What are citizen's assemblies, and how might they address challenges faced with representative democracy around the world today?
[INTRODUCTION]
"Claudia Chwalisz (CC): Because of sortition. So that random selection of who's part of this assembly. You're removing a lot of the incentives that come with elections. The short-termism of electoral cycles, the campaign financing that's needed. And, therefore, the lobbying that happens around this. People who are selected to be part of a citizen's assembly, they're not thinking about their reelection because they can't be reelected. That's not how this works. It creates a completely different set of incentives for what's driving their decision-making that's much more focused on the public good."
[0:00:39] Jenny Stefanotti (JS): That's Claudia Chwalisz, Founder and CEO of DemNext, a global platform for democratic innovation. And this is the Denizen podcast. I'm your host and curator, Jenny Stefanotti. In this episode, we're talking about citizens' assemblies, which is essentially like jury duty but for policy recommendations. The idea is as old as democracy itself. But it is gaining traction as a way to complement traditional policy-making and circumvent issues faced by elected officials that hinder their ability to make decisions aligned with the public good.
I'm very excited to bring this essential topic to the podcast. Obviously, a very timely conversation given the election in the US next month. Overall, we've talked a lot about economic reform and less about democratic reform. I'm very excited to add this conversation to our inquiry.
We couldn't have a more amazing guest to teach us about this topic. Claudia is at the forefront of establishing citizens' assemblies around the world. She was involved in designing the world's first permanent citizens' assemblies in Paris, Ostbelgien, and Brussels. She led the OECD's work on innovative citizen participation from 2018 to 2022 where she researched hundreds of examples of citizens' assemblies around the world and co-wrote many reports on deliberative democracy and other topics.
She is the author of several books, including The Populist Signal: Why Politics and Democracy Need to Change. And The People's Verdict: Adding Informed Citizen Voices to Public Decision-Making. She advises many organizations, including the UN Democracy Fund. And in 2023, she founded DemNext, whose mission is to shift who has power and how we take decisions in government and other organizations of daily life.
This conversation covers the basics of citizens' assembly. But, also, very excitingly, it takes us to the forefront of the work that she's doing where she's asking questions about citizen-led AI governance, moving beyond anthropocentric governance structures to include nature. And applying her expertise in citizen deliberation into non-public organizations to achieve economic democratization.
As always, you can find show notes and the transcript on our website becomingdenizen.com. There, you can sign up for our newsletter. I bring our latest content to your inbox alongside information about online and virtual Denizen events and announcements from our many partner organizations. I do consider this an essential topic. I'll also be creating a summary on the website in outline form with many resources for those of you who want to dig deeper. And without further ado, here's Claudia.
[INTERVIEW]
[0:03:08] JS: We have been almost having this conversation for well over a year now. And if you trust the universe, this is definitely the time to have it for numerous reasons not least because of the timeliness with the US elections coming up in about a week and a half. Claudia, it's so good to have you here. I am so excited for this conversation. Not just the importance of the topic at hand, but the breadth of the work that you're doing and the way that it touches on so many things that we have talked about on this podcast since launching a couple of years ago. Thank you so much for being here with us.
[0:03:40] CC: Thank you, Jenny. I've been also very much looking forward to this conversation for quite a while. And, yeah, I think the universe has brought us together to finally have it at an interesting, let's say, moment in time.
[0:03:53] JS: Yeah. I wanted to start with your background because it provides such a great backdrop for the broader political context in which democratic innovation in particular but citizens' assemblies also is relevant. Because you were doing some really interesting work at the OECD that led to the work that you're doing now with DemNext. And you wrote a book in 2015 called The Populist Signal: Why Politics and Democracy Need to Change. Tell us about the arc that led you here.
[0:04:28] CC: Yeah. I have been working on these questions for a long time. And my starting point and entry point into doing anything on democratic innovation was the research that I was initially doing on populism. And this was back in about 2012 that I started that work. Before, I think a lot of people were talking about populism. Or it became something that was I think more widely known or discussed.
And my initial starting point in question that I was interested in was to what extent is people's disillusionment with politics and the system? But, also, that lack of agency and voice in shaping decisions that are affecting people's lives driving them towards populist parties and actors. And from that work, becoming really convinced that it is a part of the deep drivers of the democratic issues that we face today.
It's obviously a complex phenomenon. I'm not suggesting by any means that that's the only thing behind it. There are economic and cultural factors that are intertwined. But if we recognize that political dimension, then I recently became convinced that it's not just about figuring out better economic policies, or policies on immigration, or anything else that's actually going to give people a greater sense of agency. And so, that was the pivot quite quickly on quickly after that into looking at, "Well, what are the ways in which we can be giving people a meaningful say and shaping decisions that are affecting them?"
And from what started off as quite a wide broad exploration into different things that get called democratic innovation, I also looked at things like participatory budgeting and all sorts of innovative consultation processes and so on. But when I first came across this idea of citizens' assemblies, which I know we'll unpack and talk about in this conversation, I really had a kind of light bulb moment of like, "Oh, this feels really different actually than a lot of the other things that are being tried." Because it's not just dealing with the symptoms of the democratic issues that we're facing. It's really getting to the roots of some of those deep problems which are more systemic in nature and require something that will not necessarily be easy but we need to create those conditions that actually address those deep issues and enable people to have greater agency.
[0:06:45] JS: Yeah, I find it quite fascinating because it's addressing not just apathy in political participation with respect to not feeling like one actually has a voice and has agency. But it's also really dealing with incentive issues with policy makers, which we'll also get into, which I think is very important.
[0:07:01] CC: I think the disillusionment that a lot of people have with what we think of as democracy today focused around elections, and campaigns, and politicians, and the short-termism around it all, I think those are really legitimate reasons of why people are fed up with politics as usual and turning away from democracy, which I think – again, I think those are some of the symptoms of the problems that we have as well. And focusing on things like voter turnout, or changing the voting methods, and so on. We need to do them for the short-term. But to me, those are not addressing the long-term, deeper-rooted issues of why are people feeling that way in the first place.
