When citizens took a seat at the table

In 2019, an unusual experiment brought 160 randomly selected people together to deliberate on the future of democracy. They were not elected. They had no party programmes, no parliamentary groups and, at first, often not even the feeling that they knew much about politics. In the end, they produced 22 recommendations – and helped change the debate about citizens’ assemblies in Germany.

It began with a letter

It began with a letter. No ballot paper, no application, no party membership. An invitation that at first looked like advertising.

Armin Amrhein was one of the people who received such a letter in 2019. He wondered whether someone was trying to trick him. Only after searching online did he realise that the invitation was genuine. He had been randomly selected to take part in a deliberation on the future of democracy.

Eventually, 160 people from across Germany travelled to Leipzig. They were between 16 and 82 years old. They were employees and self-employed people, pensioners and students, people with extensive political experience and people who had previously taken little part in politics.

What does democracy need?

They were asked to consider a question normally dealt with in party headquarters, parliaments and constitutional courts: What does democracy need?

It was Germany’s first federal Citizens’ Assembly of this kind. And it was more than a participation project. It was an experiment in whether citizens who had not been elected could deliberate on political questions together – and whether their recommendations would subsequently be taken seriously by politicians.

Idea came from civil society

The Citizens’ Assembly on Democracy was not initiated by the German Bundestag. It was launched in 2019 by Mehr Demokratie and the Schöpflin Foundation, with support from the Mercator Foundation. The former Bavarian Minister-President Günther Beckstein chaired the mini-public.

The idea was inspired by experience with citizens’ assemblies, particularly in Ireland. There, such processes had shown that randomly selected citizens could deliberate on complex political questions if they were given enough time, access to expert knowledge and professionally facilitated small-group discussions.

„A very good way of getting involved“

Beckstein was convinced by the approach. “Citizens’ assemblies offer people who otherwise have little opportunity to express themselves politically a very good way of getting involved,” he said at the launch.

The procedure was intended to expose a blind spot in representative democracy. Parliaments represent citizens through elections. But elected representatives are not necessarily a social mirror of the population. A Citizens’ Assembly attempts to address that problem differently: through random selection.

First talk, then judge

The 160 participants met in Leipzig for two weekends in September 2019. They listened to experts, discussed issues in small groups and then brought their conclusions back to the plenary.

The small groups were crucial. Only a handful of people sat around each table. No one could hide behind a parliamentary faction. No one automatically carried more weight because of an office or title.

Roman Huber, then Managing Director of Mehr Demokratie, later described the principle as discussion “around a small table”. The rules were designed to prevent individual participants from dominating while others remained silent. Only once everyone had spoken should someone be given the opportunity to speak for a second time.

It sounds banal. Politically, it is not.

Everyone should be heard

Democratic debate usually works differently. Those who speak more loudly, argue more skilfully or already hold office have an advantage. In the Citizens’ Assembly, by contrast, a different rule applied: everyone should be heard.

Armin Amrhein later recalled how closely the facilitators monitored whether everyone had an opportunity to speak. The groups were repeatedly reshuffled to prevent permanent camps from emerging.

The effect was striking. People had to listen to arguments they might otherwise never have encountered. And they had to respond to them.

Participants changed their minds

Perhaps the most important difference between a Citizens’ Assembly and an opinion poll became apparent here.

A poll asks people what they think. A Citizens’ Assembly places them in a process in which they can change their minds.

Günther Beckstein was impressed by this process. “The Citizens’ Assembly on Democracy was not a game, but a fantastically successful experiment,” he said later. The participants had debated at a high level; many had changed their minds, “some even several times”.

Political effect on participants

The academic evaluation confirmed that the process had a political effect on the participants. Their perception of their own political abilities increased, as did their willingness to participate politically.

This is an effect easily lost in conventional political communication.

A citizen who fills in a ballot paper is, first and foremost, a voter.

A citizen who spends four days discussing democracy with others, checking information, weighing arguments and seeking compromises becomes a political adviser.

The question was not: Parliament or the people?

The result was 22 recommendations, which were set out in a citizens’ report.

The result was more decisive than some might have expected. Of the 157 participants who took part in the final vote, 156 supported supplementing parliamentary representative democracy with further forms of citizen participation and direct democracy. A total of 155 supported combining citizen participation with direct democracy. And 152 called for citizens’ assemblies at federal level to be established by law.

The crucial point was this: The participants did not want to abolish parliament.

They wanted to supplement it.

More citizens' assemblies recommended

The Citizens’ Assembly recommended, among other things, federal citizens’ assemblies selected by lot. It also called for politicians to be obliged to consider the results of participatory processes and publicly respond to them.

Federal referendums were among the recommendations as well.

