Participatory and deliberative democracy (PDD) is often celebrated for its potential to rebuild trust, reduce polarisation and support better policymaking. It has also been criticised for failing to engage marginalised communities. These failures are often rooted in structural inequalities related for example to socioeconomic status, gender, age, ethnicity, (dis)ability, education, and how different parts of a person's identity intersect, shaping unique experiences of discrimination. INSPIRE seeks to transform participatory democracy by embedding intersectional equity into its design and practice. The overarching aim is to create participatory spaces that are inclusive, resilient and embedded. To achieve this, INSPIRE draws on 3 core conceptual frameworks:
• Political Economy of Participation to understand how socioeconomic conditions shape individuals’ capacity to engage in democratic processes.
• Co-Design to co-create participatory spaces with participants, testing a range of creative and arts-based methods.
Assemblage Theory as lens that helps capture the interconnectedness and dynamism of participatory processes This allows INSPIRE to move beyond talk-centric models of deliberation and instead embrace a more dynamic, inclusive, and context-sensitive approach to participation.
INSPIRE’s pathway to impact is multi-dimensional, targeting change at the individual, community, institutional, and policy levels:
• Individual Level: co-creating safe spaces with participants that strengthen democratic capabilities, sense of belonging and agency.
• Community Level: fostering social cohesion and new networks of solidarity through embedding participatory processes in existing civil society work.
• Institutional Level: supporting public institutions to embed inclusive and responsive participatory practices.
• Policy Level: developing recommendations and frameworks to inform participatory policymaking at different tiers of government.
INSPIRE contributes to the EU’s strategic goals of fostering inclusive governance, reducing inequalities, and strengthening democratic resilience.
The project integrates theories from political science, sociology, critical race studies, and feminist theory to develop new conceptual tools such as the Democratic Capabilities Framework, Political User Experience (PUX) and Intersectional Assemblage These disciplines also inform the methodological approach, which includes qualitative comparative analysis, participatory action research, and arts-based methods. This integration ensures that the project is grounded in a deep understanding of power, identity, and social structures, and that it produces knowledge that is both academically rigorous and socially transformative.
