Why and how do e-participation policies sometimes flow with politics as usual and sometimes lead to challenging powerful elites and institutions? With the aim of investigating this question, we introduce a framework for comparative research that includes not only systemic but also circumstantial factors. The approach is tested in a comparative case study of three northern European countries–Sweden, Estonia and Iceland–that are all experimenting with e-participation but which are experiencing rather different levels of crisis. The results show that innovation and elite challenging aspirations are very much related to the type and degree of crisis. It is therefore argued that the interplay between institutional constraints and circumstantial catalysts needs further scholarly attention and elaboration.