Should a citizens' assembly complement the European Parliament?.
Date: 2025-03-26
Institutions: European University Institute
Subjects: European Parliament, European citizenship, civic engagement, power of decision

EUROPEAN 
UNIVERSITY 
INSTITUTE

Should a Citizens'  
Assembly Complement the  
European Parliament? 

Edited by | Rainer Bauböck and Kalypso Nicolaidis

© European University Institute, 2025

Editorial matter and selection © Rainer Bauböck and Kalypso Nicolaidis, 2025

Chapters © authors individually 2025

© cover artwork: Ari Saunders

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Should a Citizens'  
Assembly Complement the 
European Parliament? 

EDITED BY
Rainer Bauböck and Kalypso Nicolaidis

European University Institute, Florence, Italy

Table of content

Preface 

Representing European Citizens: Why a Citizens’ Assembly  
Should Complement the European Parliament 
Kalypso Nicolaidis 

The case for a Permanent European Citizens’ Assembly 

The case for holistic democracy 

Transnationalism in theory: Towards a demoicratic polity 

Transnationalism in practice: Citizen participation  
between elections is the new EU mantra… 

…But a permanent Citizens’ Assembly would do a better job 

Embedding the ECA in the EU’s institutional landscape  
and public spheres 

Popular Sovereignty: The argument from equal representation 

...But who is us? Composition, criteria and pools 

Democratic Governance: The argument from integrity 

...But should the ECA be enabled to decide? 

Civic Culture: The argument from epistemic democracy 

...But how does the ECA connect to a wider European public sphere?    

Conclusion: Contrasting imaginaries and academic debate as co-creation   

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Why Citizens’ Assemblies should not have Decision-making Power  33
Cristina Lafont and Nadia Urbinati 

The pitfalls of complementing elections with sortition 

Accountability vs blind deference 

Why the ECA will be ignored by the wider public 

Empowering citizens through a mediating role for Citizens’ Assemblies 

Empowering European Citizens but  
Avoiding Illusionary Promises! 
Sandra Seubert  

A distorted image of electoral politics 

Concealing the power of experts 

The problem of legitimation rivalry 

Conclusion: Routinisation without permanence! 

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Can a European Citizens’ Assembly Improve Political  
Equality and Overcome the Demoi-cratic Disconnect?   
Richard Bellamy   

How equal and empowering is representation by sortition? 

An alternative, a supplement or a complement to electoral democracy?  

Demoicracy and the democratic disconnect 

Conclusion 

Would a European Citizens’ Assembly Justify a Sense  
of Democratic Ownership? 
Svenja Ahlhaus and Eva Schmidt 

A sense of democratic ownership: justified or unjustified? 

A re-focused ECA: Three ideas 

Conclusion 

Democracy 3.0 in the 21st Century: The Case for a  
Permanent European Citizens’ Assembly 
Yves Sintomer  

For a non-ideal and historically-situated theory of democracy 

Provincialising Western democracy 

Global governance and citizens’ assemblies 

Conclusion: Democracy 3.0 

Grounding ‘Democratic Innovations’ in Wider Decolonial  
Movements Within and Beyond EU Borders 
Alvaro Oleart  

The EU’s ‘citizen turn’ and the private industry of ‘deliberative democracy’ 

The Palestine encampments and the “decolonial project for Europe”     

The Advantages and Perils of a Civil-society-led  
European Citizens’ Assembly 
Brett Hennig  

Advantage: Freedom to experiment 

Advantage: Freedom of topic and agenda 

Peril: Biased composition undermining legitimacy 

Peril: Lack of (direct) political impact of the assembly outcomes 

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Peril: Lack of independence leading to low legitimacy 

Peril: Lack of budget leading to low quality 

Advantage: Spreading the deliberative word! 

Conclusion & Advantage: Concrete activity building a  
movement to upgrade democracy at the EU level 

How to Make Citizens’ Participation Successful:  
The Case for Citizens’ Panels on Key Commission Proposals  
Daniel Freund  

Thematic Scope: Focus on concrete issues 

Support: The necessity of political and institutional backing  

Transparency: Representing and including the wider public 

Backup: Optional decision by referendum 

Conclusion 

Can a Complementary ECA Democratise European Democracy? 
Jelena  Džankić 

Who? Those vicious technicalities of eligibility and sortition  

How? Itineration and rotation – a costly exercise?  

What? Input is precious, but output and support matter too 

So What?  

The Two European Demoi: Authorizing EU Legislation  
and Deliberating on Affected Interests 
Rainer Bauböck 

Strengthening deliberative democracy in Europe 

Why the deliberative demos must be wider than the legislative demos    

The test of effective transformation of citizens’ preferences 

Perceptions and Practicalities of a Standing  
European Citizens’ Assembly 
Anthony Zacharzewski   

Media reporting: between invisibility and inaccuracy 

The legitimacy challenge: Who selects the questions? 

Not running before we can crawl: ECA as the goal,  
not the starting point 

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Rotation, task Definition and an Increased Membership:  
An Alternative Imaginary for a Permanent ECA 
Graham Smith and David Owen 

Rotation, specific task assignment, and two-stage sortition 

Agenda-setting in a responsive ECA 

Connecting to publics: Challenges and possibilities  
for the European Citizens’ Assembly 
Melisa Ross and Andrea Felicetti  

Transnational publics, plural 

From issue salience to issue ownership 

Bridging across publics 

The cost of experimentation 

Enlarged Complementarity: How an ECA Should  
Relate to Other Institutions and Actors 
Lucile Schmid   

Why complementarity is key 

Putting the Green Deal on the ECA agenda 

An expanded vision of complementarity 

Why a European Citizens’ Assembly Should Replace  
Sortition with Liquid Democracy 
Chiara Valsangiacomo and Christina Isabel Zuber 

The problem with sortition 

A liquid European Citizens’ Assembly 

A thought experiment 

Rome Was Not Built in One Day, Neither Will a  
European Citizens’ Assembly 
Camille Dobler and Antoine Vergne 

Complementing transnationalism with translocalism 

Intersubjective representation and radical inclusion 

Complementing institutionalization with “porous” experimentation     

Falling forward, from citizens’ juries to an ECA? 

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Democratisation Through Europeanisation:  
the Case for a Permanent EU Citizens’ Assembly 
Alberto Alemanno  

The realities of EU democratic life 

Europeanisation: the missing link between politicisation  
and democratisation 

A Citizens’ assembly to Europeanise EU politics 

Mind the Gaps: Scaling up Digital Spaces to  
Increase Translocal Porousness in an ECA 
Andrea Gaiba   

Porousness in agenda-setting 

Porousness in sortition 

Porousness in composition 

Porousness in follow-up 

Technological challenges and opportunities of scaling porousness 

Rejoinder: A Permanent Citizens’ Assembly is not a  
Magic Wand for Europe. But… 
Kalypso Nicolaidis   

Popular sovereignty: Can the assembly really claim to  
instantiate the people?! 

Democratic Governance: How should the ECA work? 

Civic Culture: Can the ECA really reach the demos? 

Conclusion: How to get there? 

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List of Contributors 

Svenja Ahlhaus is Assistant Professor in Political Theory at the University of 
Münster. Her research focuses on democratic theory, especially on belonging, 
democratic boundaries, and political representation. In her new research project 
at the Cluster of Excellence “Religion and Politics” she analyses the democrat-
ic legitimacy of religious strategic litigation. Her monograph Die Grenzen des 
Demos (Campus, 2020) discusses the democratization of membership politics.

Alberto Alemanno is the Jean Monnet Professor of EU Law, HEC Paris and 
currently Democracy Fellow 2024-25 at Harvard Kennedy School and Visiting 
Scholar at the Harvard Center for European Studies Minda de Gunzburg.

