Citizens Assembly

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Spotlighting the Backstage Governance of Citizens Assemblies

ByRikki Dean

Most attention on citizens assemblies understandably focuses on what happens on stage. What do the participants discuss and how deliberative are their interactions? But what happens on stage is in large part shaped by what is happening behind the scenes – for example, who decides what the agenda for discussion is, and how? In a new report from the Global Citizens’ Assemblies Network (GloCAN), we examine these backstage governance practices in cases from across the world and ask what they tell us about how to organise a global assembly.

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Can citizen deliberation address the climate crisis? Not if it is disconnected from politics and policymaking

ByRikki Dean

A large number of national climate assemblies have been set up across Europe to enable citizens to make climate policy recommendations. But do these bodies have any impact? Drawing on new research, John Boswell, Rikki Dean and Graham Smith argue that greater attention should be paid to how these assemblies can be integrated into the world of politics.

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What are “Democratic Innovations”?

ByRikki Dean

I was the guest for the June episode of the new podcast from Goethe University, Talk Social Science To Me. The main theme was to discuss new ways of involving citizens in democracy, but the conversation led us to many topics, ranging from the effects of the pandemic on democratic governance to the role of democracies in the climate crisis. The podcast is now available on Spotify, Youtube and other podcast providers.

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On embedding participatory governance: A new symposium of Critical Policy Studies

ByRikki Dean

Embeddedness is often invoked as a goal for participatory governance, but it tends to remain vaguely defined. So what does embedding participation mean? And how is it achieved? Sonia Bussu, Adrian Bua, Graham Smith and I convened this symposium in Critical Policy Studies in order to explore these questions through case studies from around the world.

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Some rough, pessimistic thoughts on the political economy problem of climate assemblies

ByRikki Dean

Across advanced democracies citizens’ assemblies on climate change – randomly selected, deliberative initiatives of usually between 100-200 people – are increasingly being adopted in the hope that they can address democratic politics current failures on climate policy. My fear is that, as institutional design solutions to what is more a problem of political economy, these climate assemblies are destined to fail. But I share these rough thoughts in the hope that more optimistic readers might convince me that I am wrong.

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Bürgerrat Demokratie: Abschlussbericht der wissenschaftlichen Evaluation

ByRikki Dean

Der Abschlussbericht fasst die Ergebnisse der wissenschaftlichen Evaluation des Beteiligungsverfahrens „Bürgerrat Demokratie“ durch die Forschungsstelle Demokratische Innovationen der Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main zusammen, die den Beteiligungsprozess ab Juni 2019 bis November 2019 begleitete.  

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What is Democratic Theory? A New Special Issue

ByRikki Dean

A new special issue of the journal Democratic Theory, co-edited with Jean-Paul Gagnon and Hans Asenbaum, tackles the question of “What is democratic theory?”. It is a surprisingly infrequently posed question in the field. With contributions from Michael Saward, John Keane, Carole Pateman, Graham Smith and many others.

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NHS Citizen and what it tells us about designing democratic innovations as deliberative systems

ByRikki Dean

Rikki Dean, John Boswell and Graham Smith analyse an attempt to design a systems-oriented democratic innovation: the NHS Citizen initiative. They write that, while the initiative pioneered some cutting-edge participatory design, it failed to resolve well-known obstacles to institutionalisation. They argue that similar projects must evolve strategies to meet such challenges.