🌞 Summer Reading
A roundup from our recent paper launches, and things to look forward to from September!
We’ve been busy these past few months, launching four new papers and a podcast conversation with founding advisor Professor Hélène Landemore. Topics ranged from deliberative muscles and AI, to lessons learned working with cities and regions on permanent citizens’ assemblies - and whether that’s radical enough, to the importance of “civic love” for collective intelligence, and explorations of multilingualism in deliberation.
As we wind down for the summer holidays, we thought we’d share a little roundup of these publications in case you’d missed them; perhaps some of you will want to add these to your summer reading lists!
We’ll be back full steam ahead in early September… For those of you in or around London, please join us for in person drinks and a celebration of DemNext’s 4th birthday on 15th September in central London around 6pm. 🍻 RSVP here!
📚 Deliberative Muscles, Permanent Assemblies, Multilingualism & Civic Love
💪🤖 How can AI strengthen and not weaken people’s capacities to deliberate?
This is the central question explored in our new paper on Deliberative Muscles & AI by Claudia Chwalisz, Sammy McKinney, Jorim Theuns, and Eugene Yi.
The authors argue that AI, when designed with care, can play a powerful role in strengthening deliberation - but the very efficiencies that make AI attractive also risk undermining what deliberation is for in the first place. They offer a typology of seven muscles (self-reflection, reasoning, dialogue, vulnerability, collaboration, imagination, and facilitation). And they argue that the exercise of these seven muscles, sustained across many people and many processes over time, is what produces the civic societal capacity that resilient democratic systems require.
👉 Watch the launch event featuring Lisa Gutermuth (Mozilla Foundation), Maggie Hughes (Convoca), and Mauricio Mejia (former OECD, Democracy Advisor), moderated by Andrew Sorota.
🌇 How to establish citizens’ assemblies as permanent new democratic institutions - especially if you’ve never held one before?
We explore this question in a new paper that draws lessons from from our Cities Programme and our experience advising two cities and two regions across three continents — Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg, Vilnius, Lithuania, Kerewan, The Gambia, and Central Oregon, USA, offering eight lessons for building lasting democratic infrastructure.
👉 Watch the launch event featuring Tammy Baney (Central Oregon Intergovernmental Council), Satang Dumbuya (Assembly Facilitator, The Gambia), Alex Lehman (Deschutes Assembly Member), Beatričė Umbrasaitė (Advisor to the Chief Architect at Vilnius City Municipality), and Liz Thielen (Snakke & Co), moderated by Josh Burgess (DemocracyNext, COCAP).
💬 Do multilingual citizens’ assemblies work? (Yes!)
We published two reflection pieces that explore this question from different angles, drawing on observations of the EU citizens’ panel (by Hugh Pope) and our experience using technology in innovative ways in the Esch citizens’ assembly (by James MacDonald-Nelson and Hannah Terry).
👉 Watch the launch event featuring Hugh Pope (DemNext), James MacDonald-Nelson (DemNext), Liz Thielen (Snakke & Co), Constantin Schaefer (Ifok), and Jorim Theuns (Dembrane), moderated by Claudia Chwalisz (DemNext).
💓 “I think what I’ve concluded is that you will only get the epistemic benefits, all the collective intelligence, if you trigger the love part first.” Claudia interviewed Hélène Landemore about her new book, Politics Without Politicians, for our podcast, Another Democratic Future. They also talked about radical visions for the future of democracy, whether it’s a good idea to combine assemblies with referendums, the Connecticut Citizens’ Assembly, and the role of AI in supporting deliberation. Read the edited transcript or listen on Spotify.
👀 Read the post-event handouts
Inspired by New_Public, we recently began sharing post-event handouts with the key links, takeaways, and quotes from our online sessions.
You can find them on our LinkedIn page, or on the paper pages on our website:
⏰ What’s next
Next week, we have a team retreat before we take a break in August – time to reset, ready and energised for the autumn.
By way of a sneak peek: in September, we’ll be celebrating our four-year anniversary on the International Day of Democracy, and sharing updates on the assembly in Esch.
In October, we’ll be updating you on the more-than-human work we’re doing with the University of Sydney, and later in the year there will be a new piece about cultural assemblies - as well as many more exclusive interviews of course!
We look forward to continuing this journey toward a more just, joyful, and collaborative future, where everyone has meaningful power to shape their societies.
For now, please share our resources, spread the word, consider donating (your support means a lot to us, and we’re grateful to all our individual supporters! 🙏), and follow us on Substack, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Spotify.
Have a wonderful break!
The DemNext Team
