Foreign policy by lot
How 154 randomly selected citizens debated Germany’s role in the world – what they recommended, what they learned, and why the experiment revealed more about the possibilities of democracy than about foreign policy.
An unusual assignment
It began with a draw. Not an election, not a party membership, not an application. In January 2021, people from across Germany found themselves sitting in front of their computers. Some had political experience, others hardly any. Some worked in offices, others in schools, skilled trades or the armed forces. One of them was 22-year-old tax clerk Tonja Buchholz. When she received the invitation, she initially thought it was spam. Then she accepted: “I’ll never get another chance like this.”
The assignment sounded enormous: What should Germany’s role in the world be?
The Citizens’ Assembly “Germany’s Role in the World” was a political experiment – and, at the same time, an experiment in politics itself. Around 160 citizens were asked to deliberate on German foreign policy and make recommendations to the Bundestag. The topic had been proposed by the Council of Elders of the German Bundestag. The assembly was organised by civil society, initiated by Mehr Demokratie and the initiative Es geht LOS, and implemented by the participation organisations IFOK, nexus and IPG.
„Make our parliamentary democracy fit for the future“
Bundestag President Wolfgang Schäuble agreed to serve as patron. He associated the project with a fundamental hope. “We have to make our parliamentary democracy fit for the future,” he said. The bond between citizens and their elected representatives had weakened; therefore, “we need to try new things to strengthen our model.”
This was more than an attractive side project of parliamentary democracy. It was a question of whether citizens who had not been elected to office could take political responsibility if they were given time, information and a fair procedure.
Mini-Germany on a screen
The random-selection procedure was intended to produce a cross-section of the population. First, municipalities were selected, then people were contacted through population registers. From several thousand invitees, the final group of participants was assembled. Originally, 169 people took part; 154 remained until the end.
The pandemic turned the political experiment into a technological one as well. The entire mini-public took place online. On 13 January 2021, the randomly selected participants met for the first time via video conference. Living rooms, children’s rooms and home offices became, for several weeks, Germany’s foreign-policy deliberation chamber.
Highly educated people were over-represented
The ambition was to create a “mini-Germany”. But it soon became clear how difficult it is to reproduce Germany in miniature. Only around ten per cent of the participants had completed lower secondary education, compared with roughly 30 per cent of the population as a whole. People with university entrance qualifications or university degrees were significantly overrepresented.
That was one of the experiment’s weaknesses – and one that also figured prominently in its subsequent academic evaluation. Schäuble himself acknowledged that, despite the random-selection procedure, the organisers had not succeeded in attracting enough people with lower levels of formal education.
However, this shortcoming was rectified in subsequent draws. In the 2023/24 Citizens’ Assembly on ‘Nutrition in Transition’, the participants were a statistically representative sample of the population according to all the specified criteria.
First listen, then argue
Before the citizens could formulate recommendations, they had to learn. Experts provided information on international politics, the European Union, trade, security, sustainability and democracy. Then the actual work began.
The Citizens’ Assembly was divided into five “travel groups”: Democracy and the Rule of Law, Peace and Security, Economy and Trade, Sustainable Development, and the European Union. Participants discussed, argued, rejected proposals and formulated new ones in smaller groups. Facilitators ensured that the same voices did not always dominate.
Hear arguments, ask questions, change minds
There were ten sessions and around 50 hours of deliberation in total. For someone who does not work in politics, that is a remarkable intensity. Participants did not have to react to a headline within minutes. They could hear arguments, ask questions and change their minds.
That was the central idea behind the process.
Nineteen-year-old Leon Busch expressed his hope simply: “I want our voices to be heard and then for something to actually happen.”
And then something happened that is less self-evident in political debate than it sounds: people began listening to one another.
„On many things, we quickly found agreement“
Leon later recalled that there were different opinions and heated discussions. “But on many things, we quickly found agreement.” Tonja Buchholz had a similar experience. She particularly valued learning to engage with other people's views.
Perhaps the least spectacular and at the same time most politically interesting result of the experiment was this: polarisation was not inevitable. Compromise was possible.
The question of Germany’s role
The participants initially approached the big question almost philosophically: What role should Germany play at all?
The answer they eventually agreed on was strikingly restrained. Germany should be a “fair partner and mediator”, working together with other states and, above all, with the EU. It should promote sustainability, climate protection, human rights, the rule of law, peace and security. At the same time, Germany should act transparently and with foresight, and live up to its own standards.
Taking responsibility and sharing it
This was not a manifesto for a great power. But neither was it a plea for withdrawal.
On the contrary: the citizens wanted Germany to take responsibility – but together with others and without placing itself above other countries.
The formulation echoed a political attitude that Germany has repeatedly sought since 1945: responsibility without dominance.
32 recommendations for world politics
The deliberations produced four overarching guiding principles and 32 concrete recommendations in the five thematic areas.
On the European Union, the Citizens’ Assembly called, among other things, for stronger EU capacity to act in foreign policy. In certain areas, decisions should be possible by qualified majority rather than unanimity. The citizens were thus even prepared to surrender some national foreign-policy decision-making power in exchange for greater European capacity to act.
On peace and security, the assembly emphasised prevention while also calling for a modern and properly equipped Bundeswehr. According to the participants, the German armed forces should place greater emphasis on peacekeeping and humanitarian tasks.
Germany imust act credibly
In sustainable development, they linked international responsibility with the demand that Germany itself must act credibly. Climate protection should not merely be a foreign-policy objective but part of Germany’s role as a model.
On economy and trade, the citizens did not focus solely on German prosperity. Their recommendations connected economic relations with sustainability, human rights and fair rules.
