Enhancing policy innovation by redesigning representative democracy

Policy innovation is a key aspect of public innovation, which has been largely overlooked. Political leadership, competition and collaboration are key drivers of policy innovation. It is a barrier in traditional models of representative democracy that they provide weak conditions for collaboration. Two Danish case studies indicate that collaboration between politicians and relevant and affected stakeholders can promote policy innovation, but also that a redesign of representative democracy is needed in order to establish a productive combination of political leadership, competition and collaboration in political life.