Photo Credit: Goddess of Democracy (University of British Columbia). Taken by Runningboards. CC0 1.0.
In the past decade, Citizens’ Assemblies have risen in prominence. This evolving form of democracy uses representative deliberative processes to tackle complex policy challenges by bringing the voice of citizens into political decision-making.
Typically, Citizens’ Assemblies bring together 50-300 randomly selected citizens in order to represent the demographic diversity of the population in terms of, for example, age, gender, ethnicity, education, geography and political position. They generally use the following series of activities:
- An ‘information phase’, during which participants absorb and reflect on expert-presented information and testimonies of non-expert advocates.
- A facilitated ‘deliberative phase’, in which participants come together to consider different issues from diverse angles, including sharing arguments, personal stories, and other narratives.
- A ’decision-making phase’, at which the participants come to more considered political judgments under conditions of respect and equality, and ultimately decide on and formulate final recommendations.
Citizens’ Assemblies are taking place all over the world. Examples include the British Columbia Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform, the Citizens’ Assembly on Brexit and the Irish Citizens’ Assembly. There has also been an increase in a specific form of Citizens’ Assembly on climate change. These Climate Assemblies have been held in the UK, France, Scotland, and other European locations. They are being studied by the Knowledge Network on Climate Assemblies (KNOCA), with the aim of integrating them into democratic systems more successfully and thereby strengthening their impact.
The impacts of such Assemblies can vary depending on the mandate they are given, their purpose, the political contexts, and their design. Currently, a major challenge is understanding the ways in which these Assemblies can be institutionalised into the current democratic system and provide a way of addressing our most pressing problems by involving many more and diverse citizens in political decision-making.
Links
You can find more details of Citizens’ Assemblies along with other forms of deliberative democracy on the OECD page for Innovative citizen participation and in their recent report: Catching the Deliberative Wave.
