Incidents, Improvisation, and Democracy

A core feature of incidents is their unpredictability.  They are emergent phenomena and their vitality derives from the unscripted manner in which they unfold.   Incidents’ democratic potential hinges on the interplay between this inherent unpredictability and the policy and political practices through which stakeholders engage it.  This paper examines this key relationship through experience of policy practitioners, citizens, and other stakeholders who have interacted with each other in incident-driven processes.  It draws on case studies of policy controversies and narrative interviews with policy practitioners to articulate an account of the role of improvisation in democratic governance. Improvisation has received attention in organizational studies (Barrett, 2012; Weick, 2002) and in fields like negotiation (Wheeler, 2013), but less so in political science and public administration.  The cases and interview data cover programs ranging from housing and social services to urban development, community building, and social inclusion. They show how political identities and mini-publics develop as stakeholders respond to incidents (Fung, 2003; Smith, 2012; Warren, 2009). We develop an account of improvisation grounded in the experience of citizens and policy practitioners and draw on these diverse Dutch cases to re-examine democracy at a practical level.