Citizen-Led Democratic Change: How Australia’s Community Independents Movement Is Reshaping Representative Democracy

Abstract

Many citizens are frustrated with their democracy, particularly with elected representatives and political parties. In some contexts, citizens have taken steps to disrupt the status quo and push forward their own novel democratic reforms. Research on these ‘citizen-led democratic innovations’ has focused primarily on how political crises mobilise citizens to form social movements that then go on to devise or co-produce novel participatory institutions. This article expands these existing understandings in two novel directions. First, it challenges the assumption that for citizens to lead democratic reform they first need to mobilise a large protest movement. Second, it expands procedural understandings of ‘democratic innovation’ by considering how citizens are innovating in and around the core institutions of representative democracy. The article draws empirical insights from extensive qualitative research into Australia’s Community Independents Movement, which reveals a place-based, locally led political movement pursuing democratic change to improve local representation in national politics.