Addressing Threats to Democracy with Citizens Assemblies: Challenges of Success

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Session Description

Addressing Threats to Democracy with Citizens' Assemblies: The Challenges of Success

In response to waning legitimacy and growing consciousness of the need to represent all citizens across lines of difference, “citizen assemblies,” or advisory bodies of citizens chosen by random selection (or “civic lottery”) are proliferating globally. As these bodies become more well-known, some have already become, and more will become, parts of the accepted decision-making process in democracies. As that happens, the design elements in those bodies will become increasingly important.

This roundtable brings together expertise from several countries, from scholars who have experience with these bodies as well as a theoretical perspective with which to judge them. They will ask questions rooted in both normative and perceived legitimacy.

First, the legitimacy of citizens’ assemblies depends on the agenda-setting powers by which they are established. How is it possible to judge the degree to which these bodies are convened merely for show or to shore up illegitimate regimes or dominant interests, and the degree to which they are valuable contributions to citizen deliberation, to administrators’ needed information about citizens’ interests, and to the amplification of marginal voices?

Second, the perceived and normative legitimacy of these bodies rests on the representativeness of the selected participants. How large should citizens’ assemblies be to produce adequate representation in different contexts and for different purposes? When is it appropriate to oversample marginalized minorities in order to ensure that their perspectives are taken seriously? How should organizers conduct the randomization to both be and be perceived as legitimate? If agreement to serve operates as a self-sorting mechanism, should organizers dig deeper into the pool to produce a “representative” sample?

Third, assemblies’ deliberations and judgment rely on the information and materials provided to them. How can organizers and assemblies prevent significant biases in these materials? How stringently should these bodies take the mandate to consult with organizations on the different sides of an issue? How devastating to legitimacy is the exclusion of positions that only relatively small minorities of citizens approve before the deliberation? How can all voices be heard effectively during the deliberation and how can organizers counterbalance the sometimes disproportionate discursive influence of dominant groups?

Finally, the purpose and legitimacy of citizens’ assemblies depends on their interaction with other institutions in the political system. Are these assemblies appropriate for some kinds of functions and not others? What are the pros and cons of integrating these assemblies more fully into ongoing administrative and political systems? If authoritative bodies develop formal standards for judging the legitimacy of these assemblies, how likely are these standards to interfere with useful experimentation? As many polities across the globe (e.g., in China, Mongolia, western Europe, the US, and the Commonwealth countries) begin to adopt or seriously consider adopting some form of randomized citizen assembly as part of their ongoing law-making processes, it is crucial to begin to think through some of these fundamental questions.

Sub Unit

• Related Groups / Democratic Innovations

Chair

• Edana Beauvais Simon Fraser University

Presenters

• Jane Mansbridge Harvard Kennedy School

• Victoria Alsina-Burgues New York University

• Baogang He Deakin University

• Helene E. Landemore Yale University

• Manuel Arriaga New York University

• Stephen Elstub Newcastle University

• Claudia Elizabeth Chwalisz OECD