Más allá de enfoques utópicos y distópicos sobre innovación democrática. Beyond Utopian and Dystopian approaches to democratic innovation

This paper discusses the myths regarding both the conceptualization and the expected effects that are implicitly or explicitly presented in analyses of the so-called ‘democratic innovations’, that is, the new institutions that aim to increase public participation beyond regular elections. It is argued that these myths, together with the (fictitious) confrontation between direct and indirect politics, have generated false oppositions and reductionisms that mask the debate and limit empirical approximations to democratic innovation. A research agenda based on the concept of ‘participatory ecologies’ is suggested as a way to gain an understanding of the mechanisms of participation in a systematic way. Este articulo analiza los mitos que se han construido, tanto en un plano conceptual como de efectos esperados, en torno a las denominadas innovaciones democraticas , entendidas como instituciones destinadas a incrementar la participacion ciudadana mas alla de las elecciones. Argumentamos que tanto estos mitos como la (ficticia) confrontacion entre politica directa e indirecta ha generado falsas oposiciones y reduccionismos que enmascaran el debate y limitan el estudio empirico de la innovacion democratica. Una agenda de investigacion basada en el concepto de ecologias participativas se sugiere para el entendimiento de los mecanismos de participacion en forma sistematica.