“Co-construction” in deliberative democracy: lessons from the French Citizens’ Convention for Climate

Abstract

Launched in 2019, the French Citizens’ Convention for Climate (CCC) tasked 150 randomly chosen citizens with proposing fair and effective measures to fight climate change. This was to be fulfilled through an “innovative co-construction procedure”, involving some unspecified external input alongside that from the citizens. Did inputs from the steering bodies undermine the citizens’ accountability for the output? Did co-construction help the output resonate with the general public, as is expected from a citizens’ assembly? To answer these questions, we build on our unique experience in observing the CCC proceedings and documenting them with qualitative and quantitative data. We find that the steering bodies’ input, albeit significant, did not impair the citizens’ agency, creativity, and freedom of choice. While succeeding in creating consensus among the citizens who were involved, this co-constructive approach, however, failed to generate significant support among the broader public. These results call for a strengthening of the commitment structure that determines how follow-up on the proposals from a citizens’ assembly should be conducted.

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“…When a study could be grouped into more than one category, we determined the best fit. Although most of the DMPs focused primarily on food and agriculture-related topics, in certain instances, the food policy issues debated were part of broader discussion themes, such as combating climate change (Devaney et al, 2020;Giraudet et al, 2022;Schol, 2021). 7 In some studies, citizens met for the entire day; in others, the meetings lasted half a day.…”

“…The second category, agriculture and the environment, covers two DMPs, conducted in France (Giraudet et al, 2022) and Ireland (Devaney et al, 2020), both of which focused on mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. In the Irish DMP, attendees overwhelmingly approved a proposal to tax greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture.…”

Bridging Systems: Open Problems for Countering Destructive Divisiveness across Ranking, Recommenders, and Governance

“…The group is selected through sortition, providing a representative random sample (roughly analogous to the selection of jury candidates in the criminal justice system, though more similar in process to representative polling). Increasingly, such mini-publics are being used to make progress on contested political issues, including abortion in Ireland [26] and climate change in France [38]. There is an emerging profession of facilitators who are skilled at convening and coordinating such groups [29,19].…”

Democracy, Agony, and Rupture: A Critique of Climate Citizens’ Assemblies

“…17 Indeed, as the growing list of climate CAs indicates, there is a definite trend towards the use of CAs by national and local governments. 18 Empirical research has been undertaken on CAs in Canada (Warren and Pearse 2008; Pal 2012;Fournier et al 2011), Ireland (Carolan 2018), Australia (Carson 2007), France (Giraudet et al 2021), the UK (Flinders et al 2016;Wells et al 2021), and the Netherlands (Boogard and Binnema 2017). This body of research has produced mixed conclusions.…”