Rainer Bauböck held the chair in Social and Political Theory at the European 
University  Institute  from  2007  to  2018  and  is  co-director  of  GLOBALCIT 
and of the DILEMMAS project at the EUI. He is also corresponding member 
of the Austrian Academy of Sciences where he chaired a Commission on Mi-
gration and Integration Research until 2024. He teaches as a guest professor at 
the Nationalism Studies Program of Central European University Vienna. His 
research  interests  are  in  normative  political  theory  and  comparative  research 
on democratic citizenship, European integration, migration, nationalism and 
minority rights.

Richard Bellamy is Professor of Political Science at University College London 
(UCL). He was educated at the University of Cambridge and the European 
University Institute at Florence. After three years as a Post-Doctoral Research 
Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford, he went on to lectureships at Cambridge 
and Edinburgh and then to Chairs at the Universities of East Anglia, Reading 
and Essex before joining UCL IN 2005. He was elected a Fellow of the Academy 
of Social Sciences (FAcSS) in 2008, of the British Academy (FBA) in 2022, and 
a Member of the Academia Europea (MAE) in 2024. His book  A Republic of 
European States: Cosmopolitanism, Republicanism and the EU was published 
by Cambridge University Press in 2019.

x

Table of content

Camille Dobler is the Head of Research at Missions Publiques. She joined the 
team after four years working in academia as a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow: 
her own research questions the inter-linkages between citizen participation, de-
liberation and political identities in the EU. At Missions Publiques, Camille has 
been working extensively with EU institutions towards the institutionalisation 
of deliberative mini publics at the European level. Together with Antoine, she 
coordinates the EU-funded Coordination and Support Action SCALEDEM, 
which aims at scaling the impact of democratic  innovations  and  is  an  active 
member of the Democratic Odyssey Constituent Network.

Jelena Džankić is Part-Time Professor in the Global Governance Programme 
at  the  Robert  Schuman  Centre  of  the  EUI,  where  she  is  Director  of  GGP 
Southeastern Europe and Co-Director of the Global Citizenship Observatory 
(GLOBALCIT). She is also (recurring) visiting professor at Central European 
University, and senior research fellow at the Hellenic Foundation for European 
and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP). She is the author of the Global Market for 
Investor  Citizenship  (Palgrave  2019)  and  Citizenship  in  Bosnia  Herzegovi-
na, Macedonia and Montenegro: Effects of Statehood and Identity Challenges 
(Routledge, 2015).

Andrea  Felicetti  (PhD,  Australian  National  University)  is  a  Senior  Assis-
tant Professor at the Department of Political Science, Law, and International 
Studies at the University of Padua. His main research interests revolve around 
democratic theories, public spheres, and governance. He is the author of De-
liberative Democracy and Social Movements (Rowman & Littlefield Interna-
tional, 2016) and co-author of Discursive Turns and Critical Junctures (Oxford 
University Press, 2020). His research is featured in numerous distinguished in-
ternational journals including Science, Journal of Politics, European Journal of 
Political Research, and Journal of Business Ethics.

Daniel Freund is a Member of the European Parliament for the German Greens 
since 2019. He works on transparency, the rule of law and EU reform.  He was 
the chair of the Green Caucus at the Conference on the Future of the EU.

Andrea Gaiba is Programme Manager at the Transnational Democracy Pro-
gramme (Florence School of Transnational Governance, EUI), where he works 
on  research  projects  concerned  with  democratising  foresight,  scaling  dem-
ocratic  innovations  and  bridging  artificial  and  collective  intelligence.  He  has 
previously  published  on  e-participation  platforms  deployed  during  delibera-

xi

tive processes and has a forthcoming publication proposing a digital, partici-
patory infrastructure for Europe. Among other responsibilities, Andrea coor-
dinates the activities of the Constituent Network of the Democratic Odyssey 
project, tasked with co-designing a crowdsourced blueprint for a permanent 
People’s Assembly for Europe and the deployment of an open-source digital 
platform to complement the Assembly process.

Brett Hennig co-founded and is a director of the Sortition Foundation, which 
helped run the Global Assembly and campaigns to institute the use of demo-
cratic lotteries (also called sortition) in government. He authored The End of 
Politicians: Time for a Real Democracy, which was described as “a powerful 
critique and provocative alternative” by the late Professor Erik Olin Wright and 
has given many talks promoting sortition, contributed a chapter, “Who needs 
elections?  Accountability,  Equality,  and  Legitimacy  under  Sortition”  to  the 
book Legislature by Lot: Transformative Designs for Deliberative Governance 
(Verso, 2019) and co-authored the article in Nature, Fair algorithms for select-
ing citizens’ assemblies.

Cristina  Lafont  is  Harold  H.  and  Virginia  Anderson  Professor  of  Philoso-
phy at Northwestern University. She is the author of Democracy without Short-
cuts. A Participatory Conception of Deliberative Democracy (Oxford University 
Press, 2020); Global Governance and Human Rights (Spinoza Lecture Series, 
van Gorcum, 2012); Heidegger, Language, and World-disclosure (Cambridge 
University Press, 2000), The Linguistic Turn in Hermeneutic Philosophy (MIT 
Press, 1999). With Nadia Urbinati she is co-author of the book The Lottocratic 
Mentality: Defending Democracy against Lottocracy (Oxford University Press, 
2024).

Kalypso Nicolaidis is Professorial Chair of Global Affairs at the EUI Florence 
School of Transnational Governance in Florence, where she convenes the Dem-
ocratic Odyssey, the Transnational Democracy Programme, the EUI democra-
cy cluster, and the Global Peace Tech Hub. She is emeritus fellow at the Uni-
versity of Oxford and was professor at Harvard University’s Kennedy School 
of Government and at ENA, Strasbourg. She has worked with every EU insti-
tutions, including the European Parliament. Her research revolves around the 
connections between global and European governance at the intersection of 
democracy and geopolitics. Her last book is: A Citizen’s Guide to the Rule of 
Law - Why We Need to Fight for the Most Precious Human Inventions of All 
Time (with Adis Merdzanovic, 2021). Her website: http://kalypsoNicolaidis.
com/.

Should a Citizens' Assembly Complement the European Parliament? xii

Table of content

Alvaro Oleart is an FNRS postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Po-
litical Science and the Institute for European Studies of the Université Libre 
de Bruxelles. His research focuses on the relationship between political conflict 
and  democracy  through  a  decolonial  lens  in  the  context  of  the  European 
Union by analysing the discourse in the European public spheres, citizen par-
ticipation processes, political parties, the media, civil society and transnational 
social movements from both an empirical and normative perspective. He is the 
author of the books Framing TTIP in the European Public Spheres: Towards 
an Empowering Dissensus for EU Integration (Palgrave, 2021) and Democracy 
Without Politics in EU Citizen Participation: From European Demoi to Decolo-
nial Multitude (Palgrave, 2023).

David Owen is Professor of Social and Political Philosophy at the University 
of Southampton. He has published nine books, most recently the collectively 
authored Prospects of Citizenship (Bloomsbury, 2011), as well as articles and 
book chapters on a wide range of topics in social and political theory. Recent 
work includes: Refugees, Fairness and Taking up Slack’, Moral Philosophy and 
Politics 2016; 3(2): 141–164; Citizenship and Human Rights in Shachar et al. 
(eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Citizenship (Oxford University Press, 2016); In 
loco civitatis: on the normative structure of the international refugee regime in S. 
Fine and L. Ypi (eds.) Migration in Political Theory (Oxford University Press, 
2016); and Populus, Demos and Self-Rule in R. Baubock (ed.) Democratic In-
clusion (Manchester UP, 2017).

