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Public Money & Management
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Local government and democratic innovations:
reflections on the case of citizen assemblies on
climate change
Martin King & Rob Wilson
To cite this article: Martin King & Rob Wilson (2022): Local government and democratic
innovations: reflections on the case of citizen assemblies on climate change, Public Money &
Management, DOI: 10.1080/09540962.2022.2033462
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09540962.2022.2033462
© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa
UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis
Group
Published online: 16 Feb 2022.
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Local government and democratic innovations: reflections on the case of citizen
assemblies on climate change
Martin King and Rob Wilson
Faculty of Business and Law, Northumbria University, UK
IMPACT
Since the 1980s, deliberative democracy has dominated thinking around democratic innovation as an
approach to address the ongoing legitimacy crisis of public insitutions. One of the methods of
implementing deliberative democracy, citizen assemblies (CAs), are increasingly being applied to
mainstream decision-making. The scale in the UK has been notable—representing a seminal
juncture in the adoption of CA as a method of public engagement. This article focuses on how
these processes, so far, have connected to the wider public sphere and the decision-making
processes of commissioning organizations to explore whether this represents a sustainable
method for democratic renewal or a passing fad.
ABSTRACT
Local and national authorities are implementing citizen assemblies to address climate change. This
represents a potentially crucial point in the development of citizen assemblies, and offers a new
setting in which to explore unresolved questions in the literature about the relationship between
deliberative minipublics and the wider public sphere and decision-making authorities. This article
considers the significance of this recent development and the prospects that citizen assemblies
present for sustained, meaningful democratic engagement. The authors focus on how these
events are connected to the wider public sphere and institutions of decision-making and argue
that these cases reveal normative and practical challenges crucial to understanding the
sustainability and success of these events. Traditional approaches to analysing deliberative
processes may be limited in their capacity to navigate these challenges; the authors outline
potential approaches that may provide insight into these questions.
KEYWORDS
Citizen assembly; citizen
engagement; climate
change; deliberative
democracy; environment;
minipublic; public
engagement; public
participation
Introduction
A wave of citizen assemblies (CAs) has been initiated by
decision-makers to address climate change and
environmental issues. This includes national authorities in
the UK, France, Scotland, Spain, and Denmark (Shared
Future, 2021). There has been particular enthusiasm for CAs
from regional and local authorities (LAs). This includes
Budapest (Demnet, 2021), Gdansk (Gdansk, 2017) and,
notably, LAs in the UK. At the time of writing, there have
been at least 14 climate assemblies initiated by LAs in the
UK—beginning with the Camden Climate Assembly in 2019
(Cain & Moore, 2019; Shared Future, 2021). This
development raises interesting questions about the role of
democratic innovations in the work of LAs:
.What is the significance of this development?
.Why are some LAs implementing these processes now?
.Is the experience of these assemblies valuable to the
authorities and the public?
.What are the conditions of sustainability for this trend?
.Do CAs offer advantages over previous experiments in
participatory policy-making (see Michels & De Graaf,
2010)?
This article reflects on the themes emerging from this
current trend. These reflections are based on direct
observation and interviews with commissioners,
practitioners and participants of various local CAs
conducted across the UK.
What is a citizen’s assembly?
A CA is an example of a ‘deliberative mini-public’(DMP). This
is a forum that uses stratified random sampling or ‘sortition’
to bring together a representative microcosm of a
population. The DMP is given time and expert support to
deliberate on an issue and form collective preferences/
recommendations. Forms of DMP include deliberative polls,
consensus conferences, citizen juries and CAs. These vary in
relation to the number of participants, the length of time
and/or sessions of deliberation, and the expression of
preferences. CAs involve between 40 and 250 participants
and at least 30 hours of deliberation.
This practice can be understood as part of the ‘deliberative
turn’in democratic theory (see Gutmann & Thompson, 1996).
DMPs can be understood as part of an ‘empirical turn’within
this tradition as scholars attempted to test theoretical claims
of deliberation and create forums designed around the
principles of high-quality deliberation. The practice of DMPs
has encountered challenges within the literature. The
‘systemic turn’of deliberative democracy advocates a
deliberative systems perspective on deliberative forums. It
cautions us against studying discrete instances of
deliberation in isolation, and encourages us to attend to
the relationship any instance of deliberation has to the
© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use,
distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
PUBLIC MONEY & MANAGEMENT
https://doi.org/10.1080/09540962.2022.2033462
wider democratic system (Mansbridge et al., 2012; Owen &
Smith, 2015; Curato and Boker, 2015). The democratic
authority of DMPs and their relationship to decision-making
institutions is also under active debate. A DMP is
representative but not representing (participants are not
elected), therefore the warrant for democratic authority
differs from claims associated with representative
democracy. Chambers (2009) and Lafont (2015)offer
variations of a critique that DMPs risk shortcutting
democracy. Boswell and Corbett’s(2017) discussion of
‘deliberative bureaucracy’suggests the study of deliberative
democracy and DMPs has focused on will-formation rather
than implementation.
