🌆 New Paper: From Projects to Permanence
Our latest paper on citizens’ assemblies as new democratic institutions in cities & regions is now live - join us for the launch event at 17:00 CEST today!
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 paper and webinar, we launch From Projects to Permanence: Citizens’ Assemblies as New Democratic Institutions in Cities and Regions, in which we reflect 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.
Establishing an ongoing citizens’ assembly while building supportive civic infrastructure requires a completely different mindset than implementing a one-off assembly. It needs to be approached like a marathon, not a sprint. Investing early in what comes after a first assembly is fundamental to building new democratic institutions. Doing so leads to catalytic ripple effects that impact how we fund, innovate, reimagine, and intentionally cultivate new forms of democratic infrastructure.
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?
Drawing on our learnings on the ground, we provide recommendations for different actors:
For cities considering first-time assemblies
A long-term goal to catalyse a thriving deliberative ecosystem is a lasting legacy that outlives a one-off citizens’ assembly process. Starting with the mindset that this is not a one-off process opens up space to learn, build skills, and invest in the infrastructure that makes an embedded model possible.
Build widespread support before you start and ensure it is a cross-partisan endeavour. The coalition of people who are engaged before the process kicks off should be broader than direct stakeholders, or the ones receiving the recommendations.
Practitioners supporting democratic innovation
Intentionally cultivate an ecosystem of people and organisations to support, advocate for, and deliver assemblies. Supporting democratic innovation means building capacity, networks, and creating the conditions necessary for scaling. A diverse coalition of supporters and advocates is crucial for the health of this ecosystem to sustain momentum beyond a first assembly.
Invest in in-person workshops and convenings. While technically everything could have been carried out online, we prioritised meeting in person.
Experiment with technology. While we don’t believe facilitators should be replaced by AI (see Chwalisz et al., 2026), there are tools like the ones we’ve mentioned above that genuinely helped the process.
For funders of deliberative democracy
Funders that are serious about scaling deliberative democratic innovations must dedicate more resources to capacity building and ecosystem development, not just one-off processes.
The democratic innovations the world needs will not emerge from isolated pilots; they will grow from sustained, systemic investment in the people and organisations committed to making them real. It’s time for ambitious philanthropists to step up and realise that they could be catalysing another democratic future.
🚨 ICYMI: Deliberative Muscles & AI
Last week, we hosted a webinar to launch Deliberative Muscles & AI, the latest paper by authors Claudia Chwalisz, Sammy McKinney, Jorim Theuns and Eugene Yi.
Over 100 people joined online from across the globe as we heard from our guest speakers Lisa Gutermuth (Mozilla Foundation), Mauricio Mejia (Advisor on democratic change), and Maggie Hughes (CEO and Co-founder, Convoca), moderated by Andrew Sorota (Office of Eric Schmidt).
We pulled together all the links and key takeaways in our post-event summary - which you can find on the paper page of our website here, and we hope you enjoy watching/re-watching the full discussion here.
On the radar
🌲 A new study from Loughborough University, UK, finds that people are more likely to trust climate assemblies when those most affected have a bigger say.
📚 Sarah Hubbard has pulled together a summer reading list for the Allen Lab (Harvard) - The Past, Present, and Future of Democracy.
💻 The Evens Foundation have published a newsletter looking at how tech should serve, not supplant democracy, citing our recent paper, Deliberative Muscles & AI.
🇺🇦 “Democracy doesn’t pause for air raids”. FIDE Europe have written about their work in Ukraine this year, supporting three citizens’ assemblies.