Melisa  Ross  (PhD,  Humboldt  Universität  zu  Berlin)  is  a  Postdoctoral  re-
searcher at SOCIUM Research Center on Inequality, University of Bremen. 
She  received  her  PhD  in  2022.  In  the  past,  she  was  a  research  fellow  at  the 
LATINNO  project  (Democracy  and  Democratization  Department,  WZB 
Berlin Social Science Center) and the Healthier Democracies project (Public 
Agenda,  New  York,  USA).  She  currently  co-leads  the    Global  Citizens’  As-
semblies  Network  (GloCAN)  and  is  part  of  the  Global  Solidarity  cluster 
(GlobaLab)  at  the  University  of  Bremen.  Her  research  spans  contemporary 
Latin American politics, neoliberalism and postneoliberalism, citizen partici-
pation, deliberation, and democratic innovations, especially at the regional and 
transnational level.

Lucile Schmid studied at Ecole nationale d’administration (ENA) and began 
her  carrier  at  the  Ministry  of  Economy  and  Finance  in  the  international  de-
partment. After this first step, she worked in different ministries (social affairs, 

xiii

culture, and planification). She was elected at the regional and local level as a so-
cialist. In 2013 she has cofounded La Fabrique écologique a think tank dedicat-
ed to green issues where she is specifically in charge of relations with academics. 
She is a member of Esprit magazine editorial committee (focusing on 1/green 
issues 2/ public action and civil society ). Since 2023 she works in the NGO 
Emmaüs on developing links between social and green issues with people ex-
perimenting precarious status.

Eva Schmidt is a PhD candidate at the University of Münster. In her disserta-
tion, she is working on the intersection between epistemic injustice and delib-
erative democracy. She has recently published an article on Epistemic Injustice 
in Deliberative Mini Publics in the Journal of Deliberative Democracy.

Sandra  Seubert  (*1968)  is  Professor  of  Political  Theory  at  Goethe  Univer-
sity  Frankfurt.  Her  research  focuses  on  transnationalisation  of  democracy, 
transformations  of  citizenship  and  the  shifting  boundaries  between  public 
and private. She is co-spokesperson of the Research Training Group “Stand-
ards of Governance” and was Work Package Coordinator EU KP 7 Integrated 
Project: “Challenge: Exercising EU Citizenship: Removing Barriers”: Barriers 
towards EU Citizenship (bEUcitizen),. For the academic year 2019/20, she was 
Alfred Grosser visiting professor at Sciences Po Paris.  Her recent publications 
include  The  Conference  on  the  Future  of  Europe  as  a  chance  for  democratic 
catching up? Towards a citizen-centred perspective on constitutional renewal in 
the  EU,  in:  Global  Constitutionalism,  online  first  https://doi.org/10.1017/
S2045381723000199  and  Reconsidering  EU  citizenship.  Contradictions  and 
Constraints, co-edited with Oliver Eberl and Frans van Waarden, (Edward Elgar 
Publishing 2018).

Yves  Sintomer  (www.sintomer.net)  is  Professor  of  Political  Science,  Paris  8 
University,  Honorary  Senior  fellow  at  the  French  University  Institute,  and 
has a honorary degree, Liège University. He has been invited scholar or pro-
fessor  at  Harvard,  Yale,  Oxford,  University  College  London,  Tsinghua  and 
Peking  universities,  Science  Po  Paris,  Frankfurt  and  Berlin-Humboldt,  Neu-
châtel and Lausanne (Switzerland), UCL and ULB (Belgium), EUI Florence. 
His most recent book is The Government of Chance. Sortition and Democracy 
from Athens to the Present, (Cambridge University Press, 2023). He has written 
on participatory and deliberative democracy, and political representation. His 
writings have been published in 20 languages.

Should a Citizens' Assembly Complement the European Parliament? xiv

Table of content

Graham Smith is Professor of Politics at the University of Westminster and 
Chair  of  the  Knowledge  Network  on  Climate  Assemblies  (KNOCA).  He 
is  a  specialist  in  democratic  innovations,  particularly  in  relation  to  climate 
governance and recently published open access We Need to Talk About Climate: 
How Citizens’ Assemblies Can Help Us Solve the Climate Crisis (University of 
Westminster Press).

Nadia  Urbinati  is  Kyriakos  Tsakopoulos  Professor  of  Political  Theory 
Department  of  Political  Science  at  Columbia  University.  She  is  the  author 
of Me The People: How Populism Transforms Democracy (Harvard Universi-
ty Press, 2019; it received the Capalbio award); The Tyranny of the Moderns 
(Yale University Press, 2015); Democracy Disfigured: Opinion, Truth and the 
People (Harvard University Press, 2014); Representative Democracy: Principles 
and Genealogy (University of Chicago Press, 2006), and of Mill on Democracy: 
From the Athenian Polis to Representative Government (University of Chicago 
Press, 2002; it received the David and Elaine Spitz Prize). With Cristina Lafont, 
she’s co-author of the book The Lottocratic Mentality: Defending Democracy 
against Lottocracy (Oxford University Press, 2024)

Chiara Valsangiacomo is a postdoctoral researcher at the School of Politics and 
International Relations, University College Dublin, Ireland. Prior to joining 
UCD, she was a postdoctoral fellow and doctoral candidate at the Universi-
ty of Zurich, Switzerland. Her research interests include political philosophy, 
normative democratic theory, democratic innovations, political representation 
and constitutional design theory. Her current research project, “Let the future 
be liquid. Democracy in the twenty-first century”, aims to develop a unified 
theoretical and normative framework that can be used to evaluate liquid demo-
cratic institutions and compare them with other democratic innovations.

Antoine Vergne is the Co-Director of Missions Publiques. He holds a dual 
PhD from Freie Universität Berlin and Science Po Paris on the theory and prac-
tices  of  sortition  in  politics.  He  has  been  working  since  2004  on  improving 
democratic processes with the help of sortition based methods, at all scales of 
governance. Antoine’s research interests span across a large spectrum, from de-
centralized  governance  to  tech-enhanced  deliberations.  Since  2017,  Antoine 
has been coordinating coalitions of private, public, and civil society actors to 
bring sortition, and citizen voices at the table of global UN negotiations, first 
with the World Wide Views on Climate, and then with We The Internet.

xv

Anthony Zacharzewski is President of Democratic Society, a Brussels-based 
NGO that he co-founded in 2006. He was previously a senior civil servant and 
local government officer in the UK.

Christina Zuber is Jean Monnet Fellow at the EUI’s Robert Schuman Centre 
of  Advanced  Studies  and  Professor  of  German  Politics  at  the  Department 
of Politics and Public Administration of the University of Konstanz. Before 
joining the University of Konstanz, she was a postdoctoral research fellow at 
the University of Bremen and at Pompeu Fabra University and taught at the 
Universities of Zurich and Lucerne. Her main research areas are democratic 
theory and party politics, nationalism studies, and citizenship and integration 
policy. Current research investigates nationalist mobilisation in contemporary 
and  historical  European  democracies  and  explores  ways  to  integrate  insights 
about  the  relevance  of  social  identities  for  political  behaviour  into  standard 
models of party competition. 

Should a Citizens' Assembly Complement the European Parliament? Preface

The  European  Union  has  a  unique  ensemble  of  supranational  institutions 
that provide checks and balances but also need to cooperate in order to get EU 
policies adopted and implemented. Yet, even more than most of its member 
states,  the  EU’s  democratic  mandate  has  persistently  been  questioned  and 
its politics have recently become more confrontational as well as captured by 
special interests. 

When member states had to face major decisions on which national publics 
seemed to be deeply divided or for which the ordinary process of legislation 
seemed to provide insufficient legitimacy, they have sometimes revived a very 
old instrument of democracy: deliberative citizens’ assemblies whose members 
are selected by lot. 