For much of their history, DMPs have been applied
experimentally with little or no direct connection to
decision-making authorities. CAs involve significant
commitment of resources, time, money, and organizational
effort. Consequently, it is fascinating that many authorities
have chosen to commission these processes. This provides
an opportunity to explore the concerns raised by the
literature. The cases do not provide conclusive answers to
these debates, however they provide useful insights into
the practice of CAs and illuminate gaps in knowledge.
Emerging themes in the delivery of local CAs
The prominence of CAs has been traced to the following
developments: Ireland’s 2016–2018 CA; the activist
movement Extinction Rebellion demanding a national CA;
national CAs initiated by UK and France (Cain & Moore,
2019). The initiation of local CAs appeared to partly depend
on the presence of policy entrepreneurs interested in
democratic innovation. Further evidence suggested that
being seen to be first or innovative motivated some
authorities.
The cases provide insight into the potential of technology
to facilitate public engagement. Some CAs took part during
social restrictions following the coronavirus pandemic,
requiring adaptation to online delivery. Practitioners
highlighted a number of benefits including recruitment,
reducing barriers to entry (especially for participants in rural
areas or with mobility issues), and widening the pool of
potential speakers. On-boarding was found to successfully
mitigate barriers of access and confidence in using
technology (except varying internet quality). Some felt
online communication was more awkward than face-to-
face, reducing bonding and demanding greater effort for
facilitators in co-ordinating deliberation. There was a
contrary view that reducing social bonds benefited the
authenticity of assembly members’conclusions.
A promising picture emerges of a wave of local CAs,
carried by a current of enthusiasm, driven by policy
entrepreneurs, and overcoming barriers. This invites the
following related questions:
.What value do authorities see in CAs?
.What are they achieving?
.What are the conditions under which this approach
becomes sustainable and embedded in LA practice?
On the question of what value authorities see in CAs, our
findings suggest a range of distinct accounts within
authorities and distinct departmental interests at play in
perceptions of the CA’s role and value. As with many
innovations, deeper understanding of value only emerges
after experience. Generally, people felt commissioners were
sincere in their public engagement efforts, yet sometimes
lacked clarity on the value, advantages, and disadvantages,
of CAs with enthusiasm varied across participating
organizations.
Understanding the impact of CAs is further complicated by
a number of factors. An immediate issue is time—CAs have
only begun to be completed relatively recently and the
timescale of implementing particular recommendations is a
matter of years rather than months and out of the hands of
the commissioning body. There is an epistemological
challenge in identifying causation; it’s not clear what
commissioners were considering prior to the assembly, and
we cannot compare a counterfactual situation of their
actions without an assembly. Furthermore, some outputs of
CAs are difficult to measure and verify when they have
been met.
In the following sections we turn to two areas, sometimes
neglected in discussion, yet essential to our understanding of
how CAs might become sustainable and embedded in
practice. We explore the place of these democratic
innovations within the wider democratic system, focusing
on connecting the assembly to the wider public sphere and
the work of LAs.
The wider communication of citizen assemblies
The communication of the CA to those impacted by its
recommendations is crucial to understanding the success
and legitimacy of the process (Raphael & Karpowitz, 2013).
The public cannot be reasonably expected to accept the
legitimacy of a CA’s recommendations if they do not know
what the recommendations are, that an assembly took
place, or what an assembly is. An immediate challenge,
therefore, concerns communication.
Communication also surfaces a proposed good of
deliberation. Participants and observers of CAs identified
the power of seeing citizens engage in high-quality,
informed, non-partisan debate. The literature highlights the
value of deliberation as a means to improve understanding
and build empathy across divides (Mendelberg, 2002;
Cohen, 1989; Fishkin, 1995), often contrasted with the
current dominance of adversarial representations of debate.
In providing a positive example of debate, effective
communication of and by CAs may help realize this
democratic good.
In practice, we encounter challenges in communicating
the assembly. Some identified an assumption that delivery
was sufficient, with little attention/resources dedicated to
communication. There were further challenges with the
capacity of LAs to command public attention. These were
not unique to CAs, but reflected a wider challenge of co-
ordinating knowledge across local communities about
public interest issues. The deterioration of local media and
fragmentation of media consumption were presented as
factors in this challenge. It was suggested that achieving
significant public awareness of the CA would involve
resources at a scale beyond many LAs capacity (at the
national level, public awareness is more mixed, with
generally low public awareness in the UK but, reportedly,
over 70% awareness in France—see Elstub et al., 2021).
2M. KING AND R. WILSON
This is an amorphous challenge and there is no universally-
accepted approach to developing solutions to improve the
communication of assemblies. Efforts to improve
communication reveal not only practical challenges, but
normative concerns. For example, one route may involve a
more public-facing role for participants. Examples are
provided by a citizen assembly in Canada which was
supported by participants holding public hearings (see
Fournier et al., 2011), others described participants of the CA
in France taking part in radio interviews, while other
interviewees suggested giving participants a spokesperson
role or broadcasting parts of the assembly. This would
expand the role of participants; they are no longer expected
to simply represent their views, but to act as spokespeople.
