the capacities of democracy into question and perhaps even rendering the future of democracy increasingly uncertain. How can we generate new democratic practices, tools, and methods to respond to pressing dilemmas of liberal democracy? Two debates have emerged that may help us shed light on what is at stake today in democratic innovation and offer some direction: the systemic turn and the design turn in democratic theory and policy science.

This genuinely interdisciplinary workshop brought together at Warwick leading democratic theorists, design scholars and practitioners from the UK, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, and the Basque Country to explore these debates and the pressing issues they address. The event was a major success, establishing a new cross-national and cross-disciplinary dialogue. We are moving now to advance the conversation through a volume of papers, further research projects, and new collaborations between government and academia around design for democratic innovation.

We are grateful for the support of the Society and Culture Spotlight for helping to make this work possible.