Citizens Assembly Project
Note: this project will be relaunched as the "Democracy Checks & Balances Project" by Fall 2010.
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News Digest:
Recent Publication: |
The most prominent calls for a citizens assembly in the U.S. are currently coming from political leaders in California, who are calling for a state constitutional convention made up of randomly selected citizens to reform California's broken government. The most prominent political leaders to support citizens assemblies have come out of Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. iSolon.org does not necessarily support any of these initiatives, but it does seek to track them and analyze the strengths and weaknesses of their proposed features from the standpoints of democratic theory and real world practicality.
iSolon.org also views citizens assemblies as part of a much larger set of innovations it calls "electoral reform juries." A citizens assembly from this perspective is characterized as an intermediate cost electoral reform jury. iSolon.org's proposed ad hoc "redistricting jury" is characterized as a type of low cost electoral reform jury, and its proposed standing "solonic jury" a high cost electoral reform jury. For an overview of iSolon.org's conceptual framework, see If Men Were Angels....: Should the Checks & Balances System Include Electoral Reform Juries?, a working paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, September 5, 2009. iSolon.org's redistricting jury proposal was featured at a May 4, 2009 conference co-sponsored by iSolon.org and the Hudson Institute.
Much
of the current interest in citizens assembly based democratic reform is
driven by the observation that incumbent lawmakers have an inherent
conflict of interest in passing electoral reforms that have a
direct bearing on their re-election prospects. The citizens
assembly, which is democratically representative of the general
population but is chosen by lot rather than election, holds the promise
of avoiding this type of conflict of interest
iSolon.org's Citizens Assembly Project analyzes democratic reform areas where elected officials have such a conflict of interest and suggests when and how a citizens assembly can help address the conflict of interest problem. Its particular area of substantive interest and expertise involves legislative information systems.
iSolon.org's Citizens Assembly Project reports on citizens assembly developments throughout the world. Those who want news of citizens assembly developments should subscribe to the free Citizens Assembly News Digest, which is emailed to democratic reform activists and scholars in more than a dozen countries. Depending on the amount of news to report, this Digest is generally sent out several times a year.
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Praise for iSolon.org's Citizens Assembly Work: "This is the best source for up to date information and commentary about one of the most important institutional innovations in modern democracy." --Dennis Thompson, Professor, Department of Government, Harvard University
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iSolon.org knows there are many other efforts, including deliberative opinion
polls and citizen juries (as well as conventional judicial juries), to
use randomly selected bodies of citizens for democratic purposes.
But it reserves the terms citizens assembly and electoral reform jury to randomly selected bodies
with official government powers and with a jurisdiction limited to
democratic reform; that is, to areas where elected officials have a
direct conflict of interest.
Articles by J.H. Snider
Maryland's Ballot Surprise, Baltimore Sun, January 8, 2010.
If Men Were Angels....: Should the Checks & Balances System Include
Electoral Reform Juries?
(working paper presented at the Representation and Electoral Systems
Division's theme panel, Citizens' Assemblies and Deliberative
Democracy, at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science
Association, Toronto, Canada, September 5, 2009).
The Case for Redistricting Juries: Lessons from British Columbia’s
Revolutionary Experiment in Democratic Reform
(working paper presented at a conference
cosponsored by the Hudson Institute and iSolon.org on May 4, 2009; the
APSA working paper above provides a more up-to-date and rigorous
treatment of the same subject).
Using Citizens Assemblies to Reform the Process of Democratic Reform
(working paper published by the Harvard Kennedy School's Shorenstein
Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, July 14, 2008)
Canada Steps
on the World Stage as a Democratic Reformer
(concluding
remarks at the Harvard University Canada Program's conference on
democratic deficits and citizens assemblies, May 8-10, 2008,
published in the Journal of Public Deliberation, May 2008)
Designing Deliberative Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 2008)
(review of the first major book to be written about citizens assemblies,
published in the Journal of Public Deliberation, May 2008)
Citizens Assembly Policy Brief
(May 2007)
Citizens Assembly Policy Paper
(published in the National Civic Review, January 2006)
Citizens Assembly Fact Sheet
(British
Columbia, Netherlands, Ontario)
Original Citizens Assembly Blog
(replaced by this website and the
Citizens Assembly News Digest in January 2008)
iSolon.org Resources
(To click on a link below, click and hold down the mouse button. The link will move right. Watch where it goes, then point to it and release the mouse button. Sorry about this inconvenience.)
Citizens Assembly News Digest
(in recent years, the Citizens' Assembly News Digest has come out about twice a year).
Citizens Assembly Facebook Group
(provides a chronological listing of citizens' assembly events)
External Resources
(See the Citizens Assembly News Digest for more recent information)
Government Reports & Legislation