[0:07:39] JS: And, so what was it about citizens' assembly in particular that grasps your attention? I mean, you've touched on it a little bit. Can you say more? Can you say what they are? And then just elaborate a little bit more on why this is what you're really focused on right now.
[0:07:51] CC: Yeah. And I'll start with the assumption that people listening are not super familiar with these ideas. And forgive me to those who are. And this will be common knowledge. But citizens' assemblies are these assemblies that have – well, I see them as having three key principles at the heart of them that make them really different to other kinds of democratic innovations and different to our electoral democratic institutions. And those three things which I'll unpack are sortition, meaning the random selection of decision makers. Deliberation, meaning collectively weighing decisions with the goal of coming to shared decisions off the back of them. And then rotation, meaning that we take turns in that position of having both the privilege and responsibility of governing and then being governed in turn.
And a lot of this actually goes back to very ancient principles which were considered democracy for a long time. And it's more recently in history that we've started thinking of democracy as election. Even though it might seem new or an innovation for today's times, I see it in some ways as actually going back to some of the roots of what is democracy as well.
And so, citizens' assemblies, maybe just because that probably sounds quite abstract in some ways, maybe defining a little bit, it's everyday people who are not necessarily experts on the issue. That there's a principle of the fact that, by randomly selecting people to be part of a citizens' assembly, you're really recognizing the fact that actually everybody has the agency, and the dignity, and the capability of being involved in shaping decisions that are affecting them.
[0:09:35] JS: Yeah. And I think a really important point just, again, at a high-level. We'll get into the details of actually how you implement these things. But I think another really critical high-level point is that they can be permanent and they can be assembled for an issue specifically.
[0:09:53] CC: Yeah. No. Exactly. And that's where that principle of rotation comes in for me as well. Because we have seen quite a lot of one-off assemblies as a starting point to this wider movement. But I think, for me, the real power and potential is when we see this not just as another tool but actually as a democratic institution. And, therefore, we can imagine shifting power to it and having new groups of people that are randomly selected to be members of these assemblies over time.
[0:10:22] JS: Yeah. I actually first encountered the concept when I was doing some research back when I worked in philanthropy around climate into the Extinction Rebellion. Where if you actually go under the hood with the Extinction Rebellion, one of the things that they are demanding is the establishment of citizens' assemblies to address environmental issues. And interestingly, when I looked and did the research for this, the environment is the most often addressed topic in citizens' assemblies around the world.
[0:10:49] CC: Yeah. Indeed. And this was one of the things that was really interesting. Because, well, when I was at the OECD before I founded DemocracyNext, and I was leading this area of work around the future of democracy, and one of the pieces of work was this big study looking into all the assemblies that have taken place all over the world. And what kind of issues have they been addressing? And, also, all the different aspects of what makes them work, and actually effective and democratic processes, and so on.
And so, I think climate and also issues around infrastructure, and urban planning, and these kinds of complex issues actually that don't have the easy, right, objectively correct answers but that require really weighing tradeoffs and recognizing the values, dilemmas that underpin a lot of these issues too.
[0:11:38] JS: Yeah. I mean, I think it's really interesting to look at why a citizen assembly is superior in some ways than a representative, a typical representative democracy where you have election cycles. Can you speak a little bit more to what makes them so compelling as a complement to policymaking as we're generally familiar with it?
[0:12:02] CC: Yeah. I think there are a few reasons. I mean, one is the fact that because of sortition. So that random selection of who's part of this assembly. You're removing a lot of the incentives that come with elections. The short-termism of electoral cycles, the campaign financing that's needed. And, therefore, the lobbying that happens around this. People who are selected to be part of a citizens' assembly, they're not thinking about their reelection because they can't be reelected. That's not how this works. It creates a completely different set of incentives for what's driving their decision-making that's much more focused on the public good.
And then the design aspects of this, usually they need to reach at least 75% consensus amongst themselves on the recommendations that come out of this. And so, that also in itself creates a very different dynamic. You're not trying to get to just 51% support of something. You're not just aggregating people's individual views on something. But after a lengthy period of learning together about the topic, listening to one another, grappling and being with the complexity of that issue, people have then worked and done that hard work of finding common ground on what are their shared recommendations at the end of it. And I think that makes for a really powerful output and outcome which is just so different from the partisan aspect of how politics works today.
[0:13:26] JS: Yeah. I really appreciate how it addresses fundamental issues with the temporal horizon that politicians optimize for, which is so influenced by when the next election cycle is. It's very tough to implement longer-term policies. Secondarily, the misaligned incentives with respect to money are not there. And then I think a third piece that I think was really interesting that Lawrence Lessig mentioned in your conversation with him was that some issues are just very polarizing and political. And it's very hard for politicians to vote what might be aligned with their values because of the political ramifications for their base.
[0:14:07] CC: Yeah. Yeah, that's true. That's not an aspect that I emphasized right now. But I definitely agree with that. Again, you don't have that dynamic with a group of people who are not seeking to be reelected and are also not there to be representing the view of a political party either. Because in and of themselves, parties are – and probably even more so today, but have always been quite oligarchic institutions as well. And the way that they function I think is also part of what's not really working with democracy as we know it today.
[0:14:41] JS: Yeah. Also, in terms of what makes things so compelling and just tying back to the things that you were mentioning at the top around apathy with respect to feeling, there's not agency or voice. You spoke quite eloquently or you wrote quite eloquently in one of your papers about – or one of your blog posts, I think it was, about the loss of and the need for delivered spaces in society today. Can you speak a little more to that?
[0:15:09] CC: Yeah. I think we're really missing a lot of these spaces that create both the time and that structured space for people to spend lengthy periods of time together to both like get to know one another as humans, but also to work together on collective issues that they're facing. We don't really have a lot of that.
And I think beyond being deliberative spaces, I think they are also quite creative spaces for problem-solving. And that's also something that we're missing where I think the flip side to populism, which is reinforcing, it is technocracy as well. And I think a lot of our political problem spaces have also been shut down because of a more technocratic approach to them.