One theme ran through all five areas: Germany should not pursue its interests at the expense of others, but assume responsibility within a rules-based international order.
A woman in a green trouser suit
The Citizens’ Assembly found an unusual image for this idea: “Ms Germany”. An illustration depicted Germany as a woman in a green trouser suit – carrying binoculars and a magnifying glass, scales and a homework book. She was meant to be fair, act sustainably, help others and avoid appearing arrogant.
The image was humorous, but the underlying idea was serious. The citizens did not want a Germany that withdrew from the world. But neither did they want a Germany that saw itself as Europe’s and the world’s schoolmaster.
Marianne Birthler, a civil-rights activist and chair of the Citizens’ Assembly, opened the deliberations with Bertolt Brecht’s poem about Germany: “Neither above nor below / Other peoples do we wish to be.”
It is a remarkable formula for a republic whose history has made questions of power and responsibility particularly sensitive.
The moment of handover
On 19 March 2021, the experiment became a political document. Tonja Buchholz and Michael Korth presented the roughly 75-page Citizens’ Report to Wolfgang Schäuble in Berlin. It contained 32 recommendations. Representatives of all Bundestag parliamentary groups joined the event online.
But this was also the moment when the limits of the process became clear: A Citizens’ Assembly can deliberate. It cannot decide.
The parliament retains political responsibility. Wolfgang Schäuble emphasised precisely this point: Citizens’ Assemblies could provide important impulses and strengthen the relationship between citizens and politics. “But in the end, only the democratically legitimate parliament can decide.”
The relationship between sortition and elections was therefore clear: the Citizens’ Assembly was not supposed to replace parliament. It was supposed to give parliament a different view of society.
What politics made of It
The decisive question is therefore not whether the 154 citizens had designed a good foreign policy. The decisive question is: What did politicians do with it?
The answer is mixed.
Foreign Minister Heiko Maas invited around 15 participants to a meeting in April 2021. They presented their recommendations from the five thematic areas; the Foreign Office described the results as “exciting” and said they had received considerable attention within the ministry.
Further discussions followed with Bundestag parliamentary groups and committees, including the Committee on European Union Affairs, the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Environment Committee. Participants explained their proposals, while MPs in turn outlined political conflicts and practical constraints.
Alignment with coalition agreement
A later comparison with the coalition agreement between the Social Democrats, Greens and Free Democrats found numerous substantive overlaps. That does not prove that government policy was caused by the Citizens’ Assembly. Many of the proposals were already part of the political debate at the time.
The assembly therefore had influence – but no lever with which that influence could be measured precisely.
What the citizens themselves took away
Perhaps the Citizens’ Assembly is underestimated when its success is measured solely by the laws or policies that emerged from it.
Something else changed for the participants: their relationship with politics.
Tonja Buchholz expressed a principle that perhaps captures the logic of the Citizens’ Assembly better than any academic evaluation. “I don’t agree with everything, but if that is what the majority wants, then that is fine with me.”
That is democratic discomfort in its gentlest form.
Accepting majorities
One does not have to win for a result to appear legitimate. One does not have to persuade everyone else. It can be enough to accept, after deliberation, that the majority has reached a different conclusion.
Leon Busch, meanwhile, hoped that the recommendations would actually be implemented. Tonja was more sceptical: some proposals were feasible, while others were “too optimistic”.
Perhaps that scepticism was healthy.
An experiment with an open ending
The academic evaluation reached a broadly positive conclusion about the process. Citizens’ Assemblies at federal level could be a useful complement to parliament. At the same time, the mini-public demonstrated the limitations of random selection, particularly when it came to social composition.
The experiment therefore left behind a double message.
The first is this: people who would normally have little involvement in foreign-policy decisions can familiarise themselves with complex issues, discuss them with others and develop remarkably concrete recommendations.
A fair democracy requires more than a draw
The second is this: a fair democracy requires more than a draw.
It requires a sound selection procedure. Good information. Independent facilitation. Time for deliberation. Transparency about the choice of experts. And, above all, politicians who feel obliged to respond visibly to the results.
Because the real democratic value of a Citizens’ Assembly does not lie in the fact that 154 people are necessarily right. It lies in their ability to arrive at a shared judgement – and in society being able to see how that judgement was reached.
What remains of the experiment
“Germany’s Role in the World” was therefore less a foreign-policy master plan than a test of democratic division of labour.
Sortition brought together people who otherwise would probably never have met. Experts provided knowledge, facilitators structured the discussion, citizens assessed the arguments and formulated recommendations. Parliament subsequently received something that opinion polls cannot provide: not simply a snapshot of public attitudes, but a considered judgement reached through collective deliberation.
Whether Germany’s foreign policy changed as a result can only be established to a limited extent. The world itself changed dramatically. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 challenged many of the assumptions about peace, security and mediation that had informed the Citizens’ Assembly.
The Citizens’ Report remained interesting
Yet that is precisely why the Citizens’ Report has remained interesting.
It reveals a population that wants responsibility, but not grandstanding. That wants a stronger Europe without dissolving Germany. That wants peace while still accepting the need for capable armed forces. That regards climate protection and human rights not as side issues of foreign policy but as central elements of it. And that expects its own country to take its values seriously before lecturing others.
Creating a space for society
That sounds less spectacular than a foreign-policy programme. Perhaps, however, this is exactly what a Citizens’ Assembly can accomplish: not replacing the great political decision, but creating the space in which a society can discover what, after careful deliberation, it is actually prepared to carry together.
And so “Ms Germany” remains: binoculars, scales and homework book in hand. A little idealistic, a little self-critical, reasonably ambitious – and above all determined neither to stand above nor below other peoples.
Note: This article was written with the help of AI.