From Projects to Permanence: Citizens' Assemblies as New Democratic Institutions in Cities and Regions
Cities are messy, complex, diverse, beautiful places - and they are where most people live. From the neighbourhoods we live in, to how we move around, cities and regions are the places where decision making impacts us greatly.
At the same time, most people don't have opportunities to truly shape these decisions. Citizens' assemblies offer a way to tackle this - particularly when they are embedded as part of our democratic infrastructure.
In this DemocracyNext webinar, we launch From Projects to Permanence: Citizens' Assemblies as New Democratic Institutions in Cities and Regions, a paper reflecting on the lessons from DemocracyNext's Cities Programme - our experience advising two cities and two regions across three continents: Esch-sur-Alzette, Vilnius, Kerewan, and Central Oregon. It makes the case for approaching citizens' assemblies not as one-off events dependent on political will at a moment in time, but as new institutions to which power can be shifted. Doing so, we argue, requires a completely different mindset. It needs to be approached like a marathon, not a sprint.
The paper offers honest reflections on what went well, the challenges encountered, and what could have been done differently - spanning political groundwork, communications, evaluation, technology, multilingualism, and funding. Running through it all: what does it take to make a single assembly the beginning of something permanent?
What we'll explore
What approaching an assembly with the ambition to institutionalise from the start looks like in practice
Lessons from four diverse contexts across three continents
The role of ecosystems, capacity building, and network weaving in sustaining democratic infrastructure
Recommendations for public servants, elected officials, practitioners, and funders
Speakers
James MacDonald-Nelson, DemocracyNext
Hannah Terry, DemocracyNext
This event is for:
Public servants and elected city officials interested in implementing citizens' assemblies with the ambition to institutionalise
Advisors and senior administrators working on democratic innovation in cities and regions
Practitioners who want to approach citizens’ assemblies with a marathon mindset
Funders looking to invest in deliberative democracy beyond one-off processes
Researchers and students of local democracy, participatory governance, and democratic institution-building