And one of the questions I get asked quite often is like, "Well, a lot of policy issues are quite technical. Could you put those to everyday people?" And like, "Of course, there's a technical dimension to every policy problem." But it's first and foremost a values and moral dilemma related to what kind of society do we want to live in and what values do we emphasize more or less.
[0:16:22] JS: This is so good. I mean, this makes me think of two things which I think are both quite important. One is just that the political context does not really enable values-based policymaking because of the shortfalls that we just surfaced around how you get elected. How long you're elected for? How polarizing politics has become particularly in the US?
But I think there's also something very important to be said around how we've moved online and how limited our online spaces are for deliberation. Whereas there was a lot of hope for how that would enable that. What has happened is, as Tristan Harris says, there's a race to the bottom of the brain stem. As Tobias Rose-Stockwell says, these are actually outrage machines. We all know this, right? What gets propagated are the things that are more extreme because they are more emotional and triggering.
But to your point about creativity what, happens when we go into a more emotional triggered state? We lose the parts of ourselves that are compassionate and creative because we are simply not in that place in our nervous system and physiology. And another really important thing that you speak to in your papers and your blog posts is the importance of trust and the importance of in-person spaces for establishing trust particularly when you have people who come from different socioeconomic backgrounds and different geography. Because you have this diversity that's baked into the selection process for citizens' assemblies.
[0:17:59] CC: Yeah. Definitely. And I think people talk so much about trust today and the problems of people having low trust in government and in institutions. Lower than before. But I think that trust dilemma goes in all directions. And I think there's also a lack of trust by government in people. And if we're really serious about wanting to do something about how do we strengthen trust in all sorts of directions, then there's no magic shortcut to getting there. There is a whole bunch of research which shows us that it takes time, first of all. And that it also is something that is strengthened with more in-person contact as well.
And so, I think especially at a local level, but even at other levels too, it's just so important to be creating these in-person deliberative spaces that are bringing people, diverse groups of people who never would have met otherwise together for lengthy periods of time. And not just to have conversations with one another. Because I know there's also been kind of another movement of people that are just – I don't know. I think with good intentions, wanting to create opportunities for different groups of people to just come and have conversations about different issues.
But if we look at contact theory, which is one of the, I think, theoretical groundings behind a lot of that work, a key component to what is actually enabling diverse groups of people to build trust and to form real relationships is about actually doing some sort of activity or work together. And so, that's also I think one of the powerful things in citizens' assemblies is that people are coming together to do some hard work. It's not easy to come up with new proposals to how you might change your constitution or new legislation, whether that's on climate change. Or end of life issues which we've had recently here in France. Or abortion, or same sex marriage like they did in Ireland. You need to be able to have the time that enables people to be vulnerable, to get to know one another, to build trust.
And there's also interesting research which shows that it's actually also that initial phase within these citizens' assemblies which gets called group building. Meaning the kind of social activities that help people to get to know one another, that's actually the thing that's most related to people's capacity to be able to grapple with complexity in the deliberation.
[0:20:26] JS: I love this.
[0:20:26] CC: For numerous reasons, we shouldn't underestimate just the value of creating the opportunities for people to be able to do that more.
[0:20:34] JS: I love this in general. I want to get into the details of how this happens. But before we do that, there's a really critical aspect of this that we haven't touched on yet, which is that the recommendations for citizens' assembly are typically just that they're recommendations or advice. They're not actually implementing policy. Can you speak a little bit more about why that is? Or where that's different? That's a really critical piece of the puzzle we haven't talked about yet.
[0:21:04] CC: Yeah. And I think, well, it's a little bit complicated I think to talk about in the abstract as well because it also really depends. And I think this is also where we've seen the biggest shift in what are the one-off assembly processes and what we are talking about as institutionalized citizens assemblies where there's actually a legal basis that has been established for how they work. Their relationship to elected institutions. Their relationship also to the public service as well.
And from my perspective, I really think that if we're interested in addressing some of these deeper issues with democracy, of course, when you have a one-off assembly to try and address one policy issue and there's recommendations for how to do it, I don't want to suggest there's no value in that because that's not true. I think there is because it's creating all those conditions to do all the things we've just been talking about. And there are good recommendations that come out of it. But I think that it's when we're actually creating the legal basis for this to exist and to have that relationship with other institutions that we can start to see it going beyond just recommendations.
And in the world today, I think the City of Paris has actually raised the bar in terms of what can we see as an actual output of this. They have a permanent citizens' assembly where it's been written into the legal code that has established the existence of the Paris City Council. Also, the existence of the Paris Citizens' Assembly. And they have a mandate now. Every year, those assembly members are actually working on drafting what it gets called a Citizen Bill. And that bill goes to the Paris City Council to be debated and voted on directly at the end of the whole process. They're not just coming up with recommendations. They've actually –
[0:22:49] JS: They're drafting legislation.
[0:22:50] CC: – worked 9 months to draft legislation. And we have other examples. Like in Ireland, there's also been a number of examples where those propositions have been about specific recommendations of how legislation should change. Recommendations to hold referendums to be changing the constitution. And so – I don't know. It's just to say that I think there has been quite a wide variety of the kind of outputs that have come out of it. And, personally, I think we should be pushing more in the direction of what Paris has shown us is possible as well.
[0:23:22] JS: Yeah. Okay. Just to be clear, there's one-off citizens' assemblies on issues versus institutionalized citizens' assemblies. And we'll get a little bit more into that. And then if I'm understanding correctly, sometimes it's a policy recommendation. Sometimes it's actually written legislation that goes to be deliberated and voted on in the legislative body. And sometimes it actually becomes a referendum.
[0:23:46] CC: Mm-hmm. Yeah. It depends on the context. And it's also usually related to how much time has been created for this assembly to be able to do its work. And perhaps no surprise there. But the more time there is, the more you can actually work towards something that's more detailed and in the direction of actual legislation too.
