Norway's citizens want to share their fortune with future generations and the world
In this week's DemNext Deep Dive, Hugh Pope, DemocracyNext International Advisory Council Member, speaks with members and organisers of Norway's Future Assembly on the Oil Fund
Each of Norway's 5.5 million inhabitants has a theoretical $300,000+ stake in the country's $1.8 trillion Oil Fund. But what would they actually like to do with it? Who should decide that? And how?
Norwegians have struggled for decades over whether the world's largest investment fund is their private nest egg or a golden opportunity to exercise their global conscience on matters like climate change, sustainable economic policies or development aid. To strike the balance, a coalition of seven Norwegian non-profits this year organised the most representative forum yet: a randomly selected citizens' assembly.
The 56 members of the Framtidspanelet, or Future Assembly, met from January to April 2025. The organisers asked them to learn and deliberate about the future use of their huge Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG), usually called the Oil Fund. Norway set up the Oil Fund in the 1990s to absorb state oil and gas profits, invest them abroad, and shield the domestic economy from ups and downs. The government can spend the Oil Fund's investment income, set at a limit of 3% of the fund's value. This usually amounts to 20% of the government budget.
The idea was that the assembly's recommendations might spark a national conversation on the topic, particularly ahead of Norway's next general elections in September 2025.
A common-sense path
After weighing all the information presented to them – including the Oil Fund's legal duties to manage Norway's surplus hydrocarbon revenues, ensure financial stability, and benefit future generations – the Future Assembly did more than look at spending. The citizens mapped out common-sense, long-term ideas for Norway that balanced domestic needs and global responsibilities.
The citizens grouped their 19 recommendations into five main themes that gave decision-makers a clear and holistic view of what a fully informed nation likely thinks the priorities should be:
🧭 Draw up new spending and ethical guidelines for the Oil Fund, notably to strengthen its ability to respond to crises
🧑🏾🤝🧑🏻 Upgrade Norway's democracy with better civic education and more citizens' assemblies
😷 Shoulder global work on public health, medical research, and the climate crisis
☀️ Back reduced consumption and develop sustainable energy projects, even if investment risks are higher and returns are lower
🏫 Support Norway's domestic need for more education, defence, research, and innovation.
“Norway's oil money should not just be the world's biggest piggy bank," 31-year-old Assembly member Jonas Krogh told DemNext, speaking from his home in the southeastern city of Fredrikstad. "It should help make the world a better place."
More citizens’ assemblies
Remarkably, 89% of assembly members backed recommendation #5 that "citizens’ assemblies should be used more and, if they prove effective, become a permanent part of the parliament's permanent decision-making processes." The members asked politicians to commit to listen to and assess the recommendations from citizens' assemblies so that more people have a "concrete and direct" participation in politics, more diverse voices could be heard and more social groups could give input for decisions.
The assembly also called for an independent Commissioner for Future Generations, more civic education in schools, and more direct tools "to vote on major matters of principle", alongside strengthened "education about politics and the democratic process."
"Taking part in this process has taught me that it helps to talk with people who think differently from me — and that we can find common ground. Personally, I’m surprised by how my views have changed on topics I never thought I’d reconsider,” Bjørnar Hansen, a 63-year-old from the central Norwegian town of Brønnøy, was quoted as saying in the final report.
Hansen was not alone. All citizens signed the report's introduction to say that, "many of us have experienced this as one of the most meaningful things we have been part of … this has been democracy in practice. A reminder that we are not just citizens – we are also co-creators of the future."
As Jonas Krogh put it to DemNext:
"A lot of people may have felt it was anti-climatic that we did not recommend specifics like new roads or free lunches in schools. Most of us, when we started the assembly, also thought we'd be very exact about how we'd spend our Oil Fund money. As time went on, these thoughts got pushed away. We realised that in the grand scheme of things what an individual is so passionate about is not so relevant. We are not experts and we can leave these details to others. We all met around the fact that we want the money for our future generations. What we care about is other people than ourselves."