In this GLOBALCIT forum debate, Kalypso Nicolaidis proposes a bold 
plan to create a European Citizens’ Assembly (ECA) with some major inno-
vative features: the assembly should be permanent with rotating membership 
rather than devoted to a single issue for a limited period of time; it should be 
composed of randomly selected citizens from across europe as well as non na-
tionals residing in europe; it should be itinerant rather than located in Brussels, 
Strasbourg or Luxembourg; crucially she argues that such an assembly would 
enhance rather than compete with the EP’s legitimacy by providing a space for 
new kinds of interactions with the broader public;  and it  should  have  agen-
da-setting powers for the European Parliament that go beyond the consultative 
role of most national-level citizens’ assemblies.1 In her opening essay, Nicolaid-
is elaborates and defends these and several other construction principles for an 
ECA. 

1 

 ‘Representing European citizens: Why a Citizens’ Assembly should complement the European Par-
liament’,  GLOBALCIT,  https://globalcit.eu/representing-european-citizens-why-a-european-citi-
zens-assembly-should-complement-the-european-parliament/. 

2

Table of content

This proposal is, obviously, controversial and we have attempted to bring 
together critics, supporters, and modifiers of this idea in a wide-ranging dialogue 
that involves 23 authors in 19 responses. This collection concludes with a re-
joinder by Nicolaidis, in which she does not so much attempt to rebut objec-
tions as to further develop her proposal in the light of arguments advanced in 
the debate. 

This  GLOBALCIT  forum  unfolded  between  June  and  December  2024,  on  a 
rolling basis with each new contribution building on the previous ones. This period 
has seen tumultuous changes with the rise of the far right in European Parlia-
ment  elections,  the  appointment  of  a  new  European  Commission,  and  the 
re-election of an American president whose political agenda is overtly hostile to 
European integration. None of these events have killed the idea of a European 
Citizens’ Assembly. On the contrary, the Democratic Odyssey project has suc-
cessfully launched a pilot that has provided a “proof of concept”. 2

This  is  the  20th  GLOBALCIT  forum,  a  successful  format  that  aims  to 
create  a  dialogue  between  interlocutors  rather  than  merely  collecting  inde-
pendent  contributions  by  different  authors.3  We  mark  this  achievement  and 
also the greater number of contributions in this forum by publishing it not as a 
working paper, but as an open access e-book. Our hope is that it will find pro-
ductive uses among both civil society activists for deliberative citizens’ assem-
blies  and  among  institutional  actors  and  policymakers  at  local,  national  and 
European levels. 

Our  special  thanks  go  to  Jadé  Botha,  Raghavi  Viswanath  and  Giorgio  

Giamberini who have provided excellent editorial support.

Vienna and Florence, January 2025

Rainer Bauböck and Kalypso Nicolaidis

2 

3 

 ‘Democratic Odyssey’, Democratic Odyssey, https://democraticodyssey.eui.eu/home.

 ‘Forum’, GLOBALCIT, https://globalcit.eu/category/forum/. 

Representing European 
citizens: Why a Citizens’ 
Assembly should 
complement the 
European Parliament

Kalypso Nicolaidis4 

 Once again, the European Parliamentary elections taking place in June 2024 
have produced democratic angst: do citizens care at all? Will more than half of 
the  European  electorate  even  bother  to  vote?  Will  we  witness  another  series 
of parallel national campaigns? Will a new European Parliament reflect both 
greater polarisation in Europe and the growth of extreme right representation? 
Ultimately, these questions boil down to one: do Europeans feel represented 
by their members of the European Parliament – or, for that matter, by EU in-
stitutions in general?

Alas no. Or at least not enough. But there is a silver lining: Our current 
democratic predicaments offer opportunities for change and for representative 
democracy to re-invent itself, i.e., the ways citizens, representatives and other 
actors interact. The challenge is to re-organise democratic life in a social, polit-
ical, technological and economic context that will never again be the one that 
prevailed at the 18th century birth of parliamentary governments. In the era of 
unfiltered web-democracy we must radically bolster the sense of ‘democratic 

4  European University Institute

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ownership’ of the EU’s institutions by its citizens.  

I  will  argue  that  such  a  sense  of  ownership  can  be  enhanced  through  a 
radical  institutional  innovation:  the  introduction  of  a  permanent  European 
Assembly  of  randomly  selected  people  into  Europe’s  political  landscape. 
Randomly  selected  Citizens’  Assemblies  (CA)  have  proliferated  around  the 
world  in  the  last  two  decades,  mostly  at  the  local  level  –  a  trend  labelled  by 
the OECD as the deliberative wave.5 A few of these have become permanent, 
yet  there  is  no  such  permanent  assembly  transnationally.  Such  a  European 
Citizens’ Assembly (ECA) would not be sitting ‘up there’ in Brussels but be an 
itinerant body, travelling around Europe and its peripheries, meeting with local 
actors in multiple configurations that would change over time, with frequent 
rotation of its members. It would be embedded in a pan-European participa-
tory eco-system that it would also help to bring into being. Call this a leap of 
faith, but I believe that if citizens can literally see power diffused, they might 
start to believe they own a share in it.

I am currently campaigning for such an assembly along with others who 
have  set  sail  under  the  banner  of  the  Democratic  Odyssey  Project6  and  its 
initial blueprint.7 The beauty of the project is that it has lent itself to academic 
activism: testing one’s ideas by putting them into practice (through a ‘proof of 
concept’) and revising them as they fail or succeed. Here I would like to take 
a step back in the spirit of the GLOBALCIT forum by soliciting pro-and-con 
arguments linked to competing conceptions of citizenship and democracy.

Before I proceed, let me put my cards on the table. This proposal does not 
rest on a comparative claim as can be found in the vast historical and theoretical 
scholarship on the respective merits of selection by election vs by lot, a debate 
brilliantly re-invigorated in our times by the likes of Dahl and Manin whose 
views were far less univocal than that of those who seek to appropriate them 
today.8  I  do  not  argue  for  replacing  elections  by  sortition  (as  do  Guerrero, 

5 

6 

7 

8 

 OECD. (2023), Innovative Citizen Participation and New Democratic Institutions: Catching the 
Deliberative Wave, OECD Publishing.

 ‘Towards a Peoples’ Assembly for Europe’, Democratic Odyssey, https://democraticodyssey.eui.eu/
home.

 Berg, C., Chwalisz, C., Nicolaidïs, K and Sintomer, Y. (2023), ‘The European Citizens’ Assembly: 
Designing the missing branch of the EU’, https://www.demnext.org/uploads/The-EUCA-Pa-
per_040923-FINAL.pdf (hereinafter, ‘EUCA, 2023’).

 Dahl, R. (1989), Democracy and Its Critics, Yale University Press (hereinafter ‘Dahl, 1989’); Manin, 
B. (1997), The Principles of Representative Government, Cambridge University Press (hereinafter 
‘Manin, 1997’).

5

and  Landemore)  and  share  many  of  the  criticisms  that  have  focused  on  the 
risks associated with denying the import of politics, parties and organised civil 
society.9  But  neither  do  I  believe  that  an  ECA  should  simply  be  a  subordi-
nate body, a mere advisor or faire-valoir for the EP. Instead of throwing out 
the baby with the bathwater of ‘lottocracy’, the proposal turns on the idea of 
complementarity and synergies in order to develop a holistic approach for the 
EU  that  combines  the  best  of  democratic  models  by  supplementing  the  EP 
with an ECA.10 In short, its value rests above all on its idiosyncratic features 
(transnationality and permanency) and on its experimental character.

I  start  by  making  the  case  for  such  an  assembly,  along  its  three  features, 
namely, the value of holistic democracy, the challenge of transnational democ-
racy and the promise of permanence.  I then move on to offer a heuristic for 
our  discussion  along  three  contested  dimensions  of  democratic  legitimacy: 
popular sovereignty, democratic governance, and civic culture. Each of these 
is  associated  with  a  different  rationale  for  a  transnational  CA,  namely  equal 
representation, integrity, and epistemic diversity. On each dimension I open 
up the debate to what I consider some of the most difficult questions with a 
view to making the proposal conditional on addressing potential pitfalls. I will 
conclude with some reflections on the process of co-creation in the shadow of 
alternative imaginaries.

