Citizens in Foreign Policy

In his latest article, Christian Opitz discusses the current research on deliberative-participatory democratic innovations conducted by state administration agencies, which exhibits empirical eclecticism and is dominated by a deliberative paradigm. He argues that this paradigm tends to conflate normative prescription with analytical description. In contrast, the article proposes a comprehensive re-conceptualization of such innovations, drawing from Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory. It outlines the specific problem these innovations address (function), how they operate in tackling this problem (functioning) and the problems they inevitably raise (dysfunctions). In addition, Christian Opitz’s re-conceptualization retains the possibility to critically compare these (and other) experiments regarding their capability to address emerging challenges within the modern democratic political system.

The article was published with Democratization. It is open access and can be found, downloaded, and read here.