[0:24:10] JS: Okay. Let's get a little bit wonky and get into what it actually looks like to implement this. And you have an amazing guide to implementing this on your website. And then I want to get into some specific examples. But I learned a new word when I was researching this, which was sortition. There's this really critical piece about how selection happens. Can we talk about that part of it first?
[0:24:33] CC: Yeah. Sure. Sortition I think is a new word to a lot of people. And I intentionally use it because I think that it's – I don't think there's actually anything very complicated or more complicated than elections, for example. I think it's just unfamiliar. And there's a need to kind of popularize and socialize this idea. But sortition just refers to this quite ancient practice of randomly selecting decision makers.
And in practice, what that means for citizens' assemblies is there's usually two phases to the process. In the first instance, there will be an invitation that will go out typically in the form of a letter in the post addressed by either the president, or prime minister, or mayor, someone in that position of authority that's inviting people to be assembly members. And so, that letter will spell out what's the issue that's going to be addressed. How is this whole process going to work? What are the meeting dates? What's going to happen with the recommendations at the end of this? It has information about the fact that people are paid to be part of this and addresses frequently asked questions to try and help down those barriers to participating. Often, there'll be something like 30,000 of these letters that will go out completely at random.
And then there's a second stage to the lottery process though. Because there is some bias in terms of who responds to that first invitation around certain demographics. But it is also reaching people who are not typically participating in politics. Either not voting or not going to – not political party members or going to town hall meetings and that sort of thing.
Amongst that group of people who have said yes to the initial invitation, there's a second Lottery that takes place. But this time, controlling for the – the technical term is stratifying. It's like the same thing that happens when you're trying to get a representative opinion poll basically. You're stratifying for that final group to be broadly representative of the community in terms of things like gender, age, geography, socioeconomic differences, and so on so. There's the principle and then there's the practical way in which that actually happens.
[0:26:40] JS: Makes sense. So then you're left with a representative group of people who are opting in to participate in the process. And you're addressing barriers to participation around getting there. And you pay for transportation, hotel, and child care. And you get paid to do that and all of those things. I know there's a range. But what's the typical size of a citizens' assembly?
[0:27:04] CC: Yeah. Well, a typical assembly at a local level is usually around 50 people. More or less. I'd say between 35 to 65 is typical. And at a national level, usually around 100. Sometimes a bit more. Sometimes up to that 150 kind of range. But, again, it depends a bit on context and what's the nature of the issue, the size of the country, all of these kinds of things. But those are typically the numbers.
[0:27:30] JS: Okay. And then there's the deliberation process. Tell us about that. You indicated earlier, it actually starts with relationship building.
[0:27:40] CC: Yeah. Exactly. It starts with relationship building. It starts then with actually talking about values and identifying the shared values in relation to that issue that's being deliberated on. And then the longest phase of the whole assembly process is learning. That typically involves hearing from a wide range of experts. And experts in a broad sense. Not just necessarily academics or researchers. But can include civil society groups. People with lived experience of an issue. Philosophers or faith group leaders if that's relevant for the context and so on. Kind of hearing from a broad and diverse range of people on that topic before moving into a deliberation phase. And there's obviously some back and forth between learning and deliberation.
But deliberation, as we were saying, means weighing that evidence and people being able to bring in their own perspectives and experiences on this issue to then do that hard work of kind of grappling with everything they've heard and learned. And working towards coming up with recommendations on what they think should be happening to address that issue that they've been learning about.
Towards the end, there's usually some aspect of voting that takes place on those final recommendations to get to a sense of do we actually have that high threshold of consensus at 75% to move forward? And so, there's often like an iterative phase of, "If we're close to that but not quite there, what is it about that recommendation that needs to be amended that could get us over the line? Or do we recognize we're not going to reach that threshold and so on to have that final set of recommendations at the end?"
And then I would say, important to emphasize, that's not really the end of the whole thing. To your point earlier about what happens afterwards on the follow-up. Then there's a whole process of actually taking forward those recommendations and making sure that there's a response that happens from the public authority that commissioned this responding to every recommendation saying yes or no. And if not, providing a reason for it. But, also, if yes, what's the timeline? And how is this going to be implemented? And actually, having that sense of accountability that comes after that too.
[0:29:51] JS: Okay. Some key questions to understand this. First thing is who determines what issues the citizens assembly will be addressing? Whether that'd be a one-off citizens' assembly that gets created or an institutionalized citizens' assembly. Who's deciding what issues to address? Or to the extent that it varies, how does it vary?
[0:30:12] CC: Yeah. This typically varies in terms of the one-off versus institutionalized again. And once again, why I'm also interested in the institutionalized. Because in one-off assemblies, it's almost always decided top-down by a political authority that's deciding to commission this. What is the issue? And how is it framed? And sometimes citizens will come back and challenge the framing that has happened actually quite a bit as well. Because, I mean, yeah. You're either opening up or closing down a problem space depending on how you have framed an issue.
In institutionalized assemblies, there's often more of an agenda setting function that also has been designed into how this works in a more systemic way. And it varies a little bit from place to place. For example, in Ostbelgien, which is the German-speaking region of Belgium, they've institutionalized the existence of what they've called a Permanent Citizens Council. Because they have a regional parliament which has 25 people. And they have this Permanent Citizens Council which is almost like a second chamber. But their main mandate is about agenda setting for one-off citizens' assemblies. It's a representative group of people who are a similar size to the parliament actually. 24 people. But they're the ones who are deciding what should be the issue that gets put to that citizens' assembly that's taking place every year and every cycle as well.
[0:31:35] JS: Mm-hmm. Yeah. That's a really critical piece. And it's interesting how the governance complexity goes up when it's an institutionalized citizens' assembly versus a one-off obviously for numerous reasons. And then I think another question is really important, and you spoke to this in some of your podcast episodes, how do you ensure that the information that is brought to the citizens' assembly is comprehensive, representative, not biased? What's in place to ensure that? Who decides what information is getting presented?
[0:32:03] CC: Yeah. This is probably one of the most crucial kind of wonky design questions. But not just wonky. Because it's actually incredibly important when we're wanting people to trust this whole process and see it as legitimate. Usually, there is some complexity around how this happens too. Often, there's an information committee or content committee. It goes by different names. But along those lines, which is dependent to the people who are commissioning this process.