Non-profits in the lead
The Future Assembly was only the second national citizens' assembly in Norway, and the first to be privately organised. The convening coalition consisted of seven Norwegian non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that began discussing the idea in mid-2024. These were: Caritas Norway; Future in Our Hands; Norwegian Church Aid; Langsikt; The Norwegian Children and Youth Council; Redd Barna; and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF)'s World Nature Fund.
The €430,000 cost of the assembly was met by a diverse group of funders, including the European Climate Foundation, Save the Children, WWF, KR Foundation, Sunrise Project, Ulltveit-Moe, Stiftelsen Værekraft, and Norwegian Church Aid.
The assembly was organised and facilitated by a secretariat combining Norway's SoCentral and Denmark's We Do Democracy, both leading Nordic non-profits facilitating democratic innovation and citizens' assemblies.
The government had no role in convening the assembly and made no promises to act on its proposals, a potential weakness. But the seven NGOs vowed from the start to respond to the assembly's recommendations within one month, publish them unedited on their websites, organise public and parliamentary events, help media dissemination, and track impact.
"Many of the NGOs just didn't know what the general public thought about how we manage our wealth given the challenges we face, even though they were lobbying the government. So they were curious to find out. They were very aware that they could end up with a recommendation that might be against them," DemNext was told by SoCentral's Cathrine Skar. "Nobody has accused us of planting recommendations. Organisers could only make a short presentation at the beginning. And in the end, many of the recommendations did not reflect the NGO's positions."
A positive response rate
The first round of random selection reached out to 40,000 Norwegians, of whom 3,785 responded and registered their interest to join. This positive response rate of 9.5% is double the normal rate for today's citizens' assemblies. Such success was probably thanks to organisers reaching half of those selected through the government's secure digital postal system. The other half got a text message on their phones, a medium more often used by young people.
A second random selection (called stratification, to ensure broad representativeness) chose an initial 66 members from the pool of 3,785, in a way that would reflect the country's demographic diversity, including gender, age, education, geographic location, and political orientation. For instance, three-quarters of those who initially responded had higher education experience, but stratification brought this share down to the national norm of just over one-third, as shown below.
The organisers then put a series of questions to these representatives: "How can we use our wealth for the benefit of the world, ourselves, and future generations? What values and considerations should guide our choices? Which global problems does Norway have a particular responsibility to help solve? How should the Oil Fund be used—now and in the future?"
To consider this, the members held six digital and two in-person meetings between January and April 2025, followed by presentations to parliament in May and June. There will also be a digital follow-up meeting in August. During the main sessions, members engaged with 15 experts chosen by a non-partisan six-person Expert Group, which also supervised thorough briefing papers. Citizens deliberated in small groups, facilitated by the secretariat.
"We used a system of floating facilitators. Members themselves made sure the process they'd agreed to was followed, like making sure everyone had a chance to speak," Cathrine Skar said. "It seems we Norwegians are good at following rules."
The Future Assembly was overseen both by an 11-person Stakeholder Panel to ensure fair play and also by an international, six-person Deliberative Advisory Board to observe adherence to the OECD's Good Practice Principles for citizens' assemblies. Both endorsed the process. The Advisory Board said, "We have been consistently impressed by the care and professionalism with which the citizens’ assembly… was organised. The commitment to transparency, inclusion, and quality deliberation has been evident at every stage."
The 19 formal recommendations were the ones that received more than 75% support from members. Another six recommendations with 50% to 75% support were noted in the report, along with two minority views signed by three members. None of these contested the main 19 proposals.
After the first online session, 10 of the 66 members dropped out, most due to issues with work or health. None left after the second session, which was in person, so 56 citizens went through the whole process and voted. "Ideally, we'd have had more in-person sessions, including the first one. But our budget only stretched that far," Cathrine Skar said.
Starting a national conversation
A truly national conversation may take time to develop. Norwegian national media covered news of the assembly and, to a lesser extent, the outcome. At least seven local media outlets have published interviews with local members. International media followed a similar pattern, principally in specialist investment journals, and news agencies like Reuters and Bloomberg.
The government has not responded directly. But after the Future Assembly presented its findings to members of the Norwegian parliament on May 13, 33-year-old Climate and Environment Minister Andreas Bjelland Eriksen told national NRK television news that he found the citizens' assembly "exciting… I think we need more of that. It facilitates a better conversation about how we want to develop our democracy and our community. It gives us new thoughts."
