Citizen Assemblies around the globe
Australia
United Kingdom
France
Belgium
Iceland
Ireland
Organisation for Economic
Co-operation & Development
What do participants think about the experience of taking part in an assembly?
Here are some comments from those taking part in the UK Citizens’ Assembly on Social Care. They rated their experience, on average, 9.5 out of 10.
“Great experience, and I would love to do it again on almost any subject.”
“Excellent idea. This was a fantastic experience and I met some lovely people with interesting views.”
“I’ve had the best time! And feel privileged to have been a part of it. Thank you so much for this opportunity!”
“Really enjoyable experience that I’m proud to have been a part of.”
“Thank you it’s been great, can we solve world peace next?”
Citizens typically feel privileged to be asked to participate, and approach the task with humility and diligence. Virtually every person involved values the experience and comes to understand the potential of CAs as a new way of decision-making in the interests of the general public and the commons.
However, while many recommendations have been accepted, governments do not always agree in advance to implement recommendations delivered by CAs. Sharing power in this way will not be an easy change, and many political parties will resist. Some governments, however, have suggested a ‘supermajority’ rule – e.g. if a new policy scores 80% approval by participants in a CA, then they will enact it. Poland’s government proposed such a course.
Australia What’s happening with CAs in Australia? The story so far…
Early CAs in Australia included the topics of dangerous road trains in WA (2001), Perth as a ‘liveable city’ (2003), making democracy work better for young people in Qld (2006), and climate change policy in NSW (2009).
In 2009 an ambitious Citizens’ Parliament was convened, with 150 randomly selected people meeting in the old Parliament House in Canberra. This followed a regional ‘World Cafes’ and online discussions, which had developed topics for closer attention. The Citizens’ Parliament was a 3-day deliberation on ‘How the Australian Government could be strengthened to better serve the people’. Its 13 proposals were presented to Parliament (https://participedia.net/case/27).
In 2014 the City of Melbourne convened a People’s Panel to make recommendations for a ten-year $5 billion financial plan. A citizens’ panel of 43 randomly selected Melburnians met over six weekends, receiving briefings by experts, senior bureaucrats and councillors. Ten of the Panel’s 11 recommendations were accepted and implemented (https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/about-us-subsite/files/strengthening-australian-democracy.pdf). The exercise was managed by newDemocracy Foundation (www.newdemocracy.com.au).
In the first trial in SA of a CA-type process in 2015, the SA Government used a ‘citizens’ jury’ on how to reduce the number of unwanted dogs and cats in the state. Six of its seven recommendations were later included in legislation.
In 2016 a CA convened by the SA Government rejected the idea that SA become a global rubbish dump for nuclear waste.
In 2018 the City of Sydney used a citizens’ jury, again randomly selected and meeting over several months with experts to consider submissions on the plan ‘Sustainable Sydney 2030-2050’ (over 2000 submissions were received). Almost all the recommendations were included. The process was managed by newDemocracy Foundation.
In 2020 Victoria made changes to its Local Government Act requiring Councils to engage in ‘deliberative engagement practices’. So far the Sortition Foundation has assisted 11 Councils in this way, using random selection to bring together local citizens.
In 2023 democracyCo initiated a service to federal politicians in which voters in their electorates could be randomly selected to assist the local member identify the issues their voters felt were most important. The process has now been run for the ACT seat of Canberra (held by Alicia Payne and the Victorian seat of Casey, held by Aaron Violi). People who took part share their enthusiasm for the process at https://www.democracyco.com.au/the-peoples-house/.
The two most recent events were on the energy transition away from fossil fuels, involving the Labour MP for Bennelong, Jerome Laxale and the Liberal MP for Menzies, Keith Wolahan. These assemblies are providing the sitting politicians with unique and genuine insights into the concerns and values of local voters, which has to be a win for democracy!
In 1995, a randomly selected group was assembled to discuss Britain’s future in Europe, 11 years before the Brexit referendum in 2016.
In 2018, a Citizens’ Assembly on Social Care was held over two weekends in Birmingham, bringing together 47 randomly selected people. Its recommendations are found in the report at the link above.
Climate Assembly UK brought together 100+ people in 2020 to discuss how the UK should meet its target of net zero emissions by 2050. Their final report, The Path to Net Zero, was published in September that year, and is available with an executive summary at this link.
In 2021 a Citizens Assembly of Scotland produced the report Doing Politics Differently, which in particular made extensive suggestions for increased use of citizen assemblies in the governance of Scotland. 60 recommendations were made. A useful ‘Easy Read’ version of the report is available at this link.
A Citizens’ Assembly on Democracy in the UK brought together 67 members of the public in 2021 to deliberate on the core question, ‘How should democracy in the UK work?’ The Assembly reported its conclusions in 2022 in the document Report of the Citizens’ Assembly on Democracy in the UK .