The case for a Permanent European 
Citizens’ Assembly

The  story  has  been  told  how,  in  the  18th  century  second  democratic 
transformation,  political  elites  prevented  the  re-birth  of  ancient  practices  of 
sortition in order to limit access to power in the incipient state and to adjacent 

9  Guerrero, A. (2014), ‘Against Elections: The Lottocratic Alternative’, Philos Public Aff, 42: 135-178 
(hereinafter ‘Guerrero, 2014’); Landemore, H. (2020), Open Democracy: Reinventing Popular Rule 
for the Twenty-First Century, Princeton University Press H. (2020), Open Democracy: Reinventing 
Popular Rule for the Twenty-First Century, Princeton University (hereinafter ‘Landemore, 2020’); 
for a discussion, see also Owen, D and Smith, G. (2018), ‘Sortition, Rotation, and Mandate: Condi-
tions for Political Equality and Deliberative Reasoning’, Politics & Society, 46(3): 419-434 (hereinaf-
ter ‘Owen and Smith, 2018’).

10 

 Rummens, S and  Geenens, R. (2020), ‘ Lottocracy Versus Democracy’, Res Publica; Umbers, L. 
(2021),  ‘Against Lottocracy’, European Journal of Political Theory, 20(2):312-334; Lafont, C. (2023), 
‘Democracy Without Shortcuts: An Institutional Approach to Democratic Legitimacy’, in Eich S., 
Jurkevics, A., Nathwani, N and Siegel, N (eds.), Another Universalism: Seyla Benhabib and the Fu-
ture of Critical Theory, Columbia University Press (hereinafter ‘Lafont, 2023’).

Should a Citizens' Assembly Complement the European Parliament? 6

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property rights.11 Representative democracy has been riddled since the begin-
ning, with deep conflicts regarding the appropriate configuration of power in 
societies aspiring to deliver equal citizenship.  

Yet,  the  backdrop  of  increasingly  complex  state-society  relations  in  the 
contemporary  era,  many  will  argue  that  representative  democracy  has  been 
uniquely successful in balancing the dual goals of incorporating citizens’ will, 
on the one hand, and expertise for efficient policy making, on the other. Today, 
however, the balance is deeply under strain. I will not rehearse here the diagno-
sis of democratic dissonance between our system of representation and the in-
terests and aspirations of ordinary people. Representative democracy is being 
criticised for not being inclusive, responsive or accountable enough and, at the 
same time, for being too responsive to short-term popular preferences. Out-of-
touch elites are pitted against populists, expert knowledge against opinion polls 
and social media. No wonder populist leaders have emerged to exploit this per-
sistent social anger against institutions.

Thus, we have woken up from what Americans used to call the ‘dream of 
full representation’, a system that was born for a society that no longer exists, 
where cross-cutting social cleavages could coalesce into temporary aggregations 
of interest and political coalitions. What we witness instead today is polarised 
pluralism,  with  infinite  numbers  of  radically  heterogeneous  groups,  often 
isolated from each other and unable to connect. Even if political classes had not 
appropriated  politics,  today’s  parliaments  and  governments  cannot  pretend 
to represent the whole of society, nor to offer solid resilience against populist 
and technocratic capture. This state of affairs seems to be compounded at the 
European level. And so, in short, my proposal rests on three pillars: a holistic 
approach, transnationalism, and permanency.

The case for holistic democracy

Most importantly, when we speak of citizen or peoples’ assemblies, we need to 
stress that they rest on combining three crucial ingredients, namely sortition, 
deliberation and rotation. Each of these plays a key but different role in their 
legitimacy. In its simplest form, the ECA proposal can be traced back to the 
‘sortition movement’ initiated by James Fishkin, who sought to reassert the im-
portance of Habermasian deliberation in our quest for political equality in the 
making of collective choices, holding up mini-publics as an alternative to the 

11 

 Dahl, 1989; De Djin, A. (2020), Freedom: An Unruly History, Harvard University Press.

7

distortions of opinion polls.12 Since then, the deliberative wave has given rise to 
scores of conceptual and empirical debates and refinements, and such assem-
blies have become the symbol of democracy between and beyond elections.13

At the heart of it all lies the injunction to rethink the idea of ‘representative 
democracy’ by questioning that the delegation of power to political represent-
atives in a legislature and executive is the only form of re-presenting citizens. 
This leaves us with the need to reinvent the meaning of re-presentation as the 
many ways in which citizens can be made ‘present’ in the political sphere. If 
democratic representation can take many interconnected forms, selecting the 
members of an assembly by lot simply contributes to representing society as a 
whole.

To cut a long story short, the proposal builds on the many ways in which 
the three logics of representation (electoral, deliberative and direct) and sources 
of  legitimacy  can  be  reconciled  and  synergised,  as  they  indeed  have  been  in 
countless  experiments,  starting  with  the  streams  of  democratic  reforms  in 
Athens in the 6th and 5th centuries BC, from Clisthenes to Pericles.

12 

 Fishkin, J. (1993), Democracy and Deliberation: New Directions for Democratic Reform, Yale Uni-
versity Press.

13 

 Van Reybrouck, D. (2013), Against Elections: The Case for Democracy, The Bodley Head Ltd.

Should a Citizens' Assembly Complement the European Parliament? 8

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Only  sociologically  are  these  three  fundamental  forms  of  democracy  al-
ternatives  to  each  other.  Elected  representatives  are  often  wary  of  delibera-
tive forms of democracy that they feel might usurp some of their legitimacy 
or dilute their own control over the levers of power. And advocates of direct 
democracy fear that deliberative approaches might serve as fig-leaves for citizen 
participation put forth by those who want to do away with direct democracy 
altogether.

And yet, when it comes to democratic practices, it would be absurd to do 
away with any one of these three forms of democracy or diminish their distinct 
appeal. Instead, if power sharing is effectively to happen, democracy needs to 
flourish in all its forms at a time where the complexity of governance, regula-
tion  and  social  control  has  been  pushing  societies  in  the  opposite  direction, 
namely towards centralisation and monopolisation of control by a few at the 
expense of the many.

The three fundamental modes of electoral, direct and deliberative democ-
racy  are  not  alternatives  to  each  other.  As  Hannah  Arendt  argued,  power  is 
not a zero-sum game. Creating a new (polycentric) centre of power in the EU 
would likely increase its legitimacy as a whole and, therefore, the legitimacy of 
the EU itself.14 It is the combination of these three forms of power and rep-
resentation that I term ‘holistic democracy’. This view is in keeping with the 
‘systemic turn’ in democratic theory, which takes democracy as a unified ideal, 
not as attached to a specific model, but as a set of practices that can, in various 
combinations, contribute to the democratic character of a polity.15

Transnationalism in theory:  
Towards a demoicratic polity

Many will argue that CAs may make sense at the local level, even possibly at the 
national level, as we have witnessed in Iceland (2010), Ireland (2016) or France 
(2019/2020), but why is it desirable to up the ante by promoting them at the 
supranational level?

Arguably, the limits of electoral democracy are even stronger beyond the 
state, where directly elected MEPs may complement the indirect legitimacy of 
government councils but where such directness is not felt by the average voter. 

14 

 Arendt, H. (1958), The Human Condition, University of Chicago Press.

15 

 Dahl, 1989.

