Democracy beyond elections: a handbook on citizens’ assemblies

Handbook by the United Nations Democracy Fund: This handbook is a ‘how-to’ guide for commissioning, designing, and operating citizens’ assemblies to achieve a more informed, substantive, and representative way to make trusted democratic decisions. While there are many ways to consult the community, the focus of this handbook is on deliberative approaches, of which the citizens’ assembly is the best-known model. Citizens’ assemblies combine civic lottery (also known as sortition or selection by lot) with deliberation to bring a diverse group of people across ages, genders, locations, and perspectives together in an environment where they learn, think, discuss, and work toward finding common ground to address a given problem.
An assembly aims to provide commissioning authorities with a set of recommendations that assembly members have agreed to, supported by their reasoning and evidence. This handbook walks you through each step of the journey: identifying when a deliberative approach is appropriate, designing the key features of a process, preparing and running the assembly itself, and understanding how to translate recommendations into action…(More)”.