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"Citizens' Assemblies and Democracy" published on by Oxford University Press.

Citizens' assemblies are a hot topic these days in democratic theory. Hélène Landemore gave her Tanner Lecture at University of Michigan last semester, describing her experience on the governance committee of the French Citizens' Convention on the End of Life. Her account of how ordinary citizens could not only deliberate seriously about a contentious issue, […]

The De Gruyter Handbook of Citizens' Assembly showcases the state of the art of Citizens'asembly and opens new perspectives informed by multidisciplinary research and new thinking about deliberative participatory processes.

We're told this is a great idea: Yet the citizens' assembly was established nonetheless, and over the following six months something fascinating and inspiring occurred. An appointed chairwoman and 99 "ordinary" people, chosen at random and therefore completely varied in age, gender, regionality and socioeconomic status, did a remarkable job. They adopted some commendable principles for their debates, including respect, efficiency and collegiality. They listened to 25 experts and read 300 submissions. They heard each other out and compromised more effectively than elected representatives.We'd have a certain sympathy for the idea if we all went with only such assemblies and thereby managed to kill off, entirely, the parasitism of the current political class. To the extent that that's not just the post-consumption grumpiness of the Christmas port kicking in. On a more considered, umm, consideration we're against it. From the Electoral Reform Society: Members were given information on the topic, heard from 25 experts and reviewed 300 submissions (out of around 12,000 received) from members of the public and interest groups.The problem with such sortition and committee is that the power to determine the outcome rests with the selection of the experts to do the speaking, with the pick and choose of the 300 from the 12,000 submissions.This is just a replay of the commitology of Leacock or Parkinson. Or, for those who remember their student politics, how everything was really decided in the junior sub-standing committee on committee submissions, which was really all four members of whatever the Trot Party was called that term, meeting at midnight on a Sunday in the basement behind the beware of the leopard sign.Citizens' juries, assemblies, sound great. Until one realises that all the power will belong to those who feed the information to them. We've just removed political power away from elections, away from democracy and deep into the bowels of the junior sub-standing committee on committee submissions.So, no.Now it is possible that that second bottle of port was a bad idea and therefore this is a little more grumpy than should be taken seriously. But we have heard of an idea from Athenian democracy. Where anyone could propose a law, everyone voted on it and if it passed then, well, that was the new law. If it didn't pass then the proposer was taken 'round the back and strangled. No, too extreme. But it would reduce the number of damn fool ideas put forward, wouldn't it.

Globally, there has been a recent surge in 'citizens' assemblies'(1), which are a form of civic participation in which a panel of randomly selected constituents contributes to questions of policy. The random process for selecting this panel should satisfy two properties. First, it must produce a panel that is representative of the population. Second, in the spirit of democratic equality, individuals would ideally be selected to serve on this panel with equal probability(2,3). However, in practice these desiderata are in tension owing to differential participation rates across subpopulations(4,5). Here we apply ideas from fair division to develop selection algorithms that satisfy the two desiderata simultaneously to the greatest possible extent: our selection algorithms choose representative panels while selecting individuals with probabilities as close to equal as mathematically possible, for many metrics of 'closeness to equality'. Our implementation of one such algorithm has already been used to select more than 40 citizens' assemblies around the world. As we demonstrate using data from ten citizens' assemblies, adopting our algorithm over a benchmark representing the previous state of the art leads to substantially fairer selection probabilities. By contributing a fairer, more principled and deployable algorithm, our work puts the practice of sortition on firmer foundations. Moreover, our work establishes citizens' assemblies as a domain in which insights from the field of fair division can lead to high-impact applications.

This paper, originally a presentation to the Sydney Democracy Forum, discusses how the current democratic deficit could be converted to a democratic surplus. In particular, attention is focused on an ambitious project which has recently commenced in Australia which will culminate in a grassroots citizens' assembly. One hundred and fifty Australians will be randomly selected from each electorate and will participate in a range of deliberative environments (online and face-to-face), culminating in a four-day citizens' parliament in Sydney. The project is jointly funded by an Australian Research Council-Linkage grant and a not-for-profit organisation, newDemocracy. During the entire process, typical Australians will consider ways in which Australia's political system could be strengthened to better represent the will of the people.

This paper, originally a presentation to the Sydney Democracy Forum, discusses how the current democratic deficit could be converted to a democratic surplus. In particular, attention is focused on an ambitious project which has recently commenced in Australia which will culminate in a grassroots citizens' assembly. One hundred and fifty Australians will be randomly selected from each electorate and will participate in a range of deliberative environments (online and face-to-face), culminating in a four-day citizens' parliament in Sydney. The project is jointly funded by an Australian Research Council-Linkage grant and a not-for-profit organisation, newDemocracy. During the entire process, typical Australians will consider ways in which Australia's political system could be strengthened to better represent the will of the people.

Sortition is widely used in our political systems to constitute citizen panels. It is now possible to study the limits of this method of selecting our political representatives. This book presents the institutionalization of sortition while questioning its political consequences in terms of representation and deliberation. Several examples are used, such as the Citizens' Climate Convention in France and the Conference on the Future of Europe. In the end, the book helps to identify the consequences of using sortition with regard to the principles of equality and inclusion. Above all, it offers readers the possibility of continuing to reflect on this method of random selection, while promoting the implementation of greater equality between citizens.

Chapter 1. Democratic malaise and voice insecurity -- Chapter 2. Democratic deficits, citizens' assemblies, and activated citizenship -- Chapter 3. France: The French citizens' convention for the climate (comparative case study 1) -- Chapter 4. Belgium: The Brussels Parliament's deliberative committee on homelessness (Comparative case study 2) -- Chapter 5. Canada: The Canadian citizens' assembly on Democratic expression II (comparative case study 3) -- Chapter 6. United States: Petaluma fairgrounds advisory panel (comparative case study 4) -- Chapter 7. A blueprint for activated citizenship: Designing for legitimacy & transformative change -- Chapter 8. Afterword: Putting the public back in public policy.

For a growing number of people, democracy has become synonymous with broken promises and abandoned commitments. Governments everywhere are not listening to their citizens' concerns on matters of fundamental importance. As a result, ordinary men and women of all political persuasions are demanding transformations, not just to government policies, but to the methods of governance themselves. They realize that in the periods between general elections, they have great difficulty having their voices heard, because they have no formal role in constructing political agendas. This book focuses on one way to address this problem, by establishing a continual dialogue between individuals and their governments, hence forcing politicians to constantly pay attention to "the people." Larry Patriquin argues for the creation of permanent citizens' assemblies, which would be charged with examining issues of public concern and giving advice to governments. For those troubled by our current democratic impasse, Permanent Citizens' Assemblies: A New Model for Public Deliberation will give hope that practical reforms are possible and that new institutions can become effective components of governance in nations across the globe.