When sortition becomes an institution
Citizens’ assemblies were long regarded as exceptional democratic one-off events: people are selected by lot, deliberate for a few weekends, and then disappear again. But a second generation of sortition-based democracy is emerging around the world. Cities and regions are turning what was once an experiment into a permanent institution. A journey from East Belgium via Aachen and Milan to Japan shows that the real democratic innovation is no longer the citizens’ assembly itself. It is making it permanent.
An unexpected letter
The letter arrives unexpectedly. It bears the name of the Parliament of the German-speaking Community. Ismaël Scheen from Hergenrath is 17 at the time. “Then I immediately wondered what that was,” he later tells Belgian public broadcaster BRF. The subject convinces him: skills for school students. “That’s a subject I know about.” Scheen accepts the invitation. Today, he is himself a member of the Citizens’ Council.
In East Belgium, receiving such an invitation has become routine. Whenever a new Citizens’ Assembly is due to be convened, the lottery starts again. Around 30 citizens deliberate together. The initial random selection is drawn from everyone aged 16 or over who lives in the German-speaking Community.
When the experiment does not end
What is remarkable is no longer that people are selected by lot. What is remarkable is that the system itself does not have to end. Since 2019, Belgium’s small German-speaking region has had a system enshrined in law – its Citizens’ Dialogue – comprising temporary citizens’ assemblies and a permanent Citizens’ Council.
The Citizens' Council consists of former members of the citizens’ assemblies. After an Assembly finishes its work, one third of the Council is replaced: eight new members join while the eight longest-serving members leave. The result is something most citizens’ assemblies lack: an institutional memory.
This marked the beginning of a development that can now be observed in a growing number of places: the Citizens’ Assembly is evolving from a project into an institution.
No longer just an experiment
“What is special about the Citizens’ Dialogue in East Belgium is that it is permanent,” says Anna Stuers in an interview, the process’s permanent secretary. Its permanence is reflected not only in legislation but also in a dedicated budget and permanent staff.
These unspectacular things – staff positions, budget lines and rules of procedure – may ultimately prove more important to the future of citizens’ assemblies than some of the much more prominent large-scale experiments. Until now, the story of sortition-based democracy has often followed a familiar pattern: a government faces a difficult question. Several dozen or several hundred citizens are selected by lot. They hear from experts, deliberate and write recommendations. Then the group dissolves.
The crucial shift
The next difficult question is then once again dealt with by the familiar political institutions. A permanent Citizens’ Assembly reverses this relationship. Politicians no longer decide afresh each time whether citizens should be allowed to deliberate. The mechanism is already there.
Democracy expert Claudia Chwalisz therefore describes East Belgium as a turning point. The OECD had documented hundreds of deliberative processes, she writes in retrospect, but they had been one-off events: “Until Ostbelgien.” From there, the idea spread to places including Paris and Brussels.
Belgian politician Karl-Heinz Lambertz puts the ambition in broader terms. Citizens’ assemblies, he argues, have become one of the most innovative ways of involving citizens more deeply in political decision-making and strengthening public trust.
Aachen makes sortition routine
A little under 120 kilometres east of Eupen lies Aachen. In 2023, the city established Germany’s first municipal Citizens’ Assembly explicitly designed as a permanent institution.
A new lottery takes place every year. For the 2025 round, 3,500 people were initially contacted. From those who responded positively, 56 citizens were then to be selected. They tackled one of the most contentious subjects in local politics: transport.
Mayor at the time Sibylle Keupen summed up the ambition this way: “Mobility should be a benefit for everyone – convenient, safe and environmentally friendly!” She said she was looking forward to the Citizens’ Assembly’s “ideas and recommendations”. Mathias Dopatka, former chair of the Citizens’ Forum, sees the format’s strength in its ability to bring “all camps around one table” and build bridges.
A letter from democracy
The first Aachen citizens’ report gives a sense of just how unusual the experience can be for those selected. Its members describe the moment when the city’s letter appeared among bills and advertising. Their first reaction: “Have I done something wrong?” Then came the doubts: Am I even qualified? And finally the thought: “Maybe I can have a real influence on life in this city.”
It is a small passage that captures rather precisely what sortition changes politically. Conventional opportunities for public participation mainly attract people who want to participate. A lottery initially reaches people who might never have considered taking part at all.
That is also the explicit intention in East Belgium: random selection is meant to reach people who are not already interested in politics. At the same time, the group should reflect as many different life experiences as possible.
Climate policy discovers permanence
Milan has gone further still. The city has created a permanent Citizens’ Assembly on Climate. Tens of thousands of randomly selected residents were approached in the process of forming the body. The Assembly accompanies the city’s Air and Climate Plan.
Its purpose is therefore not to answer the grand question of how Milan can become climate-neutral once and for all. Instead, it follows implementation over time and makes proposals. Elena Grandi, Milan’s councillor responsible for the environment, explained the thinking with a phrase that neatly captures the political ambition behind permanent citizens’ assemblies: in confronting the climate crisis, the whole city must become an “active part of the process”.
