Can Citizen Assemblies save democracy?
Peter G. Martin
Global wealth inequality is accelerating at alarming rates, driving a political ferment that many consider underlies the rise in authoritarian regimes and decline in democracy.
The world’s richest 1% now control almost half the world’s wealth – well over $15.5 trillion. The total wealth of the poorest 40% amounts to just 1% of the world’s total.[1]. According to the 2023 Oxfam report, Survival of the richest, ‘since 2020, for every dollar the bottom 90% have gained, billionaires have gained $1.7m’ [2]. The figure below (Fig 1) shows that globally the average income of the top 10% is about 38 times higher than that of the bottom 50%.
Income inequality is not as skewed as wealth inequality, but within countries it has now regressed to where it was in 1900. Income inequality between countries is a different story – it peaked in 1980, but following rapid GDP growth in developing countries since WW2, it has lessened somewhat.
Although GDP continues to grow, per capita living standards have actually moved little since the 1970s if we take into account other measures of human wellbeing, such as inequality, job insecurity and the condition of our environment. The figure below (Fig 2) for the USA compares GDP per capita with the GPI index (Genuine Progress Indicator) which takes these other lived experiences into account. Note that GPI more or less flat-lined over the period 1970-2016, while GDP grew rapidly. Data for Australia for that period shows much the same picture.
But it is not just income and wealth inequality that has voters resentful. Despite all the GDP growth, for many the cost of living is outstripping incomes, especially the cost of housing. Many are very frustrated, too, about the lack of real action on climate change while governments in the US, Australia and elsewhere permit more and more fossil fuel projects.
In the 1980s, the rise to political dominance of neo-classical economics, often referred to as neoliberalism or free-market economics, is well documented, as are the winners and losers. In backing this quiet reversal of the fortunes of the majority, promoting trickle-down economics and globalism as best for everyone (and especially for funders of political parties), former left-leaning political parties joined the parties of the right in accelerating many of the worst social and environmental aspects of the new ideology. In the UK, US and Europe, people have responded to harsher economic times by blaming whichever party is in power and lurching to the right, accepting its simplistic and contradictory explanations for voters’ grievances.
There is now a tangible disillusion with the system of representative democracy, as political parties repeatedly fail to respond to people’s primary concerns. In many countries, politicians demonstrate that what the public cares about comes a distant second to the interests of their party, its funders and their own careers. As a result the system of electoral representation we are familiar with is increasingly under question. These are dangerous times for democracy.
However, academic and experimental work in grassroots democracy carried out over the last 40 years has begun to bear fruit. Stanford academic James Fishkin was among the first to design and run trials of ‘deliberative democracy’ in the 1980s and ‘90s. In these, ordinary citizens were selected at random (often from the electoral roll) to come together, and with experts on hand to inform, were encouraged to deliberate and arrive at a consensus on particular issues of local, regional or national importance.
The principle underlying the approach is that, in general, well supported gatherings like these arrive at better considered judgements than political parties. A wider range of views is taken into account, and unlike in most parties, there is room for fresh opinions and a new consensus. Furthermore, most participants do not seek personal gain from the process, whether financial or political, and tend not to have a vested interest in the outcome. In addition, being only involved for a short time before returning to their normal life, they have no reason to be playing a political career game. Suddenly, a genuine concern for the public good can play a formative role in policy making.
Selecting citizens by lottery to make serious decisions is not new. The highly regarded jury system does exactly this, and makes very serious decisions indeed, including life imprisonment for fellow citizens, or even execution in some jurisdictions. Well managed selection by lottery (or ‘random selection’), followed by careful and well supported deliberation, has been shown repeatedly to lead to better decision making, with broader public support. In his book ‘The Wisdom of Crowds’, James Surowiecki explains how large groups of people achieve this, while decisions by an elite few, no matter how expert, are sometimes disastrous.
Known also as ‘sortition’, the idea of a citizenry drawing lots to see who would participate in making public policy, even if taking turns only briefly, famously derives from ancient Athens. As such it is as old as democracy itself. While elements of sortition survived longer in various forms in a few locations in Europe, it was only in the jury where it retained any real power.
People brought together via lottery to deliberate on an issue are now known as ‘citizen assemblies’, or CAs. While many have been convened over the last 40 years, especially in Europe, a few examples stand out. The best known has been their use in Ireland to deal with the politically difficult subjects of gay marriage and abortion. In both cases the assemblies recommended a policy that was put to national referenda and passed. Many other topics have since been addressed in Europe and the UK, including climate change, the biodiversity crisis, social services, euthanasia and many more. The OECD has identified 733 assemblies convened from 1979 to 2023 [3]. At present their rate of use is accelerating rapidly, in eastern Europe as well. Several permanent chambers have now been established, with citizens randomly selected and rotated through on terms of 18 months or less.
One of the most interesting developments in this area in recent years has been the convening of international citizen assemblies online. In 2021 a global CA of 100 people deliberated on the question, ‘How can humanity address the climate and ecological crisis in a fair and effective way?’. Using standardised techniques for selecting participants, a 7-point declaration was developed and presented to COP26 in Paris in late 20213. Other international CAs in the last five years have been on such diverse topics as The Future of the EU, Sustainable Consumption (Europe), the Future of the Internet, Genome Editing, Climate and Energy, The Future of the Inuit Language, and the Rights of Indigenous People to Food Security and Food Sovereignty [4].
At this time, the prospects for recommendations from the international CAs being enacted by national or province-based legislatures seem limited. Even in the cases of the most advanced manifestations, such as the permanent sortition-based chamber of Ostbelgian province in Belgium, and that for the City of Paris, their powers are limited to recommending policy change. Nevertheless, the uptake by local and national governments, and now by NGOs in the international arena, has been accelerating in recent years. The next significant step will be when an elected government cedes a modicum of power to a well-managed form of deliberative democracy, such as a CA, even if just on a trial basis.
Many citizens are clearly fed up with our political parties, seeing little difference of substance between them. And many citizens also despair at the inability and unwillingness of their elected governments to effectively address climate change, or take real action on biodiversity collapse. For those voters, the spectacle of state capture by large vested interests through compliant, self-serving political parties unwilling to address blatant inequalities such as housing, has become too much.
For citizens lamenting the loss of an effective and socially progressive opposition in their democracies, and angered by the selfishness, ignorance and abuses of neoliberal ideology, citizen assemblies could be a revolution waiting in the wings.
1. https://inequality.org/facts/global-inequality/#global-wealth-inequality
2. https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10546/621477/bp-survival-of-the-richest-160123-en.pdf
3. A detailed explanation of the process can be found at https://participedia.net/case/8246
4. https://participedia.net/collection/8376
Peter G. Martin is co-chair of the group Citizen Assemblies for South Australia
Note: A national conference on citizen assemblies is being held in Adelaide on 14 June, 2025. Ex-SA premier Jay Weatherill, and leading commentator Nick Gruen will be amongst the presenters. To stay in touch as the program develops, email [email protected].
