Editorial to Special Issue by Annika Agger and Toril Ringholm: “Public participation, and the involvement of citizens and affected stakeholders more broadly, has become a central reference point in contemporary public sector innovation agendas (Nguyen et al., 2024). In the scholarly debate, these trends are examined through the lens of public sector innovation, with scholars typically distinguishing between two main types: democratic innovations aimed at involving more voices and enhancing opportunities for influence (Hendriks, 2023; OECD, 2025), and public service innovations focused on improving public services through co-creation with users and affected stakeholders (Brandsen et al., 2018; Escobar & Elstub, 2019).
While these two strands share an interest in strengthening participation as a response to increasing critiques of traditional participatory arenas, often characterised by low levels of representation and limited influence (Fernández-Martínez et al., 2019), they emerge from distinct strands of scholarship. Some strands are rooted in democratic theory, while others in public management and co-creation research. This not only reflects divergent analytical starting points, but also contributes to a proliferation of partly overlapping concepts and terminologies, such as citizen engagement, citizen involvement, citizen participation, inter-active governance, co-creation, co-production and civic empowerment. What is common in the different scholarly debates about the two types of innovations both in research and practice is a concern with: who participates and whose voices are being heard (Ahola, 2025; Brandsen et al., 2018; Escobar & Elstub, 2019).
In this editorial, we use the term participation in this broad sense to refer to the many ways in which citizens contribute to the shaping of policies, decisions and public services across both formalised arenas and more emergent, collaborative practices. Moreover, we define participatory innovation as:
New institutional arrangements that move beyond traditional formats of engagement by creating alternative channels for citizen involvement in decision-making, policy design, and governance.
This definition draws on the scholarly literature about public sector innovation, democratic innovation and co-creation and co-production (Hartley, 2005; Smith, 2009; Geissel, 2013; Brandsen et al., 2018; Nyseth et al., 2018; Ansell & Torfing, 2021; Aastvedt & Higdem, 2022).
Following from this, we examine ‘participation’ as a driver of public innovation and explore how different participatory formats contribute to innovation processes, outcomes, and institutional change in the public sector. The contributions to this special issue are organised around three interrelated questions, which are explored in different ways across the articles:
How do the different participatory formats affect democratic legitimacy and trust?
How do participatory innovations in the development of public policies or services shape governance logics in the contexts?
What democratic and governance-related implications follow from framing participation as a driver of innovation rather than as consultation or representation alone?
To contextualise these questions, the editorial first outlines the historical evolution of participation, then introduces the analytical lens guiding the analysis, and finally presents the four contributions followed by a discussion of their implications…(More)”.
