No-one can stand for election into a citizen’s assembly. No-one is voted into one. Assemblies are randomly chosen, but representative, groups of citizens. That process is called Sortition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When the Commons was in deadlock over Brexit negotiations, Labour MP Stella Creasey suggested setting up a citizens’ assembly to help break out of the impasse. This is part of why she proposed it:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Like a circuit-breaker, citizens\u2019 assemblies can disrupt the bad habits that have come to characterise Brexit: kicking issues into the long grass, placing party interests over the national interest and assuming the public are unable to cope with hard choices. <\/p>
They don\u2019t replace parliaments or offer politicians an escape from difficult decisions. Instead they reject binary choices \u2013 remain or leave, no deal or Norway \u2013 and allow randomly selected groups of citizens to explore options in an open forum and make recommendations about priorities to elected MPs, who retain the final say. <\/p>
In a deadlocked parliament, this could be the one approach that could retain the trust of us all that the answers were fair, thoughtful and not predetermined. If, for instance, a citizens\u2019 assembly recommended a referendum, it could also consider what the question should be, providing confidence that there was no attempt by politicians to game the system.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
So how do citizens’ assemblies work?<\/h4>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Brett Heddig set up the Sortition Foundation<\/a> to explore how we can do democracy differently. I took myself along to an event where he presented his ideas on Citizens’ Assemblies.. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
He reminded us of how the Greeks did democracy. Greek democracy was about drawing lots from among the citizenry. They even had a very neat bit of Bronze Age technology, the kleroterion<\/a>, to produce the random selection! And they used it to create representative group of citizens for introducing legislation, or reviewing proposed legislation, of juries. Those citizens selected then deliberated on whatever decisions were needed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Of course it was only a random pick of those considered to be eligible. Women weren’t eligible. Or slaves. Or foreigners. Of course, things have improved since then. A bit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here’s Brett Heddig’s explanation of how an assembly might work in today’s world:<\/p>\n\n\n\n