Citizens' assembly

This page is an introduction to Citizens' assemblies for community agency networks (CANs), community groups and anyone else interested in the development of more participatory and deliberative democracy and governance.

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What is a Citizens Assembly?

From Wikipedia:Citizens' assembly

Citizens' assembly is a group of people selected by lottery from the general population to deliberate on important public questions so as to exert an influence. Other names and variations of deliberative mini-publics include citizens' jury, citizens' panel, people's panel, people's jury, policy jury, consensus conference and citizens' convention.

A citizens' assembly uses elements of a jury to create public policy. Its members form a representative cross-section of the public, and are provided with time, resources and a broad range of viewpoints to learn deeply about an issue. Through skilled facilitation, the assembly members weigh trade-offs and work to find common ground on a shared set of recommendations. Citizens' assemblies can be more representative and deliberative than public engagement, polls, legislatures or ballot initiatives. They seek quality of participation over quantity. They also have added advantages in issues where politicians have a conflict of interest, such as initiatives that will not show benefits before the next election or decisions that impact the types of income politicians can receive. They also are particularly well-suited to complex issues with trade-offs and values-driven dilemmas.

With Athenian democracy as the most famous government to use sortition, theorists and politicians have used citizens' assemblies and other forms of deliberative democracy in a variety of modern contexts. As of 2023, the OECD has found their use increasing since 2010.

Climate assembly

The term 'Climate assembly' is used here to mean any citizens assembly considering, either exclusively or otherwise, a response to climate change or climate emergency.

See also: List of climate assemblies

Global assembly

• Global Citizens’ Assembly, added 13:41, 18 July 2025 (UTC)
• Coalition for a Global Citizens’ Assembly, Video: Global Assembly on youtube.com, added 16:48, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Disadvantages and criticism of Citizens' assemblies

Whilst Assembly proponents can list a number of advantages , a number of disadvantages are also identified in Wikipedia's article .

A broad criticism is that whilst an assembly may involve a tiny minority of the public in a deliberative process, it doesn't necessarily allow them, or the wider public, also involvement in the design or evaluation of the process.

Another concern or criticism less often noticed or acknowledged is that Citizens' assemblies may not have any significant effect on the resources and empowerment of communities themselves, their groups and self-organised networks. In other words it is arguable that they may do little to challenge power imbalances. Citizens' assemblies have generally been conceptualized as quite resource intensive processes. For this reason it's perhaps understandable that much of the resources and learning about them has been from the point of view of local or national governments rather than local communities themselves and their ongoing learning, self development and the actualization of their agency. Generally perhaps they remain a 'done to' rather than a 'done with' thing.

An additional problem is that citizens' assemblies only allow a tiny minority of the public to participate in the decision-making. A citizens' assembly may make a decision that is unpopular with the public, because even though they are a representative sample, their views may change through the experience of the deliberations. As James Fishkin notes, there is an impossible triangle: the ideal democratic process should score well for equality, participation and quality deliberation, but it is not impossible to have all three at once. (Conversely, voting scores well for equality and participation, but poorly for deliberation.) This could be mitigated by complementing citizens' assemblies with other democratic processes, such as peoples assemblies.

For these reasons, and even though their advantages can be recognised, Citizens' assemblies are not yet regarded here as a Community Action Project.

How to's

• How To Run A Citizens' Assembly: Handbook, demsoc.org/public-square, date not found, added 14:56, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
• Climate Assemblies, Democracy in action. Includes guides to help start a climate assembly on a local level.

Other resources

• DemocracyNext, international foundation working to accelerate the spread of high quality, empowered, and permanent citizens’ assemblies. DemocracyNext on youtube.com, added 18:18, 31 January 2025 (UTC)
• buergerrat.de, site which serves to document and support randomly selected citizen participation in Germany and beyond. added 17:26, 20 February 2025 (UTC)
• The Extinction Rebellion Guide to Citizens' Assemblies [1]
• Basic Standards for Organising Citizens’ Assemblies, May 22, 2019 Extinction Rebellion

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See also

• Climate action, Climate news
• Extinction Rebellion, XR and future democracy
• Camden
• Towards a more democratic and climate friendly way of meeting housing need across England

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