Since 1989, ever-increasing numbers of citizens have taken part in budgetary decision-making in the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre. By 2001 an impressive 16,600 citizens were participating in the annual popular assemblies held across the city. Their initial participation eventually culminated in decisions about the distribution of a significant element of the municipal budget, with a substantial proportion destined for investments in poor neighbourhoods. The following year, the process began again. At the other end of the Americas, in December 2004 after 11 months of deliberation, an assembly of 160 randomly selected citizens delivered a report recommending changes to British Columbia's electoral system. The following year, their recommendation was put to a binding popular vote. And, again in 2004, citizens in 37 states across the United States voted on 162 propositions, almost a half of which were proposals that originated from within civil society rather than the legislature or executive. Some 68 per cent of these propositions were approved by citizens and have or will become law.

Participatory budgeting, the Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform and direct legislation are three examples of what we will term ‘democratic innovations’: institutions that have been specifically designed to increase and deepen citizen participation in the political decision-making process. They are democratic innovations in the sense that they represent a departure from the traditional institutional architecture that we normally attribute to advanced industrial democracies.