The citizens’ report was therefore not a plea for rule by “the people” over parliament. Rather, it was a plea for more layers of democracy.

The central idea was simple: Between one election and the next, there could be a space in which citizens jointly deliberate on political questions.

The day the citizens handed over their report

On 15 November 2019, the unusual process reached its provisional climax in Berlin. The participants presented their findings at the “Day for Democracy”. They then handed their citizens’ report to Bundestag President Wolfgang Schäuble.

Schäuble represented the parliamentary democracy that the Citizens’ Assembly sought to expand. He accepted the report.

It was more than a symbolic gesture. The difficult part of the experiment was now beginning: What would politicians do with recommendations from citizens who had not been elected?

Reflecting on democracy

Schäuble was broadly receptive. Precisely because representative democracy was becoming increasingly important in the face of social change, he argued, politicians needed to consider how people could once again feel better represented.

But the Citizens’ Assembly had no legislative authority. Its recommendations were not decisions of the Bundestag. That had been clear from the beginning – and became the central question raised by the entire project.

Citizens went to the politicians themselves

Some participants did not want the handover of the report to be the end of the story. They subsequently sought meetings with members of the Bundestag and state parliaments. According to the organisers, twelve such meetings had already taken place within 100 days, with further meetings planned.

The participants thus changed roles. They were no longer merely the people who had deliberated. They became political advocates for their own recommendations.

Greater understanding of parliamentary decision-making

Roman Huber described a remarkable consequence of such processes: Anyone who had experienced “how difficult it is to arrive at a sensible decision in a controversial debate” often developed a greater understanding of parliamentary decision-making. At the same time, participants did not necessarily expect MPs to adopt their recommendations word for word. Above all, they wanted politicians to engage seriously with them.

This may be the unexpected twist of the Citizens’ Assembly: It was intended to reduce the distance between citizens and politics – and in doing so, it also brought citizens closer to the difficulties of political decision-making.

Bundestag takes up the idea

The Citizens’ Assembly did not remain without institutional consequences.

On 18 June 2020, the Bundestag’s Council of Elders took up the recommendation for another federal Citizens’ Assembly. It supported experimenting with such a procedure and suggested the subject “Germany’s Role in the World”.

This distinction is important: The Council of Elders established the thematic framework and thereby initiated the next parliamentary step. The Citizens’ Assembly itself, however, was not simply organised as an internal Bundestag project. It was once again initiated and conducted by civil-society organisations and the institutes involved.

Bundestag President Wolfgang Schäuble became its patron.

A civil-society experiment from 2019 had thus evolved into a model project with a direct connection to parliament.

What remains?

The Citizens’ Assembly on Democracy did not produce 22 laws. Many of its specific recommendations were not implemented.

That does not make the project insignificant. Quite the opposite.

Its most important achievement may have been to answer a practical question: Can political deliberation be organised without first selecting people on the basis of political experience, connections or rhetorical skill?

The answer was: yes – under certain conditions.

Best practice is essential

Participants needed information. They needed time. They needed professional facilitation. And they needed a protected space in which they did not have to compete for attention from cameras or headlines.

But there were limits, too.

The composition of the Citizens’ Assembly was not fully representative. People with higher levels of education and a generally positive attitude towards citizen participation were overrepresented. The process itself could therefore only approximate a cross-section of society.

However, lessons were learnt from these problems. In the 2023/24 Citizens’ Assembly on "Nutrition in Transition", the randomly selected group was, by all specified criteria, a statistically representative sample of the population.

Who decides?

Ultimately, the question of power remained unresolved.

What happens when a Citizens’ Assembly recommends something that parliament does not support?

The Citizens’ Assembly on Democracy offered a pragmatic answer: representative democracy should not be replaced, but supplemented.

The real experiment

Perhaps that is the project’s historical significance.

The Citizens’ Assembly on Democracy was not a counter-parliament. It was not a substitute for elections. Nor did it prove that randomly selected citizens automatically make better decisions than elected politicians.

It was something more difficult: an experiment in organising political judgement.

The participants had to acquire knowledge. They had to listen. They had to weigh arguments against one another. They had to experience that their own position was not always the majority position. And they had to make decisions even though no one around the table possessed the whole truth.

Moving away from the logic of election campaigns

That distinguishes a Citizens’ Assembly from the classic logic of an election campaign.

There, the question is often: How do I win?

Here, it is: What can we stand behind together?

At the end of the experiment stood 22 recommendations. But perhaps the most important result was something else: The 160 randomly selected citizens emerged from the process more politically engaged than they had entered it.

From specators to actors

Spectators had become participants. And participants, in some cases, became political actors.

The lottery had initially given them nothing more than a seat at the table. What they made of it was democracy.

Note: This article was written with the help of AI.