The citizens’ assembly that is here to stay

In 2026, South Korea created something that had never before existed at national level: a permanent, legally established Climate Citizens’ Assembly. Its members are selected by lot, they can help decide what issues are discussed, and their proposals must be considered by the national climate commission. It is an experiment whose significance extends far beyond climate policy: can the occasional citizens’ assembly become a permanent democratic institution?

Order disrupted

Climate policy has developed a familiar division of labour over the decades. Experts do the calculations, ministries draw up plans, companies warn about costs, environmental groups warn about catastrophe. Citizens get to vote – and afterwards are expected to replace their heating systems, switch cars, produce less waste and understand why prices are rising.

Since spring 2026, South Korea has been trying to disrupt that order a little. On 16 May, the country’s new Climate Citizens’ Assembly met in Seoul for the first time. Two hundred randomly selected citizens are to consider the future of their country’s climate policy.

Members come and go, the assembly remains

What is new is not the random selection. Citizens’ assemblies now exist in many countries. What is new is that this assembly was not established as a one-off process to deal with a single political question. It is enshrined in law and intended to remain in existence as an institution. The national climate commission describes it as the world’s first permanent Climate Citizens’ Assembly at national level.

This may appear to be a small difference in institutional design, but it could prove to be a significant one for democracy. The well-known citizens’ assemblies in France, Ireland, Britain or Germany have generally followed a familiar pattern: a government or parliament poses a question. A group of randomly selected citizens spends several weeks or months considering it, submits its recommendations – and then disbands. Whether another Citizens’ Assembly is ever convened is once again a decision for politicians.

South Korea is changing that relationship, at least to some extent. In April 2026, the Climate Citizens’ Assembly was written into the country’s climate law. The Climate Neutrality and Green Growth Act provides for the national climate commission to establish the citizens’ body. Citizens are to learn about climate policy, deliberate with one another and develop joint proposals. Region, gender and age are among the factors to be taken into account when composing the assembly. The climate commission is required to take its findings into consideration as far as possible when drawing up important climate plans and policies.

From a process to an institution

This turns a temporary process into an institution. The 200 people taking part in 2026 are not permanent members. They constitute its first round. The law itself does not yet stipulate how often new groups are to be selected or at what intervals they will meet. But the assembly itself is intended to remain.

Prime Minister Kim Min-seok described the ambition at its opening: citizens should no longer merely be the people to whom climate policies are applied. They should participate in shaping and carrying them out. The government, he said, would work to ensure that their experiences and views could genuinely find their way into climate policy.

The South Korean model becomes even more unusual when it comes to choosing the subjects for discussion. A 20-member planning group made up of randomly selected citizens was allowed to decide what the main assembly should discuss in 2026. It met for the first time on 13 and 14 June and again on 4 July. Its starting point was no fewer than 690 proposed subjects, submitted by the public, members of the citizens’ body and experts.

The government does not choose the question

Three questions ultimately remained:

• How can companies be encouraged to reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions more substantially?
• How can single-use products be reduced and materials reused more extensively?
• And how can climate education, public awareness and citizen participation be strengthened?

These may initially sound less momentous than the broad questions considered by earlier climate citizens’ assemblies in France or Britain. There is no sweeping question such as “How can our country become climate-neutral by 2050?”, nor a decision about the entire energy system. Yet the questions touch precisely those points at which climate policy becomes uncomfortable: who actually has to act – individual citizens, the state or companies?

Lee Chang-hoon, the civilian co-chair of the national climate commission, regards the way the subjects were chosen as significant in itself. It was the first time in South Korea, he said, that citizens themselves had selected the questions for such a public deliberation. Because the issues had been chosen “from the bottom up”, he expected particularly thorough discussions.

200 people for a country of 52 million

The citizens’ body consists of 200 people: the 20 members of the planning group and another 180 citizens who will now consider the three subjects. Region, gender and age were taken into account in selecting them.

The 180 citizens are divided into three working groups. They are to acquire the necessary knowledge, hear different points of view and deliberate with one another. Recommendations are due by the end of the year. The national climate commission must then consider them. Proposals it accepts will be forwarded to the relevant ministries and local authorities, after which their further treatment is to be followed up.

That is more than the all-too-common ceremonial handover of a citizens’ report to a minister. But it is less than decision-making power. The assembly can recommend. The government still governs.

When sortition gains a permanent place

That is precisely why permanence could prove decisive. With a one-off citizens’ assembly, a government can receive the recommendations, praise some, reject others – and then move on. A permanent assembly, by contrast, comes back. New citizens can raise new questions. The public can follow what became of earlier recommendations. Ministries must expect to encounter the considered views of randomly selected citizens again.

That changes the position of random selection itself. It would no longer merely be a tool that governments occasionally take out of the cupboard when they want help with a particularly difficult question. It could become a regular part of national decision-making, alongside parliament, government, political parties, interest groups and expert bodies.