9

The lens of demoicratic theory in particular serves to emphasise the horizon-
tal quality of the EU, a polity of multiple distinct but interdependent peoples 
committed to the mutual opening of their respective democracies.16 The point 
of a transnationalism, as opposed to nationalism and supranationalism, is less 
to deny or debate the existence of an elusive European demos than to elevate 
horizontality  from  a  positive  concept  describing  the  nature  of  internation-
al  or  European  cooperation  to  a  normative  one  conveying  the  ideal  of  ‘ever 
closer’  mutual  commitment  between  imagined  peoples  short  of  modern  na-
tion-state-building.17  Crucially,  such  horizontality  cannot  be  operationalised 
without  deepening  the  direct  links  between  European  citizens  themselves, 
which  in  turn  requires  radical  democratic  innovations  to  regulate  the  joint 
democratic government of inescapably different, yet also inescapably interde-
pendent demoi.18

In  short,  demoicratic  citizenship  shifts  the  spotlight  from  the  vertical 
focus  on  domestic  accountability  of  liberal  theories  to  horizontal  accounta-
bility among demoi, among citizens themselves, taking transnational cooper-
ative entanglements all the way down to the citizens, thus translating the idea 
of transnationalism into translocalism. As leaders balance their respective dem-
ocratic mandates, publics must demand cognitive tools for engaging in trans-
national societal empathy and establishing a form of joint and equal control 
over the conditions that allow their reciprocal non-domination through insti-
tutional and legal safeguards at the (EU) centre.

Demoicratic agency is therefore not only exercised simultaneously through 
the dual routes of national and EU citizenship19 but also through the various 
channels  of  democracy  from  below,  empowering  both  formal  and  informal 
civil society to make good on the Lisbon Treaty’s provision on participatory de-

16 

 Nicolaidis, K. (2013), ‘European demoicracy and its crisis’, J Common Mark Stud, 51: 351-369; 
Nicolaidis, K and Liebert, U. (2023), ‘Chapter 5: Demoicratic theory: Bridging positive, critical 
and normative approaches to European studies’, in The Elgar Companion to the European Union, 
Edward Elgar Publishing (hereinafter ‘Nicolaidis and Liebert, 2023’).

17 

 Nicolaidis, K. (2023), ‘The Peoples Imagined: Constituting a Demoicratic European Polity’, in 
Jan Komárek (ed.), European Constitutional Imaginaries: Between Ideology and Utopia, (Oxford 
Academic; Tilley, C. (2007), Democracy, Cambridge University Press.

18 

 Ronzoni, M. (2017), ‘The European Union as a demoicracy: Really a third way?’, European Jour-
nal of Political Theory, 16(2): 210-234.

19 

 Scherz, A and Welge, R. (2014) ‘Union Citizenship Revisited: Multilateral Democracy as Norma-
tive Standard for European Citizenship’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 41(8): 1254–
1275.

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mocracy.20 This involves enhancing formal mechanisms that allow demoi more 
effectively to borrow from one another and interconnect their different parlia-
mentary,  political  party  and  electoral  systems.  GLOBALCIT  has  debated  in 
the past how such an agenda would best be served by introducing transnational 
party candidate lists for European elections,21 by extending mobile EU citizens’ 
voting rights to national elections in their host countries22 and by extending the 
local franchise to third-country nationals.23

But in this panoply, only participatory and deliberative democracy offers 
the possibility to connect nationals through a mechanism for mediating po-
litical contestation in different political and social fields of action. A demoi-
cratic ethos explores a ‘right to participate and deliberate’ jointly with citizens 
from other states, beyond traditional models of representative democracy that 
cannot  achieve  direct  democratic  interaction  and  debate  across  national  or 
metropolitan polities and citizens in Europe.  

Transnationalism in practice: Citizen 
participation between elections is the 
new EU mantra…

It is noteworthy then that such an ethos has started to be put in practice by a 
plurality of EU actors, bureaucrats or politicians, as they realise that the EU’s 
legitimacy deficit might call for an even greater emphasis on citizen participa-
tion than in the member states – to counter democratic disaffection and the 
fragmentation of the European public sphere, to seek legitimacy beyond voting 
and other traditional rights associated with European citizenship.

With the Treaty of Lisbon (2008), EU citizens acquire multiple participa-
tory instruments (in addition to the right to petition the EP inherited from the 
Maastricht Treaty) – from the European Commission’s public online consul-

20 

 Liebert, U and Gattig, A. (2013), Democratising the EU from Below? Citizenship, Civil Society and 
the Public Sphere, Routledge.

21 

 Blatter, J and Bauböck, R (eds.), Let me vote in your country, and I’ll let you vote in mine: a proposal 
for transnational democracy, EUI RSCAS, 2019/25, Global Governance Programme.

22 

 Cayala, P., Seth, C and Bauböck, R (eds.), Should EU citizens living in other member states vote there 
in national elections?, EUI RSCAS, 2012/32, Global Governance Programme.

23 

 Bauböck, R and Orgad, L (eds.), Cities vs states : should urban citizenship be emancipated from 
nationality?, EUI RSCAS 2020/16, Global Governance Programme.

11

tation and Citizens’ Dialogues, via the role of the European Ombudsman as an 
advocate for the public vis-à-vis the EU institutions, to the European Citizen’s 
Initiative (ECI).24

But while these mechanisms are broadly welcome, they have, unfortunate-
ly, remained too timid and largely ineffective in bolstering bottom-up partici-
pation, involving as they do experts and organised interest groups rather than 
ordinary citizens. They don’t encourage debates on non-experts’ policy prefer-
ences and are applied too often at the discretion of the political elites to justify 
pre-existing policy decisions. In short, they feel more like consultative mecha-
nisms than significant democratic innovations.

To many of us, the introduction of so-called Citizens’ Panels, a new tool 
for citizens’ participation during the 2021-2022 Conference on the Future of 
Europe  (CoFE),25  which  was  sponsored  by  the  three  main  EU  institutions, 
offered an exciting new promise (EuroPolis, a first transnational EU deliber-
ative  experiment  was  organised  before  the  2009  European  Parliament  elec-
tions).26  Four  panels  made  up  of  200  randomly  selected  citizens  from  all  27 
Member States and reflecting the EU’s diversity issued recommendations that 
are now making their way through Brussels’ decision-making machine.

Here was a demoicratic EU, surfing on the deliberative wave and doing so 
transnationally, a first in the recent history of the revival of citizens’ assemblies 
around  the  world.  In  the  first  half  of  2023,  three  new  Citizens’  Panels  were 
launched  by  the  Commission  (on  food  waste,  virtual  worlds,  and  learning 
mobility), each comprised of 150 people, which in turn also issued recommen-
dations on their assigned topics.27 Two more are taking place in spring 2024, 
one on energy efficiency and the other on countering hatred.

Optimists consider such a deliberative moment a turning point. At least 
from a political sociology standpoint, there are good reasons to hope that in-
troducing European Citizens’ Panels in the EU’s modus operandi makes them 
part of a new dynamic that is likely to persist as more European civil servants 

24 

 ‘European Citizens’ Initiative’, European Union, https://citizens-initiative.europa.eu/_en (herein-
after ‘ECI-EU’). 

25 

 ‘Conference on the Future of Europe’, European Commission, https://commission.europa.eu/
strategy-and-policy/priorities-2019-2024/new-push-european-democracy/conference-future-eu-
rope_en (hereinafter, ‘CoFE’). 

26 

 ‘EuroPolis: A deliberative polity-making project’, European Commission, https://cordis.europa.
eu/project/id/225314/reporting. 

27 

 ‘European Citizens’ Panels: A new phase of citizen engagement’, European Commission, https://
citizens.ec.europa.eu/european-citizens-panels_en (hereinafter ‘ECP’). 