This would require development of capacity through
training and support and may exclude people
uncomfortable with these sorts of roles. Such efforts may
compromise the anonymity of participants and consequently
the integrity of the process. This highlights potential
tensions between different goods that CAs aim to realize.
The potential tensions between different purported goods
of deliberation is well-recognized in the literature (Thompson,
2008; Mutz, 2006), yet the manifestation of these in the
practice of DMPs is less well explored. Furthermore, the
traditional analytic criteria and methodologies developed to
evaluate DMPs are arguably ill-suited to engaging with
some of the practical challenges of communication. Where
there is evidence on public perceptions of legitimacy of
DMPs, studies artificially resolve these challenges, informing
participants about the assemblies beforehand (Boulianne,
2018; Ingham & Levin, 2018a and 2018b). Yet the challenge
of communication is vital to understanding the success of
CAs, their function within the democratic system, and
providing answers to questions the literature sets itself.
Connecting assemblies to the commissioning
organization
Finally, we consider the challenge of connecting CAs to the
work of the commissioning organization. We observe a
range of issues. Enthusiasm for CAs varied within
organizations. Resistance sometimes stemmed from
concerns about other members of the organization (for
example suspicion an assembly is a cynical attempt to
advance partisan interests). There was concern the assembly
would duplicate the work of experts or representatives, thus
presenting a threat to professional status/authority.
Enthusiasm is also tempered by concerns around cost and
value for money. Accounts of the purpose, scope and value
of the assembly differed. Commissioners described ‘building
a mandate’,‘educating the public’,‘generating ideas’,
‘providing direction’.Different departments held distinct
interests in the process (for example communications teams,
policy-makers). Views on the scope of CA differs, specifically
the extent to which recommendations should focus
exclusively on areas under the LA’s control.
These issues suggest a need for greater collaboration prior
to the assembly in navigating political and occupational
concerns to establish buy-in and develop a shared
understanding of the CA’s role/value. In principle, there
should be a willingness to engage with differing
perspectives and ambitions for the process, but we should
be alert to the following issues:
First, compatibility—do the ambitions/values compromise
the integrity of the CA? Would alternative methods be
preferable?
.Second, we must consider potential tensions between
realizing different values.
.Third, where values are ambiguously expressed (i.e. they
do not clearly delineate the role of the assembly relative
to the organization), this risks duplicating work and/or
obscuring the impact of the assembly. Finally, we may
ask how effectively the assembly realizes these values.
In navigating the challenges of connecting CAs to the
commissioning organization we encounter limited support
from traditional methods of analysis. DMPs were developed
with a particular set of concerns in mind, which can be traced,
in part, to traditions of deliberative democracy and critical
theory (Gutmann & Thompson, 1996). These approaches are
characterized by the pursuit of a critical orientation towards
institutions of power (Blaug, 2000,2002), commitment to
ideals of deliberation explicitly contrasted with strategic
action common to political organizations, and an explicit
resistance to prescribing constitutional or institutional
settings for deliberative democracy rooted in a critique of
technocratic approaches (Blaug, 1999). In this context,
questions of implementation, organizational or procedural
adaptation, navigating institutional needs and interests, go
against the grain of the field. In exploring these questions, it
may be helpful to turn to the literature on collaborative
governance (Ansell & Gash, 2008), organizational learning
(Easterby-Smith, 2000) and organizational ambidexterity
(Boukamel & Emery, 2017). These literatures centre discussion
around the capacity for an organization to learn, adapt and
problem solve, while retaining the ability to efficiently
perform routine tasks. In this context, CAs can be understood
as a mechanism for facilitating the kind of bottom-up learning
advocated by these literatures. This would involve re-
orientating the focus of our analysis of CAs, but may
represent a promising perspective to explore the challenges
of embedding CAs within the democratic system, improving
their sustainability and impact.
Conclusion
The wave of authorities commissioning CAs presents a new
opportunity to explore the relationship between democratic
innovations and the wider democratic system. We observe
that in practice a series of normative and practical
challenges emerge when seeking to connect these
processes to the wider public and the work of
commissioning organizations. Our efforts to explore
solutions to these challenges may require reaching beyond
traditional approaches to analysing deliberative processes.
An interesting contrast emerges between the environment
of the gestation of CAs and the context of application. We
encounter new sets of interests, expectations and concerns
placed on CAs through the roles and responsibilities of the
stakeholders involved. This requires a process of learning
and adaptation on the part of advocates of deliberative
democracy, engagement practitioners and citizens. There
remains a need to develop the institutional practices of
commissioning organizations with sustained
communication between the parties involved. The role of
PUBLIC MONEY & MANAGEMENT 3
digital technologies and platforms in these areas, which have
been developing in parallel, also needs careful review so as to
be confident that innovations scaffold and augment
deliberative engagements to improve relationships and not
to automate them—thereby rendering them performative.
The pace of response and how effectively these concerns
are addressed and navigated is crucial to both
understanding the conditions of sustainability for the CA
processes and ensuring that the integrity of the CA is not
compromised.
ORCID
Rob Wilson http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0469-1884
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