A Citizens’ Assembly is a deliberative democratic process in which a representative cross-section of residents convenes over several sessions to study a question, deliberates together to reach rough consensus, and develops recommendations for decision-makers to respond to.

How It Works

• Random Selection: Members are chosen via a “democratic lottery” (i.e., sortition) to reflect community diversity (on criteria such as age, gender, geography, socio-economics), reaching past the ‘usual suspects’ of public engagement. Assembly size varies, with usually between 36-60 participants 
• Clear Mandate: The mandating body (governmental) defines a specific policy question or contentious public problem to address.
• Time to Learn: Participants meet over several sessions (e.g. six day-long meetings across several months) to consider and reason together. They receive balanced information from experts, community stakeholders and those with lived experience and can request additional information.
• Facilitated Deliberation: Skilled, independent deliberative facilitation fosters active listening and respectful exchange with all voices being heard as collective intelligence emerges.
• Independent Recommendations: Participants develop recommendations based on considered judgment and prepare a final report of all recommendations with rough consensus. 
• Public Accountability: A clear plan or time-frame for the mandating body to absorb and respond to final recommendations ensures the process has meaningful policy impact.

Impacts

• Build trust between citizens and policymakers and/or elected officials
• Improve policy responsiveness
• Improve policy legitimacy
• Build Agency and “civic muscle” in citizens 
• Changes in participant behaviors and attitudes (social cohesion, trust, knowledge, and shift in perspectives and positions) [ME1] 
• Increase in mutual trust
• Reduced polarization

Learn more

IDEA’s work on Citizens’ Assemblies is led by our Senior Fellow, Dr. Marjan Ehsassi, Executive Director of FIDE – North America (fide.eu/north-america)

Examples

Citizens’ Assemblies make recommendations on contentious public problems at all levels of government. In Ireland and France, national assemblies have made policy proposals on gay marriage, abortion, and the end of life. In Canada and the US, assemblies at the provincial and city levels have discussed electoral reform, climate, municipal amalgamation, land use, and planning.