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are  progressively  converted  to  their  charm.  They  show  that  transnational 
deliberative  processes  can  be  effective  in  enhancing  the  kind  of  mutual 
knowledge  and  entanglement  called  for  by  a  sustainable  demoicracy.28  The 
CoFE has opened a window of opportunity for reflection on new kinds of po-
litical agency and interaction between citizens, political elites and bureaucra-
cies to take the deliberative wave, which has so far reached only the local and 
national arenas to the supranational level as a crucial way of managing demo-
cratic interdependence.29

But even if this were the case, how can we speak of a democratic revival 
through citizen engagement if the CoFE that was supposed to kickstart it has 
been largely ignored by the wider public? If none of the choices made along the 
way, from the composition of the assembly to modes of sortition, to choices of 
topic and types of facilitation, were transparent and democratic?

Above  all,  the  panels  failed  to  reach  the  wider  public  because  they  were 
largely insulated from ongoing political dynamics (e.g. in national parliaments, 
the media, social movements). They resembled mega focus groups rather than 
‘the people’ in action. The stakes and their impact on actual policies remained 
opaque, as noted by citizens themselves in a letter to the EP’s petition commit-
tee.30

Moreover, mediating actors (political parties, trade unions, civil society or-
ganisations) have only been involved very lightly, which will please purists of 
deliberative democracy but not those who hold a more holistic view of politics 
and policymaking in the EU. This remains a process of ‘technocratic democra-
tisation’,31 or ‘democracy without politics’,32 where the consultative logic still 
prevails over the democratic alternative.

28 

 Alemanno, A., Mackay, J., Calum, A., Milanese, N and Nicolaidis, K. (2021). ‘What’s in an exper-
iment?: opportunities and risks for the Conference on the Future of Europe’, STG Policy Briefs, 
2021/16, https://hdl.handle.net/1814/72598. 

29 

 Chwalisz, C. (2019), ‘A New Wave of Deliberative Democracy’, Carnegie Europe.

30 

31 

32 

 ‘Revision of ECP letter to Council presidency’, Google Docs, https://docs.google.com/docu-
ment/d/1SJBZXOLXUcvJhlunDBWmxkoPH-LEhSrAzC-dYcsjyJc/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.
cb2fa6z0u29m. 

 Gjaldbæk-Sverdrup, E., Nicolaidis, K and Hernández, N. ‘Technocratic democratisation’: what 
can we learn from the European Commission’s new generation European citizens’ panels?, EUI 
RSCAS, 2023/65.

 Oleart, A and Theuns, T. (2023), ‘‘Democracy without Politics’ in the European Commission’s 
Response to Democratic Backsliding: From Technocratic Legalism to Democratic Pluralism’, 
JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, 61: 882–899.

13

In this context, can the European Parliament not offer its own path to com-
bining modes of democracy? It could play a leading role as a standard bearer for 
strong and more open democratic standards while offering sufficient resources 
for citizen participation processes and a non-bureaucratic source of legitimacy 
to confer the type of authority necessary to ground rule making and compli-
ance.

…But a permanent Citizens’ Assembly 
would do a better job

Even while many would agree that Europe needs more than ad-hoc panels, the 
idea of a new permanent body for the EU meets with much resistance. Per-
manent CAs may make sense at the local level, in cities like Paris and Brussels, 
objectors argue, but why is it desirable to add yet another institution to the 
already very complex EU edifice as this proposal33 and others argue?34 Let me 
spell out five reasons.

Continuity.  The  term  ‘permanence’  can  be  misunderstood.  It  does  not 
mean  that  the  assembly  would  be  permanently  sitting  or  that  its  members 
would hold their mandates for a long time. On the contrary, the ongoing nature 
of the ECA’s existence will be combined with intermittence through rotating 
membership (of a few months), a feature which has nearly always character-
ised bodies selected by lottery in democratic and republican history.  Members 
would meet intermittently and in different places. Nevertheless, such a standing 
body would become a genuine fixture of the EU institutional landscape, and its 
stature would be continuous as institutions are meant to be, with a privileged 
relation to the EP.

Independence.  A  permanent  CA  would  escape  the  vagaries  of  the  politi-
cal cycle. It would avoid falling prey to arbitrariness and cherry-picking as to 
when and how citizens are convened to form a temporary assembly (or panels 
for  the  Commission).  As  an  independent  space  within  the  EU  institutional 
structure, it would be well placed not only to provide policy input as do the 
current panels but could become a source of sunlight shining onto the whole 
EU edifice – an open monitoring body whose vigilance could enhance the le-

33 

 EUCA, 2023.

34 

 Abels, G., Alemanno, A., Crum, B., Demidov, A., Hierlemann, D., Renkamp, A and Trechsel, A. 
(2022), Next level citizen participation in the EU: Institutionalising European Citizens’ Assemblies, 
Bertelsmann-Stiftung (hereinafter ‘IECA, 2022’).

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gitimacy  of  other  EU  institutions,  including  the  EP.  And  its  independence 
would be sustained through its own budget. While power cannot just melt in 
deliberation  through  the  force  of  argument,  institutional  staying  power  can 
help mitigate power asymmetries.

Learning.  Permanence  would  also  correct  for  one  of  the  drawbacks  of 
ad-hoc assemblies namely the lack of knowledge consolidation, by promoting 
collective learning over time and refining from experience the way the assembly 
operates by collecting best practices. Its translocal character would allow for 
what is sometimes referred to as side-scaling and thus mutual learning across 
political systems. The learning dynamic through different iteration would not 
only benefit facilitators but the citizens themselves.

Embeddedness.  Permanence  would  allow  the  ECA  to  become  more 
embedded over time. Within EU institutions, both the Commission and the 
EU would draw its Citizens’ Panels from the ECA membership. It would also 
be able to develop relations with national parliaments, a crucial dimension of 
embeddedness.  At  the  same  time,  its  permanency  will  facilitate  the  ongoing 
involvement of civil society as interlocutors, collaborators or counter power. 
This, in turn, would empower advocates of citizen engagement within EU in-
stitutions in a virtuous circle of connected political spheres.

Publicness and social imagination. Finally, by existing as a standing body 
labelled ‘assembly’ rather than the more obscure term ‘panel,’ this body would 
be public in the proper sense, visibly part of the institutional landscape (with 
or  without  Treaty  change).  Permanence  would  allow  it  to  acquire  a  status 
understood and valued by the citizenry as citizenship in action, while the very 
label and, look and feel of the assembly would hopefully appeal to their dem-
ocratic imagination. There would be a story to tell about the long march of 
democratic progress, a new way to enlarge the franchise ushered by the third 
democratic transformation, however tentatively.35 In this way, the ECA would 
be a tool for systemic change, not only a footnote to electoral democracy. By 
giving effect to popular power in a non-ephemeral way at the EU level, it might 
even  convey  the  message  that  the  EU  is  becoming  more  democratic  than  its 
member states. And beyond the EU, it could strengthen the EU’s claim as a 
global norm-setter on new democracy, adding to its growing clout on data pro-
tection and the governance of digital platforms, thus strengthening its ability 
to support citizens fighting autocratic control.

35 

 Nicolaidis, K. (2024), ‘The Third Democratic Transformation: From European to Planetary Poli-
tics’, JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, 62: 845–867. (hereinafter ‘Nicolaidis, 2024a’).

15

Embedding the ECA in the EU’s 
institutional landscape and public spheres

How, then, do we proceed to assess this proposal? Let me now offer a method-
ological heuristic and conceptual framework to organise our discussion.

First, I suggest three main criteria. These are standard dimensions of dem-
ocratic legitimacy, namely popular sovereignty, participatory governance, and 
civic culture or ownership, which correspond to different problematiques and 
sometimes  even  disciplinary  commitments,  but  which  are  arguably  comple-
mentary.36 This tripartite division roughly corresponds to input, throughput 
and output legitimacy.

Second,  I  further  suggest  that  each  of  these  criteria  allows  to  highlight  a 
different argument or rationale typically offered regarding the value of citizens 
assemblies, and I ask how each of these rationales transfers to the transnational/
permanent attributes of the ECA.

