The promise of citizens’ assemblies: Good governance or revolutionary confrontation with the carbon state?

Graham Smith, Professor of Politics, Centre for the Study of Democracy, University of Westminster and Chair of the Knowledge Network on Climate Assemblies (KNOCA). 

The Convention Citoyenne pour le Climat began its work five years ago. Its democratic contribution and impact on climate governance continue to be subject to intense debate. It remains one of the most high-profile examples of the more than 800 citizens’ assemblies and other sortition-based deliberative processes that have taken place worldwide at different levels of governance and across a range of issues. 

One extraordinary characteristic of citizens’ assemblies is the way that they have attracted the interest of very different advocates. 

At one end of the spectrum are official government agencies such as the Organisation for Economic and Development Co-operation (OECD) which has publicised the “deliberative wave” of representative deliberative institutions, generating guidance and evaluation documents for governments and practitioners. The OECD highlights the potential for assemblies to contribute to good governance, build trust and counter populism and polarisation. 

At the other end of the spectrum are activist movements that centre citizens’ assemblies within their demands and strategies. Roger Hallam, the founder of (amongst others) Extinction Rebellion, Just Stop Oil and Humanity Project, goes as far as to claim that citizens’ assemblies represent “a revolutionary confrontation with the carbon state”. 

The OECD and Roger Hallam make for very strange bedfellows. What is it about citizens’ assemblies that attracts their interest? Are they seeing the same thing? 

The lecture will consider the recent trajectory of citizens’ assemblies, particularly the way that they have been commissioned in response to the climate and ecological crisis. It will ask how and why they have attracted such diverse proponents and what this tells us about possible (and impossible) democratic futures. 

As preparation, people are encouraged to read the last chapter of Graham Smith’s We Need To Talk About Climate.