I understand the shock over Tennessee's botched execution of convicted murderer Christa Pike. But it never should have happened in the first place.

Citizens’ juries in Yorkshire and Humber found strong support for action on alcohol harm, including restrictions on marketing, stronger pricing policies, and protecting health policy from industry inf...

Brussels is turning to citizens’ assemblies to fix democracy. Do they work?

Citizens' assemblies are deliberative bodies intended to form a microcosm of the population. Organizers rely on quota-based stratification and must decide which attributes define resemblance to the pu...

According to 852 randomly selected citizens, structural change in the Saarland is also a matter of citizen participation.

Am 25. September begrüßt die Utopia-Buchhandlung in Paris Bertrand Séné und Beverley Toudic zu einer Diskussion über Bürgerräte. Bertrand Séné geht in seinem…

A year ago, I participated in the European Citizens Panel on Intergenerational Fairness. What I witnessed wasn't just dialogue. It was democracy in action, thoughtfully facilitated, resulting in propo...

97 randomly selected citizens show what the Rhenish mining region needs beyond billions in funding and major projects. The state government must now respond to their ten recommendations.

Intersektionalität (von englisch intersection „Schnittpunkt, Schnittmenge“) beschreibt die Überschneidung und Gleichzeitigkeit verschiedener Formen von…

Democracy is often told as a European invention: Athens, parliaments, elections, parties. But if democracy is understood not only as voting, but as deliberating together, a different history emerges.

Slogans won’t slow the rapid development of dangerously powerful AI. But a citizens’ assembly representative of humanity’s diversity and independent of frontier labs and national governments could.

Im ersten Kölner Bürgerrat “Mobil im lebenswerten Quartier” kamen 55 zufällig ausgewählte Kölner und Kölnerinnen über mehrere Monate zusammen, um…

Wie erreiche und begeistere ich Menschen für Demokratie, für Mitbestimmung, für die eigene Sache? Die „Wie-Erreiche-Ich-Menschen-Frage“ kennen vermutlich viele…

Democracy is facing a paradox. Around the world, citizens continue to support democratic ideals while simultaneously losing faith in democratic institutions. According to a 2024 Pew Research Center su...

Fixing complex problems usually involves difficult, unpalatable decisions. One solution: randomly select a group of ordinary people to debate the pros and cons and find a way forward.

Seit 18. September 2026 berät ein zufällig gelostes Bürgerforum über Maßnahmen zur Stärkung der Demokratie in der Europäischen Union (EU). Bis Ende des Jahres können Interessierte ihre Fragen und Idee...

Südafrikas erster Klima-Bürgerrat sucht nach Wegen zu einem gerechteren Verkehrssystem – und stößt dabei auf die bis heute sichtbaren Folgen der Apartheid.

“Oh, if I could only pray”, Luther once said of his dog Tölpel, “the way this dog watches the meat”. Attending to attentive canine figures in half a dozen paintings by Paolo Veronese, Thomas W. Laqueu...

Why SOTEU is silent on why the EU is not advancing

Elf Vorschläge wurden erarbeitet und vorgestellt. Vor allem geht es um neue Begegnungsorte und den Umgang mit Leerstand.

Does citizen deliberation inside representative institutions enhance legitimacy among non-participating publics?

Now Available! The second edition of Democracy Beyond Elections: A Handbook on Citizens’ Assemblies is now available to download for free. Around the world, Citizens’ Assemblies are demonstrating what...

Nicht die Zustimmung für die Demokratie schwindet, sondern das Vertrauen in die Parteien. Ein Systemwechsel könnte das Problem lösen.

A Quarter Century after 9/11

In this narrative account, I reflect on my role as the chair of Ireland’s Citizens’ Assembly on Biodiversity Loss. This role is unique within the assembly model since it spans both the operation and d...

Anti-Communist domestic terror, transnational repression, and collaboration with Fascists

The 2026 Democracy Monitor shows that most people in Germany want to retain representative democracy – but they also want to be meaningfully involved between elections. The Belgian historian David Van...