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 W and deliberative democracy W and governance.
News
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Data Centres Need a Social License to Operate, demnext.substack.com (May 13, 2026) — How lessons from citizens' assemblies are highly relevant for the future of AI infrastructure and data centres, Another Democratic Future and Claudia Chwalisz- Notes from Vilnius’ first citizens’ assembly, demnext.substack.com (Apr 30, 2026) — How 39 residents reimagined their city’s transportation with 23 recommendations, DemocracyNext
- Inside a Kentucky City’s Unusual Experiment in Citizen-Led Governance, nextcity.org (Apr 08, 2026)
Video
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What is a Citizens Assembly?
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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 international organization 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
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- 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
[edit | edit source]Whilst Assembly proponents can list a number of advantages W, a number of disadvantages are also identified in Wikipedia's article W.
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
[edit | edit source]- 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
[edit | edit source]- 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
News archive
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- Data Centres Need a Social License to Operate, demnext.substack.com (May 13, 2026) — How lessons from citizens' assemblies are highly relevant for the future of AI infrastructure and data centres, Another Democratic Future and Claudia Chwalisz
- Notes from Vilnius’ first citizens’ assembly, demnext.substack.com (Apr 30, 2026) — How 39 residents reimagined their city’s transportation with 23 recommendations, DemocracyNext
- Inside a Kentucky City’s Unusual Experiment in Citizen-Led Governance, nextcity.org (Apr 08, 2026)
- “Love did not eliminate politics; it made it sustainable.” Hélène Landemore on the qualities of citizen rule, over that of politicians, Daily Alternative (Feb 22, 2026)
- Introducing Katcha: An African Democratic Innovation Network, demnext.substack.com (Feb 19, 2026)
- As the UN General Assembly Turns 80, Can Ordinary Citizens Change How the World Is Governed?, desmog.com (Jan 19, 2026) — Democratic innovation as a pathway for revitalising global climate action.
- Home affairs select committee to hold “citizen-assembly style” events on immigration, committees.parliament.uk (Jan 19, 2026)
- Citizens’ Assembly to invest £100,000 in West’s culture, westofengland-ca.gov.uk (Jan 16, 2026)
- Notes from a Gambian citizens’ assembly, demnext.substack.com (Nov 13, 2025) — Find out what happens when citizens take the lead on climate and community
- Youth Climate Assembly Spotlights Climate Risks, Accountability, Urges Oil and Gas Emission Cuts, theenergymix.com (Nov 11, 2025)
- The Citizens' Assembly for Climate Held Its First Session in Izmir, raillynews.com (Sep 08, 2025)
- Poland's first youth citizens’ assembly: Designing a Safer Digital Future, peoplepowered.org (Sep 08, 2025)
- Government minister visits Dunfermline to find out about Citizens’ Assembly project, electoral-reform.org.uk (Aug 27, 2025)
- Deliberation in The Gambia – our view from Kerewan, DemocracyNext, demnext.substack.com (Jun 26, 2025)
- Can the use of citizens’ assemblies transform Northern Ireland’s policy landscape?, agendani.com (Jun 01, 2025)
- Fife Council welcomes Scottish Government's commitment to local democracy, fife.gov.uk (May 15, 2025)
- Citizens to shape new Food Strategy, ffcc.co.uk (May 07, 2025)
- Democracy, Paris-style… How assemblies are changing laws, demnext.substack.com (Apr 24, 2025)
- Citizens' ideas on sustainable consumption, buergerrat.de/en (Feb 16, 2025)
- Japan's boom in randomly-selected mini-publics, demnext.substack.com (Feb 14, 2025)
- The Ostbelgien Model: five years on, publicdeliberation.net (Jan 31, 2025)
- A Global Citizens’ Assembly is coming in late 2025—aiming at 10 million global citizens taking part in deliberations about the planet, Daily Alternative (Oct 16, 2024)
- Launch of the Global Citizens’ Assembly for People and Planet, iswe.org (Oct 07, 2024)
- How a permanent Citizens' Assembly in Paris passed a bill into law, demnext.substack.com (Jul 25, 2024)
- Citizens' Assemblies should lean towards becoming a parallel polis - and much less a democratic figleaf for establishments, Daily Alternative (Oct 14, 2023)
- From a French citizens' assembly, an eyewitness report on how non-experts are their real strength, The Daily Alternative (Jan 21, 2023)
- Citizens Assemblies: fashionable focus groups or the great hopes of democracy? May 11, 2021...newlocal.org.uk
The Scottish Citizens Assembly has concluded - and one of its big proposals is a "House of Citizens", as a second chamber for Holyrood, Feb 8, 2021...thealternative.org.uk
- If democracy looks doomed, Extinction Rebellion may have an answer, John Harris, Aug 30, 2020...theguardian.com
- Could the Citizens’ Assembly of Scotland change how politics is done for good? Mar 20, 2020...@electoralreform
- When a neighbourhood assembly becomes a community by @kahui, Dec 16, 2019...blog.wearefuturegov.com
- How do we discover what matters most to people to help them thrive? noelito. Sep 14, 2019...medium.com
See also
[edit | edit source]- 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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| License | CC-BY-SA-3.0 |
| Cite as | Philralph (2019–2026). "Citizens' assembly". Appropedia. Retrieved June 17, 2026. |