And, usually, it's maybe a group of around 10 people or so which are coming at that issue from different perspectives. And together, they're deciding on what should be the information that gets presented to this group of people both in terms of the information people will get in advance, but also which speakers will people hear from.
And, for me, I think the other design criteria that gets to this problem of how do you ensure that the information that people are getting is diverse and broad, and as unbiased as possible, and so on is also ensuring that people in the assembly also have the agency to be demanding additional information if they need it to continue in their deliberations as well.
[0:33:13] JS: Yeah. I super appreciated that when I learned about it while doing the research. And then what about the process itself? How long does it take? Do they meet all at once? Do they meet over time? How does that work?
[0:33:27] CC: Yeah. Well, this is again one of those questions where the answer is it depends. I know. I know. But quite often, these are lengthy processes. At a local level, there's usually between 5 to 10 days of deliberation. Sometimes longer. And at a national level, the kind of complexity of the issues is usually greater. And so, that length of time is even longer.
One of the lengthier assemblies that took place, but, again, I think which was a really great example was – recently in France, there was the French Citizens' Convention on end of life where the French government had asked people the question of whether the existing legislation on end of life issues should be amended. If so, how? And people met for 27 days of deliberation hearing from over 60 experts. But they worked on and they produced 67 specific concrete recommendations that they wrote up in a 176-page report for the government.
If that's the sort of depth of recommendations you're seeking, then you need to create the time and space for that to be possible. If people had been convened for only five days on that issue, they wouldn't have been able to produce anything more than very high-level sets of priorities. But you can't really expect – there's a little bit of a common-sense test that needs to be passed about. Are people going to trust this process? Is it really possible to come up with anything that has any level of depth where people have really been able to grapple with the complexity? Time to me is probably – after sortition, I think time and having as much time as possible for an issue is the most important design criteria.
[0:35:07] JS: Yeah. And you mentioned how important that is as you're indicating with your comments just now for legitimacy of the process.
[0:35:12] CC: Yeah. Exactly.
[0:35:14] JS: And in these examples, those 10 to 27 days, they don't happen all at once. They happen spread across over months. Usually, over long weekends. Correct?
[0:35:24] CC: Yeah. Yeah. That's a good point actually. The 27 days in that example were spread out over four months. And, usually, there's a few weeks in between deliberative weekends as well. Or sometimes it's taking place during the week sometimes, too, in Belgium notably. But what was I going to say? Yeah. And part of this relates to the other point that I was mentioning actually about ensuring that, if people are requesting additional information, there's actually time to be able to seek out the experts. Provide them with it. And, usually, these are also quite complex, sometimes heavy issues. End of life was actually quite a heavy, weighty to topic for people to be deliberating on. Even having time in between all of those sessions to be able to kind of decompress and take it in. And, also, have the conversations with your family, and your friends, and people around you I think is also a part of the process in a kind of extended way as well.
[0:36:15] JS: How does voting work? You gave an example where it was 75%. Is it typically a super majority voting process? Or is there a lot of variance around how voting works?
[0:36:29] CC: Well, there is a fair amount of variance around how voting works. Sometimes it's a simple yes or no vote. But quite often, it's a little bit more complicated than that. Usually, there's a sort of scale that the voting takes place on. And I think there's a recognition that, around any of these kinds of complex policy issues, you're never going to have an entire group where 100% of people are saying, "Yes. I 100% agree with all of this."
What you're really working towards is wanting that at least 75% of that group to be able to get to that point of saying, "I can live with this." They might not fully agree 100%. But after having heard and learned everything about it, understanding the perspectives of people they disagree with as well, saying, "Okay, I might not fully agree. But I can live with it." Usually, there's some scale on like one to five where you're getting to that threshold. Most people are getting to that point of three where I can live with it.
[0:37:28] JS: 75% in a group of up to 100 or even 50 feels like a really incredible coalescing around very complex policy topics given the diverse representation.
[0:37:44] CC: Yeah. I think so too. And I think for me, some of the most interesting things have been hearing from people who are at that point where they don't actually fully agree and explaining why they voted in favor. One of the interviews that has really stuck with me was actually after that citizens' assembly on end of life in France where there was one of the assembly members who was talking on prime time French TV show about the fact that, at the very outset of the assembly, she was, for religious reasons, really against any form of liberalization on issues to do with euthanasia in particular. And over the course of the whole assembly process, she didn't change her mind on this on a personal level. But she was explaining why she voted in favor of that change because of the process and because of the fact that she felt really listened to. And that she wasn't judged. And that she also really understood the perspectives of people who felt differently than her. And I think there's a lot of value in that and understanding that that's also how we work as people and how people change their minds also when they feel like they've been heard and listened to. And how do we create these deliberative spaces that enable that?
[0:39:02] JS: Yeah. And where we have incentive to do that. I mean, you compare this to the hyper-partisan outcomes that you see in the US.
[0:39:09] CC: That's true. Because the goal isn't to win. And I think that's the difference as well. The success of an assembly is actually when people get to that final set of recommendations together. No one's winning or losing within this kind of context.
[0:39:25] JS: Okay. I know you've mentioned some already. But tell us about some of your favorite examples. You mentioned end of life in France. That was recent.
[0:39:34] CC: Yeah. No. Indeed. I mean, favorite. I guess there's ones that I think just convey the sheer power and beauty of these kinds of assemblies for being able to address some of these deep issues.
[0:39:48] JS: Are they all your babies and you can't kind of favor one over the other?
[0:39:54] CC: No. Well, I don't know. I guess maybe also –
[0:39:56] JS: Of which particularly illustrative examples might you want to highlight when we speak to the – this is actually happening around the world. Yeah. Your research at the OECD. You looked at 600 examples of this happening around the world, right? More at an issue-based level. And came out with your – I mean, you literally wrote the paper on the best practices before you spun out and started DemNext, right?
