Recently climate change has been the focus of increased attention by scholars in the field of public administration. In this article the practice of implementing particular climate mitigation policies at the local level is highlighted. More specifically, attention is paid to the appliance of renewable and other non conventional energy systems in refurbishment projects in Dutch residential areas. A comparative case study analysis of eleven cases was conducted to answer the question which factors influence the adoption of innovative energy systems. The results show that the use of subsidies and supportive communicative policy instruments are of great importance. Other factors also stimulate adoption: the presence of environmentally motivated advocates in housing associations and in particular network characteristics. Strikingly, climate policy output by local authorities and the presence of urban renewal activities in the project area exercise a negative influence. Because of these insights, the article contributes to the Dutch debate on governance aspects of climate policy issues.

Whilst embedding democratic innovations that increase and deepen citizen participation in decision making now is a common policy of governments in many countries, and theorists in democratic theory also tend to emphasize how good citizen participation is to democracy, the empirical evaluation of democratic innovations is still a rather unexplored area of research.

This article evaluates two types of democratic innovations, participatory governance and deliberative forums in the Netherlands and a large number of other Western countries. The findings show, for both types of innovation, that citizen participation contributes to the quality of democracy in several ways. The analysis also makes it clear that different designs produce different democratic effects, which also reflects tensions between democratic values; participatory governance projects are better at giving citizens influence, whereas deliberative forums appear to be better at promoting the exchange of arguments. Also, whereas cases of participatory governance are more open than deliberative forums, representation is higher for the deliberative type of cases. As a consequence politicians and policy makers can have a major impact on democracy; by choosing for a specific design of citizen participation they may encourage certain aspects of democracy more than others.