Are citizens’ assemblies a key to more political participation?

The residents of Basel are currently discussing and testing various forms of citizen participation. Most recently, in spring 2024, the Demokratie Labor Basel and the Institute for Public Sector Transformation at Bern University of Applied Sciences organised a citizens’ assembly at which political proposals were discussed and formulated together and the various forms of participation were compared. A report on the experiences and challenges of this experimental project.

A popular instrument of citizen participation is the “Citizen Assembly”, known in German-speaking countries as “Bürger:innen-Versammlung”. People are invited to take part in this event by drawing lots. The assembled group meets and discusses a clearly defined topic. Accompanied by a moderation team, concrete solutions and proposals for action are jointly developed for the attention of politicians. The event in Basel was organised under the motto “The future of democracy”.

Other countries have been using citizens’ assemblies for a long time to bring the opinions and ideas of the population into politics. One well-known example is Ireland, where citizens’ assemblies have been used to push forward issues such as same-sex marriage or the liberalisation of abortion rights, which were blocked in parliament due to a stalemate between the two camps.

Virtual collection of ideas – discussions on site

The “Demokratie Labor Basel” project team, for which BFH is responsible for scientific support, deliberately chose a lean and hybrid format. In the run-up to the event, citizens were able to submit ideas via the online platform “BePart”. This resulted in around 70 usable contributions. The citizens’ assembly took place shortly afterwards as a physical meeting on two days. Current problems and potential improvements to Swiss democracy were discussed and possible proposals were jointly developed and prioritised. The moderation team led the 27 participants through a dense programme of information blocks, group discussions and plenary discussions for six hours each. In between, there were breaks with refreshments and entertainment was provided by current topics of conversation and encounters between people.

On the first day, two political scientists provided input from academia. Marc Bühlmann’s (University of Bern) contribution “Who should decide? Democracy and inclusion” focussed on the question of how political rights could be expanded in Switzerland. Sean Müller (University of Lausanne) presented alternative approaches for a differentiated form of voting under the title “Voting differently, voting better, voting more?”. On the second day, experts from BFH came to the fore: Daniel Schwarz spoke about the measurability and evaluation of democracies, while Jan Fivaz presented other forms of direct political participation.

Deliberating together when different opinions clash

The 27 citizens started the first meeting with 70 proposals, which were grouped into eight thematic blocks. In a multi-stage process, the proposals were supplemented with further ideas and prioritised. The six top-prioritised thematic blocks were then discussed in groups and the questions and arguments put forward were recorded in writing so that all participants were informed about the discussion points of all groups. Between the two events, participants were able to use online voting to decide which specific proposals should be prioritised for discussion on the second day. As part of this process, the topics and proposals on which a consensus could be reached were gradually crystallised. On the second day, these were extensively deliberated – i.e. reflected on in depth, discussed together, deliberated in groups and formulated into concrete proposals and finally debated and adopted in plenary.

In addition to the content-related objectives, the project also had the scientific goal of finding out how the citizens of Basel evaluate such a panel in comparison to the usual parliamentary and direct democratic processes, who takes part in such a participatory event.

The results are mixed. Although it was possible to prioritise a large number of different proposals in the shortened process, the in-depth development of concrete proposals took significantly longer than expected. This was not least due to the lively participation of the participants. The debates were lively, sometimes emotional, but always civilised, even if opinions within the groups sometimes diverged significantly. The participants’ high level of motivation created a good atmosphere in the room. However, the fact that not all social groups were represented was not considered ideal. Overall, the citizens’ assembly was rated as very good by the participants. So good, in fact, that they recommend that the canton of Basel-Stadt introduce it on a trial basis.

Politically motivating young and old

The feedback on representativeness is entirely justified. However, a better reflection of the population could only have been achieved with a great deal of effort. Only 1.3 % of participants in the “Basel Democracy Lab” responded to the written invitation and their participation was confirmed without an additional representative selection process. If significantly more than the required number of people had responded to the invitation, a representative group could have been put together in terms of gender, age, education and political attitudes. However, when organising the groups for the purpose of discussing the individual topics, care was taken to ensure that each group had a mix of age, gender and political orientation.

In this context, the timing and time required for participation in the project must also be taken into account. People who work on Saturdays, for example, or who take on caring responsibilities, can only devote a limited amount of time to participating in such a project. Accordingly, retired people were overrepresented and younger age groups were underrepresented. The compact programme over two days at the weekend was less able to convince younger people to take part. Planning requires careful consideration of the scope and complexity of the content and the time allocated to it. The more time is scheduled, the more people drop out because the effort involved is too great for them. Ultimately, a kind of “self-selection” takes place, as each person who is drawn by lot and contacted decides whether they want to devote the time and energy to participate.

What do Basel politicians say?

At the public evening event “Open Mic Politik” a few weeks after the meetings, the proposals were put to the test: six Basel politicians answered questions from the moderator and the audience of around 60 people. They commented on the four most promising proposals from the citizens’ assemblies. There was a lively exchange with many comments and different points of view. The coming years will show whether and how the proposals will actually be taken up by politicians and, if so, implemented. In any case, the citizens’ assembly gave participants the opportunity to voice their concerns about democracy in Basel and discuss them in an open dialogue with political representatives. As part of the “Basel Democracy Lab”, there are plans to address this point in greater depth with another sub-project – the so-called “Smart Ask” platform before the cantonal elections in autumn 2024.

More information

The “Demokratie Labor Basel” is a project of the association of the same name(www.demokratielabor.ch), which is testing democratic reform approaches together with the people of Basel in around ten sub-projects. The Institute for Public Sector Innovation (IPST) at Bern University of Applied Sciences BFH is responsible for the scientific realisation of the projects.

The projects are funded by the Mercator Switzerland Foundation, the Raiffeisen Jubilee Foundation and, in the special case of the Citizens’ Assembly, by the Christoph Merian Foundation.

1. Project results Citizen Assembly
2. BFH project page on projects with the Demokratie Labor Basel
3. Online platform for the collection of ideas BePart