Citizen Assemblies and Conventions are usually known for introducing the civic lottery and deliberation as key methodological pieces. But the aspects to be taken care of are numerous.
Setting the Stage: Feasibility, Mandate, Governance
- Political and budgetary viability: the added value of citizenship is to catalyze long-term agreements where conventional politics is blocked. The budget and political commitment must rise to this challenge.
- Agenda generation and definition of the task or mandate of the process: the task assigned to the citizenry should be achievable and focused on policy dilemmas with potential impact.
- Process design, governance and stakeholder activation: Before bidding, it is essential to have a consistent process design. It is also essential to have the support of a balanced diversity of political stakeholders and/or interest groups that transcends electoral cycles.
The Heart of the Process: Drawing, Informing, Deliberating
- Democratic lottery, incentives and inclusion: everyone should have an equal chance of being invited to participate. A well-designed lottery that also stratifies, correcting for major self-selection biases, to generate a descriptive sample, is essential.
- Management of the provision of information for citizen deliberation: the information provided to the participants has a great potential for influence. Therefore, it is very important that it is of high quality and presented in a balanced manner involving a deliberation content management group.
- Design of deliberative work sessions and facilitation: the methodological phases of citizen deliberation must be carefully designed so that the process produces quality and impactful recommendations. The design of the sessions and the role of the facilitators is key.
Assessing Impact: Evaluation and Accountability
- Evaluation, observation and transparency: the process must be auditable by a diversity of stakeholders, and transparent, so that anyone can follow it and understand how the final recommendations are arrived at.
- Study of the impact of citizen recommendations: analyzing and assessing the impact of a recommendation once it has been delivered to the government is essential to evaluate its effectiveness and relevance.
- Management of accountability by the administration: it is crucial to define the steps to be taken by the government, other parties and stakeholders to ensure the implementation of citizens’ recommendations.
Innovation in Deliberation: New Tools and Methods
- Multilingual deliberation: we have designed tools to work in more than 20 different languages in the European and global context.
- AI to inform deliberation: we have piloted the use of language modeling (AI) to facilitate responses to citizens and for clustering ideas.
- Communication and participation for the extension of deliberation: it is essential not only to promote the realization of the deliberative process, but also to ensure that the essential information from such deliberations is widely disseminated and permeates the public debate.