While scholarship on intersectionality has emphasised the need to go beyond single categories of identity, like gender or race, intersectionality has not been considered to date within the literature on democratic innovations, even though enhancing inclusion is a key aim of such institutions. This article overcomes this gap. It analyses tools of inclusion within democratic innovations and argues they are not responsive to intersectionality claims. This article shows that current democratic innovations are explicitly exclusionary towards the groups which need the attention of the democratic scholars the most. To address this problem, this article argues for a move away from advocating for single or 'one-off' acts of inclusion and towards a more direct focus on facilitating leadership of the disempowered and diversification of the contexts of democratic innovations. Such changes can increase the sensitivity of democratic innovations but can also facilitate a wider social change.

This article contributes to the debate on the consensus and deliberation. While the relevant literature claims that consensus undermines further deliberation, this article argues that it depends on the aim of the process. In particular, I argue that if the aim of deliberation is understood as reaching a certain epistemic level, reaching consensus does not need to decrease the rationality of the group. In short, such deliberation is a process of debate, reason-giving and listening which aims at establishing a result of certain epistemic value. In order to shed new light on the debates on the consequences of consensus for further deliberation, I introduce a detailed conceptualization of a full agreement. I call it Completely Theorized Agreements. In this article, I argue that reaching consensus in an epistemic setting does not need to have negative consequences. Further, I argue, that the truth-tracking quality of deliberation need not be worse in a group that reached a full consensus as opposed to a partial one.

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Contemporary participatory theory remains in a problematic disconnect from political practice. This disconnect is often a source of criticism and leads to accusations of the idealistic nature of participatory theory. In this article, I argue that the reasons for this disconnect lie in the theoretical tools used by participatory theorists. While the theory relies on an assumption of the educational effects of political participation and the possibility of societal transformation, the core concepts of the theory do not enable the identification of potential obstacles for such transformation. Consequently, this article argues for incorporating a previously overlooked concept and an ideal of political emancipation into t participatory theorising. By incorporating political emancipation into its vocabulary, participatory theory can successfully address the disconnect from political practice and provide guidance in establishing improved political arrangements.