Okay, so 100 representative citizens have just spent a whole bunch of weekends deep diving into a complex issue to arrive at a nuanced, realistic yet ambitious series of recommendations for policy and other changes. So now what?
Remember this person (or organisation)? It’s the job of the commissioner to ensure all this effort and goodwill turns into something tangible.
Without careful thought and alignment, politicians may feel they can easily bat away or ignore the recommendations of their citizens.
Ideally the commissioner has been collaborating with a government, a local council, or whatever other body to ensure recommendations turn into change.
Example!
Brussels has setup a permanent climate assembly, where the public authority must respond to all recommendations within a few months.
A small group of assembly citizens also forms an oversight committee to ensure recommendations are followed up on.
Example!
President Macron setup a French climate assembly with much fanfare with a promise to implement whatever the citizens came up with.
By some counts, 70% of recommendations have been implemented, but the most impactful ones have been ignored.
Example!
In Ireland, assemblies were run on two very fraught topics for the Catholic country: abortion rights and same sex marriage.
In both cases, roughly 60% of each assembly recommended legalising both. What followed were nationwide referendums – and the national vote mirrored the assembly vote exactly.
This all illustrates how much of a work in progress assemblies still are – and how crucial mass public awareness and advocacy for assemblies are to hold politicians to account to follow through on what their citizens are asking them to do.
But what about the CITIZENS themselves?
The vast majority of citizens come out of an assembly feeling energised and eager to keep that feeling going.
Assemblies have been described as a sort of anti-polarisation machine – people come out with more empathy for one another’s views and lives.
Some citizens train up as ambassadors or even facilitators for future assemblies. Those who’ve been through the process want to tell the world about it.
And very often, citizens form new friendship groups with others who went through the assembly.
Example!
In the Irish assembly on same sex marriage, one famous pair have become life long friends. Finbarr was a retired postmaster who had very strong homophobic tendencies. He started the assembly full of revulsion for a young gay man, Chris.
By the end of the eight weekends, they had become very best friends. Over that time, Finbarr had been able to unburden to Chris some terrible childhood experiences that Chris understood and helped him to work through.
Citizens’ Assemblies are a work in progress – but done right, they do work.
They re-energise and empower citizens around the world.
They fight against polarisation & hatred by putting people together.
They reach nuanced solutions that go farther than politics currently do.
They’re a truly representative voice of a population.
It’s time to make the world aware of them!