Paris: How an experiment became a permanent citizens’ assembly
Paris is one of the most interesting European examples of the institutionalisation of citizens’ assemblies. The Assemblée citoyenne de Paris was established in 2021 not as a one-off citizens’ assembly on a single issue, but as a permanent institution of the City of Paris. One hundred randomly selected residents serve for a limited period and are granted specific rights in relation to the Conseil de Paris, the city council. Since its creation, the process has been modified several times – particularly with regard to the composition of the assembly, the length of its mandate and the way citizens’ recommendations are translated into political decisions.
It began with 9,000 proposals
The story goes back to 2019, when Paris conducted a large-scale consultation on the future of local democracy. More than 9,000 contributions were submitted. One of the ideas that emerged was to complement the participatory budget, neighbourhood councils and other forms of participation with a permanent randomly selected citizens’ assembly.
In October 2021, the Conseil de Paris formally established the Assemblée citoyenne. What made the initiative unusual was not simply that Paris was organising another citizens’ assembly, but its institutional permanence: once one group completed its mandate, another would be selected by lot. Paris thus created a permanent city-wide institution whose membership would regularly rotate.
The assembly was also given unusually extensive rights. It can put topical questions to the Conseil de Paris, submit formal proposals and recommendations known as vœux, and even prepare its own draft municipal resolution (proposition de délibération). This can be introduced into the Conseil de Paris through the member of the city executive responsible for citizen participation.
The first assembly served for an unusually long period
For the first assembly, 10,000 adult registered voters were initially selected at random from approximately 1.35 million people on the Paris electoral rolls and invited to participate. A group of 100 was subsequently assembled from those who expressed an interest.
This first assembly worked from November 2021 until March 2023 – considerably longer than one year. Among other subjects, it addressed reading and literacy, energy-efficient building renovation and the Paris street code. The city states that all four vœux and one draft resolution submitted by this first assembly were adopted by the Conseil de Paris.
However, this first cycle also functioned as a trial period. The process was subsequently refined considerably.
Who represents the population?
For the second assembly in 2023–24, Paris first changed its composition. The first assembly had essentially been recruited from the electoral rolls. This excluded two groups who live in Paris but are not represented on those lists: 16- and 17-year-olds and residents who are citizens of countries outside the European Union.
From the second assembly onwards, the 100 members therefore comprised:
- 80 people drawn from the Paris electoral rolls,
- 15 Paris residents who are non-EU citizens, and
- five young people aged 16 or 17.
The final selection also takes account of gender, age, educational attainment, arrondissement of residence and representation of disadvantaged neighbourhoods.
This was more than a technical alteration to the selection procedure. Paris moved from representing the electorate towards a broader representation of the resident population.
The same composition was retained for the third assembly. In July 2024, the random selection was again carried out under the supervision of a judicial officer.
From sixteen months to about one year
The length of the mandate was also shortened. The second assembly began in July 2023 and completed its work in July 2024. The third began in September 2024 and likewise worked for roughly a year. The extended first experimental cycle had thus evolved into a more regular annual rotation of the 100 members.
At the same time, the working process became more structured. The second assembly followed four stages: selecting topics and acquiring background knowledge; investigation and hearings; drafting recommendations; and finally working together to translate the results into formal proposals that could be submitted to the Conseil de Paris.
That final stage is particularly significant. Citizens do not simply hand over a report which is then left to the administration to interpret. Members of the assembly, city officials and the municipal executive work together to translate citizens’ recommendations into the legal and procedural form required by the City of Paris. The full assembly then approves the text before it proceeds through committees and ultimately to the Conseil de Paris.
Direct access to municipal decision-making
This development was particularly visible during the second assembly. One working group examined support for homeless people. After eight months of work, around 30 hearings and a series of site visits, the process resulted in a formal draft resolution.
According to the City of Paris, this was the first municipal resolution in France to have been directly developed by a citizens’ assembly.
Paris therefore differs from many citizens’ assemblies whose influence effectively ends when their citizens’ report is handed over. The Assemblée citoyenne has an institutional route from random selection through deliberation and recommendations to the formal municipal decision-making process.
This also explains why Paris is particularly important when examining the impact of permanent citizens’ assemblies. Institutionalisation here means not only regular repetition, but also institutionalised rights of political follow-up.
Deliberation on democracy itself
The third assembly went one step further. Its 100 members considered, among other issues, how the democratic participation and decision-making rights of Paris residents could be strengthened. The group worked over 15 half-day sessions and heard from 44 experts and representatives of different institutions.
The result was a draft resolution entitled “Nouveaux pouvoirs pour décider des Parisiennes et Parisiens” – approximately, New Powers for Parisians to Make Decisions. It contained 20 measures for developing democracy in Paris. The Conseil de Paris adopted the proposal in 2025.
This created an unusual feedback loop: the permanent citizens’ assembly helped redesign the democratic participation system of which it was itself a part.
Permanent mini-publics in the arrondissements
One of the third assembly’s most far-reaching proposals was to extend the model to the Paris arrondissements. It recommended creating permanent randomly selected citizens’ assemblies at arrondissement level as well.
In 2025, a joint working group consisting of members of the Assemblée citoyenne, arrondissement politicians, city officials and representatives of local participatory bodies developed a common framework. The Conseil de Paris subsequently established the basis on which interested arrondissements could create their own Assemblées citoyennes d’arrondissement.
The framework draws on experience with the city-wide model while developing it further in some respects. Provisions include random selection, regular renewal of membership, rights to place matters on the political agenda, a right to follow up what happens to proposals, training, administrative support and remuneration modelled on that received by French jurors. Childcare may also be provided.
In the 11th arrondissement, for example, a corresponding charter had already been adopted in May 2025. The debate there also shows that remuneration was politically contested. Supporters argued that because the city actively calls upon people selected by lot to participate, different conditions should apply from those governing purely voluntary neighbourhood councils.
A system of sortition-based democracy
The development since 2021 can therefore be understood in three stages. First, Paris institutionalised a city-wide citizens’ assembly comprising 100 regularly renewed randomly selected members with its own rights of access to the Conseil de Paris. Second, the process became more inclusive and more clearly structured: young people and non-EU residents were included, the mandate was shortened to approximately one year, and the route from deliberation to formal municipal proposals was clarified. Now, the model is beginning to spread to the arrondissements.
This is what makes the Paris model particularly distinctive. It is increasingly no longer simply a permanent citizens’ assembly, but the beginnings of a permanent sortition-based pillar within municipal democracy: a city-wide assembly, emerging arrondissement assemblies, rights to place issues before elected institutions, direct access to formal political decision-making and the right to track how citizens’ proposals are subsequently handled.
The Paris example therefore points towards a possible direction for the development of permanent citizens’ assemblies more generally: it is not the same citizens who become a permanent part of the political system. The institution is permanent, while its members are regularly renewed through random selection.
Note: This article was written with the help of AI.