Democratic innovations and the field of Eurocracy: How field theory sheds light on the study of democratic innovations

Abstract

Abstract This article aims to discuss the recent use of Bourdieu’s field theory in scholarship on democratic innovations. It seeks to extend these works’ effort to study democratic innovations within configurations of power relations. However, I argue that it is often unconvincing to conceptualise a field of democratic innovations or institutionalised participation when they are often too heteronomous in relation to the field of power. Instead, by extending the relevance of the Bourdieusian framework for the analysis of democratic innovations, the article invites reflection on the way promoters of democratic innovations constitute a social space – a ‘reform space’ – that is not a field but nonetheless provides resources to certain actors embedded in the field of power. The usefulness of this analytical framework is demonstrated by examining how the promoters of mini-publics at the EU level are positioned within the European field of power.

The authors' abstract, as published at the source. European Political Science, 2026 · DOI ↗