Citizen’s Assemblies

What’s the theory? Why are they useful and good? What role should they play in municipal or state governance? Here are my notes …

Some theory

1. Endogenous Constitutions by Ticchi & Vindigni, ties consensual systems with income inequality, not surprisingly consensual systems deliver greater income equality.
2. Choosing the Form of Government:-Theory and Evidence from Brazil by Nakaguma, this would seem to disagree with Ticchi.
3. Citizens’ Senate – Towards Consensual Presidential Democracy/  by Tony Czarnecki, a précis of his longer paper held at https://sustensis.co.uk/citizens-senate. In the précis he critiques strong government, identifies weak local government as a problem, justifies citizen’s assemblies and pairs them with citizen petitions for legislative initiative.
4. Contrasting Styles of democratic Decision Making: Adversarial vs Consensual Politics by Ken McRae, this maybe the first person to define consensus vs majority
5. 8 Principles of Direct Democracy, not quite the same thing, but establishes petitions and referenda as key tools in direct democracy. This is posted at the Centre for Global Development.
6. There was a CitiDem event advertised for 3rd Dec 2025, in which John Boswell from SoTon University will be interviewed by Paulus Blokker.  The potential focus on the interview/debate is Boswell’s book, “Beyond Magical Thinking …” Beyond magical thinking: Why it is still worth trying to improve the policy process – LGIU at the LGIU. He has also written a book called “Mending Democracy”, … Mending Democracy: Democratic Repair in Disconnected Times

The disagreement between Ticchi and Nakaguma may need the two theories to take into account the levels of corruption.

In the Autumn of 2025, I had another look, via is there a one of more white papers documenting the success and failure of citizen’s assemblies? by ChatGPT. It found, amongst others,

1. https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/innovative-citizen-participation-and-new-democratic-institutions_339306da-en.html from the OECD
2. https://www.parliament.uk/globalassets/documents/get-involved2/climate-assembly-uk/evaluation-of-climate-assembly-uk.pdf from the UK Parliament
3. POWER FROM THE PEOPLE? Citizens’ Assemblies in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland by Frances Foley published by FES.
4. I found by Paul Blocker, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4359555
5. See also Building a permanent European Citizens Assembly (ECA) together from Citizen’s Takeover Europe.

I should check the other references, some look very informative.

As a result I wrote this blog, “On Citizens’ Assemblies”

I wrote this blog article, which looks at the People’s House stunt at #lab22 and mentions a series of Citizen’s assemblies that have been used in the real world.

Somewhere or other my words about term limits, sortition and the need to ensure we don’t create a new class of permanent politicians chosen by lottery and not by election have been lost. Citizen’s assemblies should be seen as an aid to politicians whose constituencies are becoming unmanageably large. I am also of the view that the catchment area of a Citizens; Assembly needs to be small enough that the member’s lived experience is relevant to the problem. I am suspicious of national citizen’s assemblies. I am of the view that citizens’ assemblies should have some say in the topic selection process.

Do they improve democracy?

1. Alemanno, Alberto and Organ, James, The Case for Citizen Participation in the European Union: A Theoretical Perspective on EU Participatory Democracy (June 15, 2020). Citizen Participation in Democratic Europe: What next for the EU?, ECPR Press /Rowman & Littlefield, 2021 Forthcoming, HEC Paris Research Paper No. LAW-2020-1376, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3627195 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3627195
2. The Radicality of Sunlight Five Pathways to a More Democratic Europe, by Kalypso Nicholadis and others.

I was taken with the work of the Ost Belgien Model, which sought to create a permanent assembly.

1. The Ostbelgien Model: a long-term Citizens’ Council combined with short-term Citizens’ Assemblies, In 2019, a permanent Citizens’ Council was established in Ostbelgien (German for Eastern Belgium, the German-speaking community of the country) to constitute the third fundamental democratic institution together with the Parliament and the Executive.
2. The Ostbelgien Model: five years on, the authors of this paper think it’s a success, but still evolving. They quote, “Once you think that you know how to run these processes, they will again surprise and challenge you.”

And https://www.buergerrat.de/wissen/netzwerk-buergerraete/, a network of municipal activists.

I should look for some stuff on credit unions and micro lending, this will also have the community dimension.

De Tocqueville in “Democracy in America” coined the phrase “Tyranny of the Majority”

Human Rights and guarantees for local democratic autonomy seem key here, The tools can be used to oppress as well as empower.

I wrote about Democracy and Plebiscites on this blog.

In Sept 2022, I was pointed at Brigitte Geissel of Goethe University who has written often on innovative democracy.

See also my diigo list, tagged #citizensassembly

ooOOOoo