#28 · Before the Assembly
How to make assemblies more frequent or permanent? What existing formal processes for democratic participation (e.g., referendums) can be adopted by assemblies? What can we lear from prior experiences?
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A growing number of practitioners, activists and researchers are advocating for permanent, or institutionalised CCAs that can support long-term transformations, independent of short-term political cycles. As climate and social justice affect all areas of society, this would require full democratisation, including the realms of work, production and care. Such a shift would lead to fundamentally different forms of governance and societies. Historical and contemporary experiments include council democracy and anarcho-syndicalism or methods like sociocracy, liquid democracy and platform cooperativism and myriad commoning practices and visions of common-ism. Pioneering communities, such as the Zapatistas or the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (also known as Rojava) are experimenting with grassroots self-governance, and democratic confederalism, demonstrating different pathways to enduring, systemic participatory governance.
However, CCAs remain far from achieving this level of self-organised power. Yet the practices emerging within them, and the experiences with first permanent assemblies, such as Belgium and Milan, may point towards more enduring forms of democratic participation. The examples above can serve as inspiration and as a utopian horizon towards which to move while Reflecting Deliberation Along the Way.
The FIDE/KNOCA note Towards Permanent CCAs outlines promises and limitations. while How to use Citizens Assemblies Permanently highlights implementation considerations for permanent CCAs
Belgian Sortition Models are pioneering permanent CCAs: In “Ostbelgien”, a CCA has been active since 2019, consisting of a Citizens’ Council (CC), citizens’ assemblies (CA), and a permanent secretariat. Each CA includes 25–50 randomly selected citizens. The CC, composed of 24 former participants, organises assemblies, selects topics, and supports monitoring of policy implementation. Members serve up to 18 months to ensure continuity while bringing in new voices. The Ostbelgien Model.
In Brussels a mixed mode links citizens’ deliberation (in person and online) more directly to representative institutions by integrating 45 randomly selected citizens and 17 legislators in a joint committee. The parliament retains agenda-setting power and the assembly is only partially institutionalised. Assemblee Climat
The permanent CCA Milano Cambia Aria focuses on climate and air quality, with 90 citizens selected yearly who meet monthly and provide recommendations to the city administration.
The Climate Plan of South Tyrol (p. 76) foresees continuing with CCAs “in a certain rhythm”, while the local initiative ‘Zukunftspakt - Patto per il Futuro’ proposed a model with a permanent citizen council and recurring CCAs to ensure continuity. The Zukunftspakt Model participatory Transformation
A growing number of practitioners, activists and researchers are advocating for permanent, or institutionalised CCAs that can support long-term transformations, independent of short-term political cycles. As climate and social justice affect all areas of society, this would require full democratisation, including the realms of work, production and care. Such a shift would lead to fundamentally different forms of governance and societies. Historical and contemporary experiments include council democracy and anarcho-syndicalism or methods like sociocracy, liquid democracy and platform cooperativism and myriad commoning practices and visions of common-ism. Pioneering communities, such as the Zapatistas or the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (also known as Rojava) are experimenting with grassroots self-governance, and democratic confederalism, demonstrating different pathways to enduring, systemic participatory governance.
However, CCAs remain far from achieving this level of self-organised power. Yet the practices emerging within them, and the experiences with first permanent assemblies, such as Belgium and Milan, may point towards more enduring forms of democratic participation. The examples above can serve as inspiration and as a utopian horizon towards which to move while Reflecting Deliberation Along the Way.
The FIDE/KNOCA note Towards Permanent CCAs outlines promises and limitations. while How to use Citizens Assemblies Permanently highlights implementation considerations for permanent CCAs
Belgian Sortition Models are pioneering permanent CCAs: In “Ostbelgien”, a CCA has been active since 2019, consisting of a Citizens’ Council (CC), citizens’ assemblies (CA), and a permanent secretariat. Each CA includes 25–50 randomly selected citizens. The CC, composed of 24 former participants, organises assemblies, selects topics, and supports monitoring of policy implementation. Members serve up to 18 months to ensure continuity while bringing in new voices. The Ostbelgien Model.
In Brussels a mixed mode links citizens’ deliberation (in person and online) more directly to representative institutions by integrating 45 randomly selected citizens and 17 legislators in a joint committee. The parliament retains agenda-setting power and the assembly is only partially institutionalised. Assemblee Climat
The permanent CCA Milano Cambia Aria focuses on climate and air quality, with 90 citizens selected yearly who meet monthly and provide recommendations to the city administration.