This is the real significance of the South Korean experiment. Since citizens’ assemblies began their worldwide rise, there has been a debate about whether they should merely provide occasional additions to representative democracy or whether randomly selected citizens’ bodies can acquire a permanent place within democratic systems. At national level, South Korea is now putting the second possibility into practice: rather than creating an assembly for a single dispute, it is establishing a permanent means of deliberation by randomly selected citizens.

From democratic experiment to democratic institution

There are already precedents at local and regional level. In the German-speaking Community of Belgium, a permanent Citizens’ Dialogue has existed since 2019 and repeatedly convenes new randomly selected citizens’ assemblies. The Brussels-Capital Region has also made its Climate Citizens’ Assembly permanent. What has been missing until now is an equivalent permanent arrangement at the level of an entire country.

That makes South Korea more important to the development of citizens’ assemblies than the three rather technical-sounding climate questions might initially suggest. If the model proves durable, it would demonstrate that deliberation by randomly selected citizens need not remain an exceptional political procedure reserved for extraordinary disputes. It can become part of the ordinary machinery of government.

There is also a question of power. With one-off citizens’ assemblies, politicians do not merely decide what happens to the recommendations. Before that, they decide whether a Citizens’ Assembly is allowed to happen at all. Establishing such a body permanently in law removes at least part of that first decision from the political circumstances of the moment.

Permanent does not mean powerful

None of this automatically makes the South Korean assembly powerful. The government is not required to implement every recommendation. Lee Chang-hoon has said that the findings will be submitted to the climate commission and that the relevant ministries will subsequently be consulted. The aim, he said, is to ensure that the Climate Citizens’ Assembly’s proposals are reflected in policy.

“Ensure”, however, can be a remarkably elastic word in politics. The crucial question is therefore not simply whether the assembly continues to exist, but whether its influence remains visible. Will ministries have to explain publicly which recommendations they accept and which they reject? Will there be regular checks on what happened to earlier proposals? Can future assemblies confront the government with recommendations made by their predecessors that were never acted upon?

Only rules of that kind would turn permanence into political weight.

What happens when citizens become inconvenient?

The first real test could come from the question concerning business. South Korea is one of the world’s major industrial economies. Steel, semiconductors, cars, chemicals and shipbuilding have created its prosperity – and consume enormous amounts of energy. Asking companies to reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions more substantially is therefore not a conversation about better household recycling. It goes to the heart of the question of who pays for the transformation.

The assembly is explicitly not intended to produce a simple opinion poll. Members receive information, hear different sides and then deliberate together. Recommendations are supposed to command broad support within the assembly.

That distinguishes the process from an ordinary survey. A survey asks people what they think now. A Citizens’ Assembly tries to discover what people think after they have been given time to understand an issue, listen to other views and reconsider their own position.

Citizens help write the rules

One unusual detail may prove more important than many of the grand speeches. The 20 members of the planning group did not merely choose the subjects. They also discussed the rules governing the assembly itself: its responsibilities and the way decisions should be reached. To some extent, therefore, citizens are shaping not only what they deliberate about, but also the process through which that deliberation takes place.

That is more demanding than a Citizens’ Assembly whose members arrive on the first morning to find a completed programme waiting on the table. South Korea already has experience with such exercises. In 2021, the previous government brought together more than 500 citizens to consider pathways towards climate neutrality. But the questions and possible routes were largely predetermined. The new assembly shifts some of that power towards citizens themselves.

The voices from the deliberation room are still missing

There is, however, already one weakness. While the government and climate commission have spoken extensively about the assembly, the voices of its randomly selected members have so far been surprisingly poorly documented in public. Official reports on the launch and the selection of subjects quote the prime minister, commission chairs and experts – but hardly any of the citizens themselves.

That is a curious shortcoming for a process whose purpose is precisely to give ordinary people a voice. The substantive deliberations will therefore matter greatly. Only then will it become clear whether a permanent institution on paper can also become a living form of democratic participation.

After the first 200, others will follow

If the South Korean model endures, its importance could extend far beyond climate policy. The same question could then be asked in other fields: why should a randomly selected Citizens’ Assembly meet only when a government happens to face a difficult decision? Why could it not – with regularly changing members – become a permanent part of democratic government?

That changes the debate about citizens’ assemblies. The question is no longer merely whether citizens should occasionally be selected by lot. It is whether sortition can acquire a permanent place in democracy alongside elections.

More than just another exercise in citizen participation

That is what makes South Korea’s 2026 Climate Citizens’ Assembly more than just another exercise in citizen participation. It is an attempt to turn a democratic innovation into a democratic institution.

And that is why, in the end, the most interesting question will not simply be what South Korea’s first 200 citizens recommend. Far more important will be whether others come after them – and whether governments become accustomed to the idea that randomly selected citizens are no longer consulted only when it happens to be politically convenient.

Please note: The text and image in this article were generated using AI.