Different models developed
The Brussels-Capital Region has also established a permanent Climate Citizens’ Assembly. Paris created a standing Citizens’ Assembly in 2021. Rouen and Rennes have developed their own models. Some consist predominantly of randomly selected citizens; others combine random selection with additional routes into the body.
Villeurbanne also belongs in this landscape. Its Assemblée Citoyenne consists of 80 members and combines different routes into participation: 20 residents are selected at random directly from the population, another 40 are selected by lot from a pool of volunteers, while 20 come from existing participatory bodies. This is not a Citizens’ Assembly in the pure East Belgian mould, but a permanent hybrid body with a genuine random-selection component. Models of this kind demonstrate precisely why producing a simple global count has become so difficult.
Sortition reaches Bogotá
Such processes are also becoming established outside Europe. Bogotá has developed its Ciclos Deliberativos #SumemosVoces into a recurring form of public participation. Citizens discuss specific problems facing the Colombian capital – such as waste, cleanliness and other issues relating to urban life – in groups selected by lottery. The process combines random selection with other means of participation, making it a hybrid model. The city continued the consultation cycles in 2026, transforming a one-off trial into a recurring participatory practice.
Bogotá is thus also broadening the scope geographically. The institutionalisation of randomised citizen participation is no longer exclusively a European experiment. Particularly in a city of over a million people with significant social disparities, random selection is intended to bring together people who would not necessarily meet through conventional participatory processes.
56 – but not 56 permanent citizens’ assemblies
A worldwide research has identified 56 relevant institutionalised structures involving genuine random selection or a substantial random-selection component. But it would be wrong to turn that finding into the claim: “There are 56 permanent citizens’ assemblies worldwide.” The figure describes a family of different democratic institutions, not 56 identical bodies.
They include permanent or regularly renewed bodies such as those in East Belgium, Aachen and Milan. Elsewhere, it is the process that has been institutionalised: Konstanz convenes a new council every year to deliberate on its participatory budget, Bochum regularly holds citizens’ conferences, Vienna uses new citizens’ juries in different districts, and several Japanese cities have repeatedly assembled randomly selected groups for many years. There are also hybrid models such as Villeurbanne, where randomly selected citizens form a permanent Citizens’ Assembly together with members recruited through other participation channels.
This diversity is, in fact, the real story. Sortition-based democracy is not spreading as a standardised institutional blueprint. Cities and regions are adapting it to their existing political systems. Sometimes it is a body that becomes permanent, sometimes a right to convene a Citizens’ Assembly, sometimes an annual cycle – and sometimes simply the political habit of repeatedly bringing a randomly selected cross-section of the population to the table when important decisions have to be made.
A history that did not begin in Belgium
Anyone who tells the history of permanent citizens’ assemblies starting only with East Belgium overlooks a remarkable precursor: Japan.
Since the 2000s, Japan has had a little-known municipal tradition of randomly selected citizen deliberation. These processes are often called Shimin Tōgikai. Unlike East Belgium, they generally do not create a continuously operating council. Instead, random selection itself becomes a permanent administrative practice.
Shizuoka has used such a process since 2007. Tajimiand Chigasaki began in 2009, Toyama in 2010 and Komaki in 2012. Tajimi continues to hold its citizen deliberations today. Komaki reached its 14th annual round in 2025. In Iyo, the practice was not discontinued but deliberately moved to a biennial cycle. Narahas organised several randomly selected assemblies since 2022.
East Belgium was still a turning point
This changes the historical perspective. East Belgium remains a pioneer – but not because it was the first place to select citizens repeatedly by lot. What was new was the determination to turn sortition into a political institution in its own right, complete with legislation, a budget, staff and follow-up procedures.
The Japanese examples point towards a second path to permanence. The body itself does not have to be permanent. A process can become permanent when a municipality develops the habit of repeatedly selecting a new cross-section of its population by lot whenever new political questions arise.
This also changes the question of what a “permanent citizens’ assembly” actually is. Must the same institution exist continuously? Or is it enough for legislation or established political practice to guarantee that new groups of randomly selected citizens will repeatedly be involved in decision-making?
The overlooked question: what happens afterwards?
The biggest problem facing many citizens’ assemblies begins only after they finish. The recommendations have been written. Photographs are taken. Politicians express their thanks. Then ordinary politics resumes.
The East Belgian model tries to close precisely this gap. The permanent Citizens’ Council does not merely organise new Citizens’ Assemblies. It also follows up on previous recommendations. Its composition ensures that experience from completed assemblies does not disappear entirely.
Minister-President Oliver Paasch sees this as more than public participation. Distrust of political office and decision-making processes is growing, he said following a Citizens’ Assembly on integration. “That is a danger to our liberal democracy.” Citizens’ assemblies could help reduce this distance.
Not a parallel parliament
Former Citizens’ Council chair Thomas Förster nevertheless warns against a misunderstanding: “The Citizens’ Dialogue is not a parallel parliament.” What he wants instead is a “closer relationship between the population and politics”.
This points to an important distinction. Most of today’s permanent citizens’ assemblies are not intended to replace parliaments. They create an additional form of political representation: elected representatives represent the population through elections; randomly selected citizens constitute, for a limited period, as diverse a cross-section of that population as possible.