France In 2019-20, a ‘Citizens Convention for Climate’ was held to discuss reducing France’s carbon emissions by 40% from its 1990 levels.150 randomly selected citizens came together over seven sessions, and organised themselves into working groups around the issues of food, housing, employment, transportation, and consumption. President Macron addressed the Convention, and promised to implement 146 of its 149 recommendations. However, the final recommendations were poorly reflected in the Parliamentary bill written in response to the proposals of the convention.
Based on the Ostbelgian model (see Belgium below), the City of Paris in 2021 created the Assemblée Citoyenne de Paris (Paris Citizen’s Assembly). This body consists of 100 citizens randomly selected from the population of Paris, each serving a term of 12 months. Its main mechanisms appear in the diagram below.
In 2024 a milestone was reached when a set of recommendations on housing from the Assembly was accepted by the city’s governing council and passed into local law.
The standard setter for citizen assemblies being formalised as a permanent part of normal policy making is the Belgium province of Ostbelgien. Created in 2019, the assembly has 24 randomly selected members who serve for 18 months on a ‘Citizens Council’. Its main function is to initiate and steer smaller citizen assemblies on specific topics, and present their recommendations to Parliament. However, while the latter is obliged to respond, the recommendations are not binding on the law makers.
The implosion of the Icelandic banking system with the GFC in 2008 led to community outrage, with people taking to the streets banging kitchen pots in what was branded the Pots and Pans Revolution, demanding political reform. In particular, the population called for the use of a citizen-led process to reform the Icelandic Constitution. The government agreed to a review process not dependent upon party-based politicians.
Many had hoped that this would lead to permanent reforms to the country’s political system, and in particular how public policy was made. However, although a number of citizen-based groups were elected or otherwise convened, their role and influence was curtailed by a sequence of decisions made by the judiciary and by elected political representatives.
By 2022, the question ‘Where is the constitution’ was common graffiti in Reykjavík, and in 2025 the people are still waiting for reform. In the words of Jan Olafsson of Iceland’s Aarhus University (2024), ‘In the 15 years since the financial crisis, Iceland has gone through considerable social and political change. However, the most publicized effort to transform the country, the one that was supposed deliver the foundations of a ‘new Iceland’, has led nowhere.’
The lesson for other countries from observing how deliberative democracy was sidelined in Iceland after such a promising start, is perhaps that without its principles being widely understood and respected by the population, local vested interests remain able to influence and block its use.
In recent years two CAs in Ireland have gained global attention as remarkable examples of how a respectful, objective, equitable and transparent process can lead to quite profound change in national policy in a perfectly peaceful manner. This is quite a statement for a country with a record of serious sectarian violence.
The first was the referendum that led to the recognition of same sex marriage in 2015. That recommendation came from the Constitutional Convention (a type of citizens assembly), commissioned in 2012 by the Irish Government.
The second was in 2016 when a new Citizens Assembly of 99 randomly selected citizens was asked to consider abortion legislation in Ireland, a politically difficult topic in an overwhelmingly Catholic country. Before the CA, polls showed that only 23% of the population agreed with legalising abortion. However, after much discussion over a long period, the assembly voted 64% in favour of legalisation, and a referendum was called. The months leading up to the referendum saw extensive public debate and exchange of information based on the position taken by the assembly, and in the end 66% of the population supported the change. This was a remarkable outcome that demonstrated the effectiveness of genuine, respectful deliberation by ordinary citizens
Other issues in Ireland tackled by CAs in recent years include climate change, the challenges and opportunities of an aging population, biodiversity decline, and most recently fixed term parliaments.
OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development)
‘Catching the Deliberative Wave’
‘Public authorities from all levels of government increasingly turn to Citizens’ Assemblies, Juries, Panels and other representative deliberative processes to tackle complex policy problems ..This “deliberative wave” has been building since the 1980s, gaining momentum since around 2010. This report has gathered close to 300 representative deliberative practices to explore trends in such processes..’
Simon John Birmingham is a former Australian politician who was a Senator for South Australia between May 2007 to January 2025.
A member of the Liberal Party, he served in the Morrison government as Minister for Finance from 2020 to 2022 and as Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment from 2018 to 2020.
An award-winning writer, columnist, critic, academic, broadcaster, public intellectual and former political candidate. Dr Elizabeth Farrelly is trained in architecture and philosophy.
Elizabeth trained in architecture and philosophy, practiced in London and Bristol and holds a PhD in urbanism from the University of Sydney, where she is also a former Adjunct Associate Professor.
As an independent Sydney City Councillor (1991-95), Elizabeth initiated Sydney’s first heritage and laneway protection policies, and was inaugural chair of the Australia Award for Urban Design (1998). She was also Manager Special Projects at the City of Sydney during the Olympic preparations (1998-2000) and is an award-winning writer and published author.