The Climate Plan of South Tyrol (p. 76) foresees continuing with CCAs “in a certain rhythm”, while the local initiative ‘Zukunftspakt - Patto per il Futuro’ proposed a model with a permanent citizen council and recurring CCAs to ensure continuity. The Zukunftspakt Model participatory Transformation
FIDE/KNOCA 2023 https://uploads-ssl.webflow.com/65b77644e6021e9021de8916/65ddc119b11f3cb81207d076_Towards-permanent-climate-assemblies_Draft-for-comment.pdf
https://www.publicdeliberation.net/the-ostbelgien-model-five-years-on/
https://www.interregeurope.eu/good-practices/permanent-citizens-dialogue-in-ostbelgien
https://democracyrd.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/PDF-Guia3-Case-Studies-1-Ostbelgien.pdf https://www.demnext.org/projects/scaling-democratic-innovations?referrer=luma
Civic assembly instead of citizen assembly! C.f. homeless assembly
https://www.buergerrat.de/en/news/thanks-for-giving-me-hope/
kids:
https://home.crin.org/childrens-rights-and-deliberative-democracy
power:
https://delibdemjournal.org/article/id/326/
public judgement instead of raw opinion:
https://publicagenda.org/wp-content/uploads/Imagining-the-Robust-Deliberative-City.pdf
Indigenous Assemblies
< slowing down and starting where people are…taking time to build trust!:
Paper presentation and discussion scaling-democratic-innovations:
https://www.demnext.org/projects/scaling-democratic-innovations?referrer=luma
Civic assembly instead of citizen assembly! C.f. homeless assembly
https://www.buergerrat.de/en/news/thanks-for-giving-me-hope/
kids:
https://home.crin.org/childrens-rights-and-deliberative-democracy
power:
https://delibdemjournal.org/article/id/326/
public judgement instead of raw opinion:
https://publicagenda.org/wp-content/uploads/Imagining-the-Robust-Deliberative-City.pdf
Indigenous Assemblies
< slowing down and starting where people are…taking time to build trust!:
6 features of scaling catalists:
- Explicit scaling mission - Change is relational – in a cross partisan way - Strong commitment to quality Ø Poor quality CAs not only fail to deliver, but also - Bridge local and global (OECD good practice principles Ø Translational work social and political translation (e.g. translation of learnings from conferences and lessons from different parts oft he world and translating - Dynamic leadership and interdisciplinary teams > team building distributive forms of knowledge sharing - Physical space matters (not only online deliberation platforms, but physical spaces including material infrastructure, as part of wider infrastructure local to Global e.g. – enabling deeper forms of reflection and coordination, but also everyday proximation
Tensions, critical consideration and limitations: part of wider political economy inbetween democratic ideals and real world complexity
1. coordination and collaboration challenges: role and remits are sometimes struggled with;
Paying closer attention, better ecosystem mapping, drawing on local forms of knowledge
2. funding sustainability: often set up as non profit irregular and precarious whilst scaling needs long term – blended models in physical spaces that include revenues
Beyond catalyst organisation: frontiers of future practice
1. deliberative technologies: towards tech enhanced democratic innovations e.g AI and other forms of deliberative technologies. Some of the wider capacity building through paying attention. Practitioner learning; ease of use; more co-design
2. education: building deliberative muscles from a young age. Start with schools and uni´s to develop first ideas about deliberation
3. legal participation frameworks: deeply ingrained political inequalities, sometimes perpetuated through sortition… therefore, protection for employment consequences, better payment for deliberative work
4. community building: requirement of network building for practitioners
Civil servants sometimes feel isolated > better connections for mutual learning; former assembly member often transformed by experience, but rarely structured to find a way forward for these democratic energies…
5. public communication: significantly underdeveloped therefore making deliberative democracy visible and compelling! E.g. though translation of outputs for wider public, storry telling and network, developing infrastructures and budgets are not a nice to have but necessary part…
Conclusion:
- Scaling requires patient flexible funding beyond process delivery, but - Building long term evaluation scales - Investment in documentation of what has been learned - For gov officials: not only one off assemblies, but investing in broader infrastructures that enable deliberative democracy (as permanent feature) - - Researchers: open
Demonstrate that ppl given good conditions can govern wiesely and well!!!!
- Robust civic infrastruchter
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