[0:40:23] CC: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No. And there are hundreds of examples. There's actually 733 examples on that database that I created at the OECD. And that was last updated a year ago. There's even more than that. But I think maybe going back to some of the – historically, more emblematic ones that I think are at the Genesis of a lot of this what we called actually at the OECD deliberative wave that has happened since.
For instance, the examples that took place in Ireland about a decade ago I think still to me are ones that I think back about and I point people to because – and I think especially maybe this resonates in the US where there's a lot of polarization on similar issues. Some of these first assemblies that took place in Ireland addressed constitutional issues of same-sex marriage and abortion. And in both of those cases, the assemblies ended up recommending to the Irish government that there should be referendums to change the constitution on those issues. Because to be able to make constitutional change happen in Ireland, you have to have a referendum. There's no other way.
But it wasn't just a yes or no issue. On those questions, the assemblies provided detailed recommendations about how the legislation should change if people vote for change in the referendum. They were also creating the conditions for the wider public voting to have a clear sense of how are things going to be different if we vote for constitutional change. And it really also, I think beyond that, created the opportunity for wider societal deliberation on these quite polarizing issues too.
Especially, I know some of the detailed statistics on the abortion assembly where there were around 100,000 people that watch the live streams of people giving testimony and sharing evidence with the assembly members. And there is academic research which has been done which showed that this did prompt people to have dinner table conversations that they'd never had before this assembly took place.
And I think one of the other stories from the other Irish assembly that has also just really stuck with me and I – I don't know. I like to share this because I think it also conveys some of these kind of wonky points about why time matters and all of this kind of stuff, too, is from the assembly on same-sex marriage. There's a really lovely story between two of the assembly members.
On the very first day of this assembly, there's two assembly members that, when they show up, they're randomly assigned to their small group table that they're going to be sitting at. And one of them is Finbarr. He's a 50-year-old truck driver from a tiny village in the West of Ireland. And he has been openly homophobic his entire life. And he's shown up a little bit nervous, a little bit questioning. Like, "What am I actually doing here?" And he arrives and he sat down randomly beside Chris, who's a 26-year-old guy living and working in Dublin. Openly gay. Has shown up with his nails painted colors of the rainbow. He wants people to know that's part of his identity.
And both of them on that first day sit down and they're each thinking like, "Oh, gosh. Finbarr is really nervous to be sat beside this guy who is just causing him almost to panic." And this is like sharing some of his own words of how he's described that moment. And on the other hand, Chris is showing up and he's like, "Gosh. I'm sat beside old Ireland here." And they both have come in with their different stereotypes and judgments of each other. Yet, they both end up bonding because some of the first conversation they have with their group is how they both feel a little bit out of place and nervous about being there for the assembly.
And over the course of these five months, they start going to – because of the fact that they bond over that very first thing, they start having coffee in the breaks. They go for pints after the assembly sessions. And they become really, really close friends. And to the point where, near one of the last sessions, Finbarr in one of the kind of public plenary sessions shares a personal story that he's never shared with his parents, or his family, or his wife, or his kids before. The fact that, as he was growing up, he was repeatedly molested by one of his parents' close friends. And why, since that time for him, being homophobic has just been associated also with pedophilia. And how through this whole process and meeting the people that have been in this assembly and so on, he's come to really understand how those things are not the same.
And he doesn't say anything in that speech about how he's going to vote in the assembly or anything like that. But just the power of being able to share that. And I think both the friendship that was formed. And it's the sort of thing which to me shows like why you need the time and the space created in these processes. I don't think this would have happened if this had been just an online assembly process. Or if this had taken place in five days instead of five months. I think that we need to be able to value those aspects of like what are these deliberative spaces creating for us too. Sorry. That's a little bit of a long story.
[0:45:31] JS: It's a beautiful story though.
[0:45:31] CC: But I just feel like it conveys so much of the power beyond the policy impact of why I believe in these ideas so much.
[0:45:39] JS: Yeah. Well, it humanizes all of the different viewpoints involved. And you have been intimately involved in the establishment of the first institutionalized, I.E. permanent citizens' assemblies in Europe. Just in case listeners didn't understand what a badass at the forefront of the space we are fortunate enough to be learning from. Can you tell us a little bit about those or one of them as another example?
[0:46:11] CC: Yeah. Well, I actually referred a little bit to it earlier. I mentioned Ostbelgien, which is the German-speaking region of Belgium, which I think many people might not be super familiar with. But it's Belgium being Belgium. It actually has quite a lot of power that is devolved and exists at that level of government as well. And they were the first ones in 2019 to set up that Permanent Citizens' Council that I was describing earlier.
[0:46:36] JS: Well, I read that that was the first permanent citizens' assembly to be put in place since the Renaissance. True?
[0:46:43] CC: That's true. That's true. They are the first ones that created that legal basis for it. And it's a community of about 80,000 people. But a really nice place to be experimenting I think with that for the first time. And then they were the ones who inspired Paris to set up their permanent assembly after that.
[0:47:02] JS: And you were involved in both of those.
[0:47:05] CC: And I was involved in that as well. Yeah. And, also, then afterwards, the capital region of Brussels also set one up. And there's been a few other – I mean, there's been a whole bunch after that. But those were really the first three in the world that had then kind of set a little bit of an example and inspired other places to do the same.
[0:47:23] JS: I want to talk about the role of technology. About a year ago, you established a collaboration with the MIT Center for Constructive Communication to do a 2-year lab to look at how technology could facilitate these different areas of the citizens' assembly process. And particularly, one of the things that you have been investigating is what the role of AI can be in sensemaking, in synthesis, in visualization. I'm curious what's come up through that work in technology enabling these innovative forms of governance with citizens' assemblies.
[0:48:01] CC: Yeah. I'm glad that you've asked about this because I think also that question of the intersection with technology and deliberation and deliberative assemblies is a really kind of live one at least in the field and the community I'm working with. And I think there's different philosophical approaches around this. And the way that we've been thinking about it and doing this work in collaboration with colleagues at the MIT Center for Constructive Communication has really taken this approach about how can we be using technology to enhance the quality, the legitimacy, the trustworthiness of these assemblies rather than trying to think about technology as something that could be trying to scale this to have mass deliberation with a thousand, or 10,000, or a million people at once. Or technology to be replacing some of the human aspects that I think are really valuable.
