How to run a citizens’ assembly

This guide covers each stage of organizing a citizens' assembly, drawing on case studies from the Innovation in Democracy Programme, which supported three local governments in the United Kingdom to run assemblies in their local area.

The resource is aimed primarily at local authority officers or councillors who want to run a citizens’ assembly in their local area (when this guide refers to ‘you’ throughout the report, this is the group the authors had in mind). But they also hope that it can be of use to others who are interested in deliberative democracy: process designers, facilitators, advocates, researchers or anyone else.

While some of the guidance is specific to local citizens’ assemblies, many of the suggestions apply to regional, national and even transnational deliberations.

Source: The Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA), United Kingdom
Language: English

Year of publication: 2020