It’s not rocket science
Really! You just follow these five simple steps...
1. Select a broadly representative bunch of people by lottery.
Okay, when we said "simple" what we meant was that the steps are simple to understand, because recruiting a broadly representative group of people by lottery is not so easy – in fact it's what we specialise in doing. Here's how it's done.
Step 1: Invite a bunch of people, selected by lottery from all across the relevant community, to express interest in joining the citizens' assembly
In the UK, Australia and the USA this is typically done by sending letters to households or people selected by lottery from a relevant address database. This could be the national postal service address database, an electoral register, or some other database - the important point is that ideally everyone should have an equal chance of receiving an invitation. In some countries (in mainland Europe, for example) this selection can be done from the government register of residents, or sometimes random phone dialling is used, or people are sent to door-knock on households selected by lottery.
Step 2: From those that respond, select a representative sample by lottery
To perform this second lottery we have developed, with the help of academics from Harvard and Carnegie Melon Universities, some open-source software the uses the "fairest possible" algorithm to select a bunch of people that is a microcosm of the community in terms of age, gender, location, a socio-economic proxy (such as highest education level or occupation) and, if relevant, some attitudinal data (to make sure a climate assembly is not only people who care deeply about climate change, for example).
2. Bring them together in an assembly, typically at small tables or groups, and let everyone have their say.
This is typically achieved by bringing people face-to-face and sitting them in small groups at tables, with a trained, professional facilitator at each table, like this:
The meetings can happen online, or a mix of face-to-face and online. In any case, the entire group is typically split regularly into break-out groups with a facilitator, so everyone gets to have their say, and then comes back together to make collective decisions.
3. Have those most knowledgable about, or affected by, the issue address the assembly, bringing in diverse viewpoints and proposals.
An important aspect of any citizens' assembly is making sure assembly members have access to high quality and diverse information from a range of experts and other stakeholders. This is not easy, but it is possible. See What is a citizens' assembly? for more information about this process.
4. Get the participants to discuss, listen and talk to each other – and give reasons for their opinions.
Process, process, process. We cannot over-emphasise the importance of the design of the deliberative process. Because of course it is not good enough to simply selected a broadly representative bunch of people by lottery and throw them in a room together and say "decide". So, typically, professional community engagement facilitators are used to design and run an assembly that alternates between plenary and small group discussions, between learning, enquiring, developing informed opinions, and finally making decisions.
This is often not a linear process but a more circular one, where participants learn and deliberate and make some decisions (such as prioritising options or people they want to hear more from) before going into more cycles of learn >> deliberate >> decide.
5. Decide! On what is the best way forward.
Ultimately citizens' assemblies are about making political recommendations and decisions, so when the assembly finishes decisions must be made. Often the participants themselves will come up with the final list of questions to be voted on – and this list of questions should be made by consensus. Everyone should agree that the questions are the important things to decide upon. The answers themselves are a different matter. It may be that the answer is a simple "yes" or "no" to each question, but more often than not a more nuanced approach can be taken, with participants grading their enthusiasm for differing options (e.g. rating them on a scale from "strongly agree" to "strongly disagree"), which gives more information about strong minority opposition (and the level and strength of support) for the various options.
However, as important as the final decisions and recommendations are, almost more important are the reasons for those recommendations. This is what sets a citizens' assembly apart from, for example, referenda. It is another reason why people trust citizens' assemblies – you not only find out what is decided, but why that decision was made.
Want even more? Then read the guides...
Here is a selection of guides, with differing levels of detail and different target audiences:
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