Previous experience shows that it will take time to judge the full impact of the Future Assembly, according to Cathrine Skar of SoCentral. "As with most assemblies, interest wanes after the opening," she said. "Members are now talking about it a lot in their networks of families, friends, and co-workers. And we will keep it on the agenda as the elections approach."
For instance, she said, in August the organising coalition would be promoting the assembly's work at Norway's annual political festival, the Arendalsuka, where political, intellectual, business, and media elites meet for public debates. Already, one local candidate in the September election has thrown herself behind the 56 members.
"The citizens ask, "Should we be the world's best savings bank – or the world's most important change agent?", wrote Gerd Samuelsen in the Hamar Arbeiderblad, a magazine in the small central Norwegian town where she will stand for the tiny Centre Party. "The Future Panel has done its part. Now it is our turn – we who are running for office. We cannot say that we are listening to the people, and then ignore it when the people are actually speaking."
Norwegian power structures
Institutional buy-in may be greater than can be seen on the surface. Former Finance Minister Kristin Halvorsen praised the initiative for bringing in ideas from citizens who are not typically involved in political debates. The founding CEO of the Oil Fund, Knut Kjær, was a notable supporter of the Future Assembly, which was addressed by him and current Oil Fund managers.
"I was disappointed by the media reaction, and it's quite hard to translate the report into the political party programmes… but I believe the power structures in Norway will listen to the assembly," Kjaer told DemNext. "NGOs have strong opinions. We know what their recommendations will be by knowing who raises them. But here it's not NGOs, it's not political parties. It's a collection of normal individuals sitting together. Over time they built very good knowledge. I was impressed."
Kjaer said he saw citizens' assemblies as an innovative tool for renewing democracy against the global advance of authoritarianism. For him, one of the greatest successes of the Future Assembly was in reaching a respected, meaningful outcome that could pave the way for stronger citizens' assemblies in future.
"In the end, for the Oil Fund, the Future Assembly's recommendations will be one of many inputs. But I didn't look at this citizens' assembly as being just about the Fund," he said. "I saw it as an assembly on the values and principles that should be important for building a Norway of the future. You cannot discuss the Fund without having the whole long-term political and economic and global perspective in mind."
The non-corruption that makes Norway rich
In the investment world, the Oil Fund that Kjaer started is now considered the biggest, and one of the most successful, of 100 such sovereign wealth funds around the world. The pillars of its success are a strict mandate avoiding government interference in decision-making and a low limit on possible government withdrawals.
"We are not rich because of the Fund," Kjaer said. "We are only rich as long as we are running a non-corrupt, efficient government and economy."
Time will tell how many of the Future Assembly's recommendations find their way into the Oil Fund's mandate. Even without major government action, elements could find their way into its climate strategy update later this year.
Whatever the politicians and Oil Fund managers decide, many involved felt deeply impacted by the novelty of the open discussion.
"From the first meeting as strangers, you have transformed into a kind of democratic collective, full of warmth, disagreements, laughter, reflection, and genuine collaboration. It has been beautiful to witness," Thomas Berman of SoCentral, who led the organising secretariat, told members of the citizens' assembly in a farewell statement. "You’ve spoken from the heart, listened with curiosity and patience, and worked hard to address a question that many politicians hesitate to tackle. Maybe that changes now."
🐝 Upcoming events
17 June, online
DemNext paper launch: Five dimensions of scaling democratic deliberation: With and beyond AI. Join co-authors Sammy McKinney and Claudia Chwalisz for the launch of their new DemNext paper.
June 18, Toronto, Canada
DemNext Cities Programme Lead James Macdonald-Nelson will be part of a panel “Assembling change: How cities and citizens are reshaping public discourse together” at the School of Cities, University of Toronto.
18-20 June, Sydney, Australia
DemNext Chief Strategy & Creative Officer, Lucy Reid, will be joining the Multispecies Justice Symposium at the University of Sydney. Includes a public event Reimagining Democracy: How Diverse Knowledges are Creating More-than-Human Justice.
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