The crucial democratic contest is therefore not necessarily election versus sortition. A more interesting question is which tasks are better performed through elections and which by randomly selected citizens serving for a limited period.
Permanence needs money
Sometimes, however, you only discover how permanent an institution really is when the money runs short. Oregon has enshrined its Citizens’ Initiative Review in law – yet the process has not been held regularly at state level for years.
Toyoyama in Japan offers an even clearer example. From 2011 to 2022, randomly selected citizens were invited to deliberate for twelve consecutive years. Then the continuation of the process stalled.
Konstanz, too, demonstrates how directly sortition-based democracy can depend on budget decisions. There, the Citizens’ Jury on the participatory budget became routine over the years: a new randomly selected group every year, a new decision on project funding every year. But if there is no money for the participatory budget, there is no reason to convene the next Citizens’ Jury either. Institutionalisation therefore requires more than good rules – it needs a reliable financial foundation.
That, too, is part of the story of institutionalisation. A Citizens’ Assembly needs staff, meeting rooms, a selection process, facilitators, experts and money. The unglamorous budget line can determine whether a democratic innovation becomes democratic infrastructure.
Institutions can disappear again
That is why the worldwide inventory includes, alongside the success stories, a category that enthusiasm for democratic innovation can easily overlook: dormant and discontinued processes.
In 2019, Madrid had a remarkable randomly selected body, the Observatorio de la Ciudad. It was abolished following a change of government. Other processes remain legally possible but are no longer used. Still others survive as an idea even though the money for the next round is missing.
Institutionalisation, then, is not a one-way street. Democratic institutions can emerge – and disappear again.
From Vienna via Finland to Stavanger
New forms are currently emerging particularly rapidly. In Vienna, after two pilot years, the Wiener Klimateam (Vienna Climate Team) has been explicitly described by the city as a permanent, established project since 2024. Its process includes citizens’ juries in different districts. In each district, around 2,000 people are first randomly selected from the population register and invited to participate. Groups of 20 to 25 people are then formed from those who respond. The fourth cycle of the Vienna Climate Team took place in 2025/26.
Finland, too, is developing into a largely overlooked centre of this democratic experimentation. Jyväskylä repeatedly assembles new residents’ panels to deliberate on different policy questions. Turku has chosen a different approach: there, a randomly selected citizens’ panel considers several issues over time. Institutionalisation does not necessarily mean creating an entirely new group for every question. It can also mean asking the same randomly selected cross-section of the city’s population to consider a range of political issues over an extended period.
Stavanger is more unusual still. In 2026, a permanent citizens’ panel was established there, not by the city administration but by an independent civil-society organisation. Invitations were sent to 5,000 randomly selected residents, from whom a 33-member panel was formed. If the model proves successful, it could point towards another path: sortition-based democracy as a permanent public institution without itself being part of the state.
First national permanent assembly in South Korea
New Caledonia is particularly noteworthy. There, a citizens’ body initially established as a pilot was made permanent in 2026. Also in 2026, South Korea began operating a permanently conceived national Climate Citizens’ Assembly. The development is thus reaching a new level: what only a few years ago was primarily a municipal and regional experiment is beginning to establish itself within larger political systems.
Permanent national citizens’ assemblies nevertheless remain the exception. The municipality remains the real laboratory of sortition-based democracy.
And suddenly the 18-year-old is part of the institution
Back to East Belgium. Ismaël Scheen completed his Citizens’ Assembly long ago. His story could have ended there. Selected once, a few meetings, recommendations submitted, finished.
But the system is designed differently. People from the Citizens’ Assemblies move on to the permanent Citizens’ Council. There they help organise future processes and follow up on earlier recommendations. The Council renews itself gradually: after every completed Citizens’ Assembly, eight of its members are replaced.
Scheen is therefore no longer simply a participant in a public-participation project. He is now one of the people ensuring that the next one can take place.
When innovation becomes boring
Michaela Rothkrantz also joined the permanent Council through a Citizens’ Assembly. In 2025, she became its chair. Her goal: “to further develop the Citizens’ Dialogue”.
It sounds almost mundane. Perhaps that is precisely the point. A democratic innovation has truly arrived when it no longer needs to be celebrated as an innovation every single time.
When the letters go out again. When another group of people is selected by lot. When the budget is there. When recommendations are revisited a year later. When old members leave and new ones arrive.
Democracy as infrastructure
In an interview, Belgian author and democracy thinker David Van Reybrouck still considers institutionalisation “tentative”. For many governments, organising even a Citizens’ Assembly lasting three weekends is difficult. A permanent structure is harder still. Nevertheless, he expects that within the next decade or two a medium-sized European democracy will also take the step at national level.
By then, the decisive change may already be happening elsewhere: in Aachen, Konstanz and Vienna; in Milan, Brussels and Villeurbanne; in Bogotá, Jyväskylä and Turku; in Stavanger, Tajimi and Komaki. Not as a democratic revolution marked by a single grand founding moment, but meeting by meeting, budget by budget, draw by draw.
Perhaps the decisive question will then no longer be whether citizens should be allowed to have a say between elections. It will be why we should have to decide afresh every time whether they are allowed to do so.