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...

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...

EU-CIEMBLY releases a groundbreaking policy brief urging the EU to embed intersectionality into citizens’ assemblies, ensuring...

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...

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

How should tourism in Copenhagen develop? A Citizens’ Jury comprising 36 residents addressed this question.

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

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.

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.

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.

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...

YouTube video by Michael Button | Patterns of History

On 25 September, the Utopia bookshop in Paris will welcome Bertrand Séné and Beverley Toudic for a discussion on citizens’ assemblies. Bertrand Séné posits in…

“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...

Since September 18, 2026, a randomly selected Citizens’ Panel has been deliberating on measures to strengthen democracy in the European Union (EU). Until the end of the year, anyone interested can sub...

South Africa’s first climate citizens’ assembly is looking for ways to create a fairer transport system – and confronting the enduring legacy of apartheid along the way.

Across Europe, polarisation is hardening public debate, civic space is...

With COP31 a few months away, new research has found the most trusted decisions about how to fight global warming are made by the people affected most by those environmental issues.

One citizen, a business owner, railed against encroaching socialism in a debate about taxes to subsidize cities.

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...

YouTube video by Michael Button | Patterns of History

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...

Saffron and ostrich liver were prescribed but so were exercise, gardens, animals, socialising, and music

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...

The long read: Every decade, the BBC’s continued existence must be secured through an elaborate multi-year negotiation with the government. But what does charter renewal actually involve – and will it...

On 11 September 2026, a Citizens’ Jury on climate adaptation begins in Pinneberg. What makes the process unusual is that some of their proposals could later be put to all eligible voters in a referend...

The long read: Scientists are battling over whether supposedly simple organisms should be considered ‘intelligent’. The outcome could reshape our understanding of the natural world – and our own place...

Just months before the 2027 presidential election, France is seeing the launch of three new nationwide citizens’ assemblies.

The ‘hugely important artefact’ that’s followed 14 children since they were seven is set to air its final instalment. The now-septuagenarians and director Asif Kapadia talk about breaking new ground f...

Why parties and elections can deepen social divides – and citizens’ assemblies can offer a different experience of democracy.

A Danish Citizens’ Assembly is calling for a fundamental transformation of pig farming. Now politicians must show how seriously they take their own promises of public participation.

Democracy’s present difficulties were predictable. History and older theories of democratic stability should have prepared us for both democratic backsliding and the vulnerability of Western democracy...

YouTube video by Michael Button

We are most human when we play freely, imaginatively, pointlessly. Gamification risks atrophying that most precious capacity

In the German city of Osterburg, all citizens were supposed to vote on recommendations from a Citizens' Jury regarding mobility and bicycle traffic. Now there isn't enough money to do so.

Thirty randomly selected residents came together in Flensburg in April and May 2026 to develop recommendations for the city council on transport policy. How does a citizens’ assembly work, and what is...

Should citizens' assemblies simply be encouraged in general, or should they be specifically enshrined in law? In Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, the political parties have differing views on this matte...

In Herzberg (Elster), citizens are not only asked for their views once the plans have already been drawn up. The small town in Brandenburg has permanently anchored citizens’ juries in its local regula...

The long read: Our buildings are monuments to extraction and extreme emissions. But what if we turned from destructive concrete to timber?

An updated view of categorization reflects the modern understanding that the nervous system is more of a prediction engine than a filing cabinet.

Six political parties want to strengthen or make more frequent use of citizens’ assemblies in Berlin. The city is already one of the pioneers of democracy by sortition in Germany.

How much tourism can an island that depends on tourism sustain? Sylt is seeking an answer to this question with the help of randomly selected residents.