There's various people that are trying to replace facilitators with AI, for example. And for me, that's sort of asking some of the wrong questions in a way. I think we actually need more people that have the skills to facilitate difficult conversations in society. With colleagues at MIT, part of the work has really been actually about trying to get full recordings of the entirety of the deliberations that are taking place. Also, in the small group conversations that take place in the liberative assemblies. Which up until the – we did this for the very first time in a project that we've been involved in in Central Oregon. There's the Deschutes Civic Assembly on Youth Homelessness that just took place recently.
[0:49:40] JS: I saw that.
[0:49:41] CC: And it might seem like a small feat to just be trying to record a citizens' assembly. But it's actually logistically a little bit of a challenge. And part of our goals and ambitions is for that to become something that is something that is seamless and a lot easier than it is now. But, also, that by doing that, we're able to give assembly members better – let me just explain I think an aspect that might not be obvious to listeners is that, quite often in these assemblies, you're going back and forth between this dynamic of a lot of full group and small group conversations.
And when you're doing that over 27 days, for example, in that assembly we were talking about earlier, I do think there's something that gets a little bit lost in the richness of everything that happens. And so, how could we be making sure that there's less that gets lost? That we're able to share more of the insights and the highlights in the voices of people that have been part of all of those different small groups. Could we be visualizing aspects of conversation better? To also visualize the dynamics of what's been happening to get a sense of the deliberative quality that has happened that's maybe more on the research side of what becomes possible when we do this?
These are some of the kinds of questions and the approach that we're taking in the work. We're not trying to replace the in person or to reduce the overall time. But we are interested in how can we be leveraging the new technologies and things that exist that can be improving the quality of this process even more?
[0:51:13] JS: One of the things that I appreciated, because the citizens' assembly is intended to represent a broader group of citizens because of the demographic representation. But at the same time, there's a question of not just the value set that that individual holds. But to what extent that value set is representative of who they're trying to represent. And so, the opportunity to have citizen preferences and voice be an input to the deliberative process in addition to the experts and all those other sources of information and the role that AI could potentially play in facilitating that. I thought that was a really interesting piece of the puzzle too.
[0:51:51] CC: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Because, in a way, we're also drawing off – the team at MIT CCC called for short and in collaboration actually with the nonprofit Cortico that they're working super, super closely with. Deb Roy is both the Director of the MIT Center and the CEO of Cortico. They've been working in collaboration actually with a lot of different public authorities and community groups all over the US where they've been convening people for small group conversations in a place often around policy issues and using their technology and platform form to be able to have outputs that are grounded in voice. But also, be able to do that kind of sense-making with that conversation data.
If you have, let's say, conversations with a hundred people that have taken place in all of these different small group conversations using natural language processing and machine learning, you can today be able to draw out in a more quantitative way what have been the main themes that have emerged from all of these conversations. And you can also use a platform to be able to go in and find the kind of highlights of those conversations within the context of what was said as well. You're never also taking a quote out of context either. We think that using that kind of method and technology can be a better way of getting wider community input as part of the evidence base for an assembly. As well as using that technology within an assembly process for analysis-making too.
[0:53:25] JS: Exactly. Yeah. I really appreciate that. I mean, I'm just generally excited about technology for democratic innovation. If you look at things like liquid democracy or even the limitations of direct democracy, I think there's really interesting opportunities to do things with new technology that weren't possible before. Bookmark for another conversation.
I want to talk about something really important on your website, very important and very timely, about the notion of citizen-led AI governance. Obviously, there's a very, very hot topic right now, is how do we govern AI. You just had a great quote on your website. I wanted to surface it and just hear your take on this. We believe that technology company workers and owners, experts, or politicians alone cannot be responsible for answering these inherently political and societal dilemmas. The emphasis needs to be on both the representativeness and the deliberate quality of the engagements. Ensuring that the process gives people agency and dignity leverages collective intelligence and can result in finding ground on clear political mandate. Say more about your thinking on citizen-led AI governance. I know it's an early call to collaboration around this. But I was thrilled to see it on your website.
[0:54:37] CC: Yeah. No. Thanks for surfacing that as well. I feel like that captures really well what I think. But I guess I wrote that. So that makes sense. No. I mean, it comes back to one of the things we were talking about earlier in this conversation as well that I think also issues around AI policy and regulation get treated as though these are purely technical issues. Because there is obviously a technical dimension to them. But I think we need to remember that there is that values-based set of dilemmas underpinning them. And that bigger question of what kind of society do we want to be living in that we should not lose sight of.
And it's why we need to be having deliberative spaces and processes to be able to come to questions around these issues. And this actually makes me think of a quote by the physicist, the Nobel prize-winning physicist, Richard Feynman. And I don't remember the exact wording of it. So it won't be as eloquent as the way he said it. But, basically, he's talking about the fact that science will be able to tell us what happens if we do this. But on its own, it doesn't answer that question of like should we do that? And, to me, that's where we need both. We need science and analysis of like what's going to happen. But we need the public deliberation of like do want that to happen? Under what conditions? With what safeguards? Those are not objectively answerable questions. I think it kind of highlights to me why deliberation on AI is important.
[0:56:11] JS: I appreciate that you have a blog post on what politics can learn from physics that talks about Feynman. I will link to it in the show notes. I want to touch just quickly on some really exciting work that you're doing expanding this really amazing work at the frontier around democratic innovation and citizens' assemblies. You recently wrote a paper called Governing With the More-Than-Human World. What does this mean? Why should we care? And how could we do this in practice? Just quickly, can you speak to how you're thinking about moving beyond a anthropocentric perspective with respect to governance innovation?
[0:56:49] CC: Yeah. And I am glad you asked this. I would say this is probably the most exploratory aspect of all the work that I'm doing right now and that we're doing at DemNext more broadly. And that is a piece of work that we've been doing in collaboration with folks at an organization called Arising Quo actually.
