What’s the bigger plan? And how do we make the outputs of any national-level assembly unignorable?

Held by Jon Alexander and Clare Farrell, facilitated by David Bent.

• You can watch the summary of the round-table here:

• You can listen as Jon and Clare set the problem definition, here:

• Or you can watch the full round-table here:

• And a final thank you to Josh Knowles‘ for his live illustration summaries:

Context

Lots of assemblies happen without a bigger plan or a follow-up strategy, and in the worlds of Professor Graham Smith, “this is a disaster”. There are relatively few examples of stuff actually happening as a result of a citizens’ assembly, even if the assembly is run with high integrity and rigour. For example, the French Citizens’ Convention of Climate was very rigorous and had a state mandate… but almost no recommendations came into place. 

So, what do we do after? How can we plan and create cultural events and moments that make the outputs of the assembly unignorable?  For example, the Irish assembly on abortion was conducted entirely in the public eye with huge media visibility, so when recommendations came out, there was huge public awareness. So when the terms of the referendum then also came out, politicians couldn’t not put the assembly recommendations into the referendum, word for word. 

So, before we create an assembly, we need to think carefully about what to do with the outputs. Is strengthening state mandates the wrong direction? With a strong state mandate, you’re creating an incentive to make the question smaller, because it makes the state want to control the uncertainty of the outcome. Second, focusing entirely on the state is putting power back into the hands of the state, and it is the opposite of what participatory democracy is about: power to people.

Instead, can it be a cultural strategy? Can it be about the relationship between a groundswell mass movement of local assemblies connected into a national-level assembly, or a back and forth between the two through the process? Does this become the basis for mobilisation? Or some other action? Could it link with further people’s assemblies? And how do we make sure that the wider public knows about the process and outputs – hence questions about communications and media strategy?