Explainer
What is a citizens' assembly?
Reshaping society from the ground up
A citizens’ assembly is a microcosm of society. By bringing together randomly selected people, it invites people from all walks of life to find solutions to issues affecting society. Through a process of collective learning and deliberation, the assembly creates recommendations for decision-makers to take forward, reshaping society from the ground up.
1. The microcosm
Randomly selected citizens from different backgrounds come together to form a citizens’ assembly, their diverse voices and experiences being the key to creating solutions and recommendations for a collective future.
2. The deliberation
Equipped with learning from scientists, experts, and organisations, assembly members explore a key societal challenge in depth - such as climate change, education, mental health, public services - and, drawing from their own experiences, work together to form recomendations that truly represent citizens' vision for change.
3. The impact
Presented with concrete, citizen-led recommendations, politicians are equipped with concrete ideas to reshape society. Assembly members themselves are equipped with the knowledge and skills to continue advocating for democratic participation, and to hold politicians to account.
Further Reading
What is democratic lottery?
Why does this matter to children
and young people?
Democratic lottery (also known as ‘sortition’) uses random selection to select assembly members. It is typically a two-stage process: first, invitations are sent out to a large number of randomly selected individuals. Second, from those who 'opt in', the final assembly membership is selected by stratified sampling with criteria such as gender, age, ethnicity, geography to make sure the assembly is made up of a diversity of backgrounds, experiences and perspectives. Democratic lottery demonstrates that anyone can participate in political decision-making. With children and young people, this challenges commonly-used nomination, election or even merit-based methods of selection for becoming members or representatives of school councils, child and youth parliaments or clubs.
Children and young people are excluded from many forms of democratic decision-making, even though political decisions shape their lives and futures in profound ways. In addition to low voter turnout amongst young adults, and the majority of under 18s being excluded from voting altogether, opportunities for children and young people's participation in decision-making are often separated from mainstream democratic processes. In the last decade, a growing number of citizens’ assemblies involving children and young people have taken place at community, city, national and transnational levels. Such processes have shown that involving children and young people is essential for strengthening democracy today, for ensuring intergenerational fairness, and for safeguarding our democracies in the future.
Sharing library
DemNext:
Children and young people’s assemblies: The next generation of democracy
KNOCA:
Children and Young People’s Participation in Climate Assemblies
Reasons Revisited:
From school assembly to climate assembly: the children changing democracy Season 1, Ep. 316
Pro Futuris:
Learning Publication for the Future Council U24