And I suppose for me, there's both a slightly personal dimension to why I'm interested in this. I think for a long time, I had this separation between some of my personal interests and things that I do in my spare time, and my love of nature, and hiking, and all of these sorts of things. And also my immense collection of books on biology and all sorts of really good topics that I read in my nerdy spare time. And then all the work on democratic innovation.
And it's been nice to be able to start bringing these together and to be exploring. If we know and recognize things about the living world's agency, what does that mean for how are we governing ourselves? And what is that relationality that we have with the living world too? I don't know. I think for me there's still a sense of I don't have a real sense of clarity on what the answers are to some of these questions. But I've been doing some work looking into who has been experimenting with very concrete things that we can be doing to be recognizing that relationship we have with the living world and how we're governing ourselves. And governing with it. Not just for it too.
But I also I think recognize some of the limitations of at least some of the approaches that I have been doing some research into around this too. I think there's a little bit of a risk that we end up in a kind of pure role-playing kind of thing where people are putting themselves in the shoes of the soil, or the river, or the tree in a deliberative context.
And I think there can be some value. Because we have seen that people really can shift their perspective on a wider set of issues. But I don't think that on its own can be the basis of solid decision-making either. But I still think there's a lot more to be exploring in the intersection with these different questions as well.
[0:59:04] JS: I just love that you had this. Because we have a cluster that I intend to bring to the podcast soon around rights of nature and nature governance. And so, it's really interesting to potentially think about, well, what if you added a representative of nature or whatnot to these citizens' assemblies to hold that perspective in that conversation? Or how might you integrate that perspective into the conversation?
The other thing that I was excited to see on your website was democratizing economic institutions, which is something that we have talked about extensively on this podcast. You're working with Democratizing Work and Demos Helsinki on a series of workshops and papers around this. And so, this is bringing these practices into other types of organizations. Not public institutions, corporations, et cetera. Can you speak a little bit more to that work?
[0:59:52] CC: Yeah. Indeed. There's like that wider overarching set of questions around economic institutions that you're referring to. And we also have a more kind of practical project and collaboration that's just getting off the ground now. Together actually with the colleagues at the MIT Center for Constructive Communication for the tech enhanced side of things, but also with Mondragon Corporation, which is one of the world's oldest and biggest cooperatives, and Arantzazulab, which is a democracy innovation lab in the Basque Country in Spain. And, also, LANKI Research Institute, which is a part of Mondragon University. We're all collaborating together on a set of pilot projects around bringing in these principles of sortition, and deliberation, and rotation into the decision-making and governance processes of Mondragon. And Mondragon is quite interesting because it's actually a federation of many different cooperatives.
[1:00:44] JS: We actually, a couple episodes ago, discussed it somewhat at length as a really important example in this one. Yeah.
[1:00:48] CC: Okay. I think a lot of your listeners will be familiar with it then. And so, we're going to be doing pilots with two of the co-ops next year but with the intention of learning from those as something that could actually be spread and institutionalized across Mondragon more widely too.
[1:01:07] JS: Yeah. It's really interesting. It just makes me think of – if you think about an example like OpenAI, for example. What they originally tried to do as a nonprofit. And then as they became this sort of hybrid with for-profit needing to raise more capital but having this really, at the time, elegant governance structure that was attempting to not have economic incentives corrupt decision-making. But you're still like why are we appointing Sam Altman and Adam D'Angelo to make these decisions for everyone? And what would it look like if you had a more democratic and representative group at the corporate level engaging? And these are types of things that could be legislated for companies beyond a certain scale or in certain sectors that had significant spillovers. And so, it's pretty exciting to actually instantiate in a meaningful way democratic government in the firm. I'm very excited to see where this work goes.
[1:02:00] CC: Yeah. I'm excited too. And I think one thing is working with Mondragon. I think I would also love to be able to work with other kinds of companies that are not set up as co-ops. Because I think there's just a whole bunch of experimentation that needs to be done. And I don't think it's necessarily also always obvious how do we bring in these principles into such organizations too. I don't think there's just one way to do it either.
And, I guess, maybe also as someone who's now running my own foundation and has the sense of responsibilities of also being on the board, but working with board members and so on, I know that it's complex. And I think there's different kinds of actors you need to take into account. Both people who are working at an organization as well as the board, as well as the wider set of stakeholders that have some relationship with that organization.
I think having explorations about what are the different ways in which we can be bringing these principles into our decision-making and governance is just super fascinating. And so, maybe this is a little bit of a call out to anyone listening. If people are wanting to experiment also in that vein, I would love to open up some conversations on that front too.
[1:03:08] JS: Thank you for coming on the podcast. I just can't applaud you enough for the work that you're doing in the world. I'm incredibly grateful to have been connected to you and to bring you on to the podcast to teach us about citizens' assembly. But, also, just be such an inspiring example in the world of how to make these ostensively audacious changes that we talk about on the podcast real. Thank you so much for everything that you do. It's amazing.
[1:03:35] CC: Well, thanks, Jenny. That's really kind of you to say. I mean, I definitely feel I'm not alone in this movement. And if anything, it's also the audacious leaders and the people who are actually part of these assemblies that are at the forefront of a lot of the change. And I think I'm just in a lucky position to be able to have a chance to talk about these various stories. And, hopefully, inspire some people to action. Because it's not just waiting for government to change. I hope that people also come away with this thinking, "Oh. Actually, I could do something in the organization where I'm working or at my child's school," which there's also examples of that being brought into changing debating clubs into deliberation clubs. And I just think there's a whole wide set of things that many people can be taking action on to make some changes. Thank you for hosting me. And appreciate the work that you're doing as well.
[1:04:26] JS: This is what I would consider an essential topic. I'll also create on the website for those that are interested in diving deeper that written summary with extensive resources. And, of course, I'm always happy to connect people directly to you. Thanks again.
[1:04:39] CC: Oh. Thank you, Jenny.
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