Elizabeth holds a number of national and international writing awards. As Assistant Editor of The Architectural Review (London) Elizabeth edited the August 1986 special issue ‘The New Spirit’, which won the Paris-based CICA award for architectural criticism. Her other awards including the Pascall Prize, the Walter Burley Griffin Award, the Adrian Ashton Award and the Marion Mahony Griffin Award.
An articulate, interesting and engaging speaker, Elizabeth Farrelly is skilled at making complex issues accessible to diverse audiences both in Australia and overseas.
Dr Sonia Randhawa helped to establish the Sortition Foundation’s Australian branch. She has worked on recruitment for over 50 democratic lotteries, and is working with educators to develop curriculum for secondary school students on deliberative democracy. As part of the organisation’s commitment to acknowledging the First Nations people of Australia, she recently completed an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Cultural Competence course and is undertaking a Certificate IV in Training and Education.
A founder of the Coalition of Everyone, she focused on Citizens’ Assemblies, building capacity for deepening democracy. Previously she has worked on media democratisation, freedom of information and media freedom in her birth country, Malaysia and as a journalist in both radio and print. She holds a PhD in media history from the University of Melbourne, and an undergraduate degree in philosophy, politics and economics from the University of Oxford.
Iain Walker is the Executive Director of The newDemocracy Foundation, an independent non-partisan research institute exploring how to do democracy better.
nDF sees the democratic innovation problem to be solved in terms of the constraints on elected representatives as a result of the pressures of uninformed public opinion, with the solutions lying in public judgment mechanisms akin to the criminal jury. They design and operate real-world demonstration projects for elected representatives at all tiers of government, and their advisory work includes a range of governments internationally and projects for the UN Democracy Fund and OECD.
Emma Fletcher is Co-CEO of Australia’s leading deliberative democracy company – democracyCo. In this role she designs, and project manages large and complex engagement projects.
She has an exceptional ability to support governments in building genuine collaborative relationships and partnerships with key stakeholders.
Emma’s commitment and passion to raise the voices of all citizens within the democratic process is one part of the driving force behind the success of democracyCo. This vision is foundational in ensuring that democracyCo is a national leader in engagement.
Emma’s background is in public policy, having worked at the highest echelons of the public service in South Australia and abroad. Emma has an unparalleled understanding of the workings and challenges of government having worked across many different areas of policy, inter-governmental relations, politics and in Parliament.
Jay Weatherill AO is a former politician who was the 45th premier of South Australia, serving from 21 October 2011 until 19 March 2018. Weatherill represented the House of Assembly seat of Cheltenham as a member of the South Australian Labor Party from the 2002 election to December 2018, when he retired.
In 2015, Weatherill initiated the Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission to investigate opportunities and risks associated with expanding the state’s involvement in the nuclear fuel cycle. The Royal Commission report indicated that it was not commercially viable to generate nuclear power. Weatherill used the release of the report as an opportunity to undertake “one of the largest” deliberative democracy processes in Australia’s history. Weatherill stated early that a nuclear waste facility would need both public and bipartisan support.
In 2019, he was appointed as an industry professor at the University of South Australia. Weatherill moved to Perth in 2020 to lead the Minderoo Foundation’s early childhood development arm Thrive by Five. In 2024, he joined the Leeuwin Ocean Adventure Foundation as chairman of the board and in 2025, he was appointed by arts minister Tony Burke to the Council of the National Gallery of Australia.
David Van Reybrouck is a Belgian cultural historian, archaeologist and author and is considered ‘one of the leading intellectuals in Europe’ (Der Tagesspiegel). He is a pioneering advocate of participatory democracy. He founded the G1000 Citizens’ Summit, and his work has led to trials in participatory democracy throughout Belgium and The Netherlands. He is also one of the most highly regarded literary and political writers of his generation, whose most recent book, Congo: The Epic History of a People, won 19 prizes, sold 500,000 copies and has been translated into a dozen languages. It was described as a ‘masterpiece’ by the Independent and ‘magnificent’ by The New York Times.
Effective April 1, 2025, David will be appointed Philosopher Laureate of The Netherlands He will devote the next two years to what he calls “vérdenken. On the occasion, he wrote the essay The World and the Earth.
Nicholas Gruen, CEO of Lateral Economics is a widely published policy economist, entrepreneur and commentator. He has advised Cabinet Ministers, sat on Australia’s Productivity Commission and founded Lateral Economics and Peach Financial.
He is Visiting Professor at Kings College London and Adjunct Professor at UTS. He chairs the Open Knowledge Foundation (Australian Chapter) and is Patron of the Australian Digital Alliance, which brings together Australia’s libraries, universities, and major providers of digital infrastructure such as Google and Yahoo. He is a member of the Council of the National Library of Australia.
