Standards for citizens' assemblies

A set of draft standards for citizens' assemblies, developed by Involve, organized into “essential” and “desirable” features of ten criteria.

A citizens’ assembly is a specific democratic tool to be used in specific circumstances. Their power comes from their robust process, which gives a representative group of the public time and support to engage with a topic in depth. But this process makes them time and resource-intensive compared to many other methods of engagement, so citizens’ assemblies should be reserved for the really knotty issues that require challenging trade-offs to be made.

Where these circumstances exist, a citizens’ assembly can make a substantial contribution to helping to resolve an issue — but it must be properly resourced and well run to enable it to succeed.

It's with this in mind that we developed some draft standards for the citizens’ assemblies that we design and run. These are based on our own practice, understanding of the international practice and a range of standards that have already been developed across the globe (including by us). They are intended as a starting point for discussion with other practitioners, experts and commissioners to refine them over the coming weeks and months. We hope that they might form the basis for some collectively agreed standards among practitioners and commissioners in the UK.

Source: Involve