#04 · During the Assembly
How to empower participants to exercise agency after the assembly? How to provide the joining of forces with social movements and many others? How can participants become multipliers?
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To be transformative, CCAs should not only focus on producing results but also help build societal agency beyond the assembly. Meaningful participation does not only relate to immediate impact on decision-making and policies, but also to the experience of participation. This is key to addressing participation fatigue, as CCA outcomes are often taken as advisory.
Ideally, participants leave assemblies as agents and multipliers of change. They reach out to their families, friends, and colleagues. They can continue to collaborate with other transformation-engaged actors, such as NGOs and social movements. Organised groups can then nourish broader political activation, much needed in times of fatalism, escapism, and the rise of authoritarian forces. Eventually, organised political pressure can push for the implementation of the envisioned changes beyond the CCA’s boundaries.
Collective activation can be initiated during or after the assembly. Assemblies can be opportunities to make contact with potential partners, such as invited individuals engaged in institutions or movements. Some of these practices can be simple triggers for activation, such as supporting participants in accessing other participants’ contact information, considering personal preferences, and complying with data privacy regulations.
Facilitate self-empowerment to expand small-scale experiences to broader action by enabling participants to campaign for their recommendations. In Austria, participants formed an association due to the discrepancy between the empowering assembly experience and limited political uptake Verein des österreichischen Klimarats der Bürger
Activate youth participation as in theKlimabürgerrat South Tyrol, where some of the youngest participants joined the climate ambassadors action of the local climate justice movement and developed skills in using connecting technologies to coordinate initiatives, share ideas, and organize events.
Provide sustained Follow-up to Climate Assemblies (KNOCA Guidance) to maintain momentum and support participant-led initiatives through organizing workshops, and continued engagement (follow-up assemblies etc.). TheGlobal Citizens’ Assembly, initiated follow-up activities exploring small grants and partnerships to support participants led local climate actions.
Review political uptake to ensure impact by establishing mechanisms for citizens to track how recommendations are implemented. At the Camden Climate Assembly participants proposed a follow-up panel to ensure structured accountability in the political process (Involve UK).
In this lies also the potential push for political uptake. The authority and access of scientists combined with the mobilisation power of the climate movement can exert pressure for the implementation of recommendations. Furthermore, the participants of a CCA themselves may continue to engage independently. In Austria, for instance, the discrepancy between empowering experience and lack of political uptake, prompted participants to form an association and campaign for the implementation of their recommendations (Verein… , n.d.). This self-empowerment was facilitated through the CCA as a space of other logics. I.e. the power-with experienced on the small scale can expand to broader networks, increasing social and organisational power. Selectivity of state apparatuses and hegemony are stretched, “[…] overflowing against that which contains us”, as John Holloway formulates it in Hope in Hopeless Times (2022, p. 6). This is the emancipatory hope – and a potential.
Krois, Kris, María Menéndez-Blanco, Anja Salzer (2025). Assemblies of Power. Can Climate Citizen Assemblies drive Emancipatory Social-Ecological Transformations?, in El Moussaoui, M., Krois, Palmieri, T. eds. Power in Transformation. Design and Art as Catalysts of Change. 2024. Munich: oekom, ISBN 978-3-98726-150-3
Factors that affect empowerment during the engagement process may include: (i) equality between participants that respects and values different knowledges and contributions; (ii) epistemological flexibility to recognize, evaluate and integrate contributions that are drawn from very different knowledge bases; (iii) authenticity; (iv) transparency; (v) agency, including freedom (from fear), and access to the resources and other means necessary to actively participate; (vi) representation based on democratic mandate and (vii) the ability to deliberate. Factors that may continue to build empowerment or disempower participants post-process include: (i) accountability, ensuring that decisions are faithfully implemented and reflect outcomes from the group process, representing complexity and difference and (ii) feedback loops that keep people informed about how their knowledge is being used.
Karen Bell, Mark Reed, The tree of participation: a new model for inclusive decision-making, Community Development Journal, Volume 57, Issue 4, October 2022, Pages 595–614, https://doi.org/10.1093/cdj/bsab018
https://academic.oup.com/cdj/article/57/4/595/6294808
Alice Moseley, Rebecca Sandover, Patrick Devine-Wright,
Integrating citizens’ assemblies into local climate governance: Lessons from a UK case study,
Environmental Science & Policy,
Volume 168,
2025,
104052,
ISSN 1462-9011,