Third, however strong these arguments, the idea of an ECA has faced con-
siderable  pushback.  I  believe  that  objections  are  best  addressed  by  thinking 
through the relationship between the ECA and the EU’s institutions, most im-
portantly  its  parliament  and  asking  in  particular  under  what  conditions  the 
ECA’s relation to the EP could be synergetic rather than one of subordination 
or substitution.  

Popular Sovereignty: The argument from 
equal representation

If popular sovereignty were to mean that all political power must be vested in 
the people, Cas, in general, and a permanent ECA, in particular, would not 
remedy the exclusion of the vast majority of citizens from the circle of rulers. 
If this is inevitable, traditional electoral representation has unique advantages 
of  creating  an  explicit  mandate  for  representing  the  will  of  voters  under  the 
banner of political equality by combining one person/one vote with the pro-
gressive expansion of the franchise across time.

An assembly created through random selection can claim to supplement 
such equal representation on two counts: through what Manin calls “egalité 

36 

 Szulecki, K. (2018), ‘Conceptualizing energy democracy’, Environmental Politics, 27(1): 21–4.

Should a Citizens' Assembly Complement the European Parliament? 16

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de probabilité” and through alternative ways of effectively widening the fran-
chise. By mirroring the general population in statistical proportion, it creates 
another kind of proxy than the EP for popular representation. As it is practised 
today, sortition usually involves two stages. At a first stage, a lottery takes place 
to invite people to become assembly members from a pool of randomly drawn 
citizens. At a second stage, a process of ‘stratification’ is applied amongst all 
those who respond positively to this first invitation in order to ensure broad 
representativeness.  Borrowing  from  techniques  developed  for  opinion  polls, 
potential self-selection biases are corrected to create the final assembly using 
criteria such as gender, age, education, income, race, and geography based on 
known distributions of these criteria in the general population.

Moving from the aggregate assembly, which is statistically or descriptive-
ly  supposed  to  be  representative,  to  the  individual  members,  we  can  add  an 
affective or identification dimension to ‘representativeness’, as research shows 
(with caveats) that the public tends to see these members as ‘people like us’ – in 
contrast with the EP, where the social gap between representatives and elector-
ates is much more pronounced.

But can a few hundred citizens selected by lottery ‘represent’ 500 million 
citizens across 27 or more countries? They can, at least to the extent that the 
selection process is communicated and explained to the broader public in a way 
that is radically transparent, through what I call ‘a pedagogy of sortition’. By 
contrast, electoral candidates in EP elections are themselves chosen non-trans-
parently by political parties with vertical chains of delegation that are increas-
ingly remote from individual citizens.

Over time, the pedagogy of sortition can teach the wider public that the 
core ethos of randomness is equal chance. If explained well, in fun and accessi-
ble ways, sortition allows people from all walks of life to perceive that they have 
an equal chance of being selected (even if with a very small likelihood), whereas 
they would not stand a chance in the traditional electoral system monopolised 
by professional politicians, shaped by the oligarchic nature of political parties 
and plagued by extremely high barriers to entry, especially at the EU level. The 
argument for enhancing democratic equality is all the more important in an 
EU where some states and, therefore, their citizens are perceived as more equal 
than others. In an ECA, a German worker or a Latvian teacher can feel closer 
to respectively a Spanish worker or an Irish teacher than to their co-nationals. 
And collectively, they can claim to mirror the concerns and hopes of broader 
sways of citizens across borders.

17

...But who is us? Composition, criteria 
and pools

One first difficult conversation has to do with who decides how a represent-
ative sample of a transnational public is designed.  Analysts of sortition have 
recently sought to develop what they call ‘fair algorithms’ for selecting citizens’ 
assemblies with probabilities as close to equal for any individual within a polity 
as mathematically possible, creating metrics of ‘closeness to equality’.37

Democratic progress has traditionally been equated with the expansion of 
citizenship status, the franchise and electoral rights, the foci of GLOBALCIT. 
Citizenship thus became a byword for ‘full representation’ in electoral democ-
racy, an increasingly impossible equation as societies grow and become more 
diverse  and  polarised.  Moreover,  progress  towards  inclusiveness  in  processes 
like EP elections has come to a halt both formally and informally, with rising 
numbers of non-enfranchised migrants from third countries and of abstention 
among those who have voting rights. 

Here I argue that the ECA’s composition would not be fixed once and for 
all. As an institutionalised experiment, it could evolve organically in a radical-
ly transparent and inclusive manner. Its ultimate ambition would be to stim-
ulate and expand our social imaginary through a process of evolution, taking 
in citizens’ understanding of citizenship and representation and their different 
conceptions of the public sphere.

Here are some elements:

Let  us  imagine  that  the  ECA  has  300  members  (mirroring  300  million 
European voters), with a third of them renewed every 6 months. The initial 
pool  is  drawn  from  across  Europe.  A  purely  random  technique  is  chosen 
to  create  the  base  pool  from  which  willing  participants  will  be  extracted  by 
applying criteria that will create a sufficiently diverse assembly.

The criteria chosen to compose the ECA are, of course, key. A first aspect 
has to do with the distance between a polling logic that a sample is represent-
ative only if it is sufficiently large (several thousand across Europe) and a logic 
of  political  representation  where  deliberation  and  decisions  need  to  happen 
within a much smaller assembly. So even if, as with pollsters’ samples, the com-
position of the assembly needs to match the known socio-demographic com-

37 

 Flanigan, B., Gölz, P and Gupta, A. et al. (2019), ‘Fair algorithms for selecting citizens’ assem-
blies’, Nature, 596: 548–552.

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position of the total population, we should still question the most apparently 
neutral criteria of ascriptive identity and ask who decides which ascription is 
relevant (if age why not height?). In my view, this itself needs to be debated 
democratically.

Moreover, the question remains on what basis it is legitimate to add weight 
to underrepresented groups. Arguably, it seems justified to over-represent, for 
instance, younger generations, in part to compensate for their weaker presence 
in the EU (where the average age is 50) and in part to acknowledge the agen-
da-setting function of the assembly. One could even imagine that the EP starts 
by creating a permanent youth assembly to road-test the idea.

Similarly,  the  assembly  could  over-represent  small  states  in  the  EU,  to 
balance the fact of degressive proportionality in the EP (that is proportional to 
the population of each member states but with overweighting smaller state). 
An extreme solution, which I would favour, could include the same number 
or quota of delegates from each member state (so about 12 per member state).

This also makes it easier to form language groups at the onboarding stage, 
when citizens who have been selected are first socialised and familiarised into 
the process and provided with information, which I do not believe would ul-
timately create national silos. If, for instance, the delegates from 10 member 
states were replaced every 6 months under the rotation principle, all member 
state representatives would mingle at some point in time. The criteria could 
also include sub-criteria of representation for the major regions of Europe, es-
pecially regions composed of some member states or parts of these (e.g. Nordic, 
Baltic or Mediterranean), whose representation would count for all states that 
they straddle.

Over-representation  can  also  apply  in  socio-cultural  and  socio-economic 
terms, starting with the proposal to over-represent minorities or disadvantaged 
groups. This would counter-balance the more elitist socio-economic make-up 
of the EP. So, we need to define who belongs to which minority and ask what 
kind of capacity building is necessary to make effective the idea that recruited 
delegates who may not have thought of themselves as citizens with a legitimate 
voice can be helped to do so. To be sure, members recruited to the assembly on 
the basis of a minority criterion might think that they need to represent only 
the interests of that minority rather than deliberate about the common good. 
This risk ought to be addressed explicitly in the early socialisation phase. But 
in the end, how do we deal with the fact that people with, say, lower levels of 
education simply refuse to participate remains an open and tough question.

19

Even more drastic approaches might be necessary to balance the ideological 
self-selection bias of the Assembly. Those who say yes to the initial invitation 
are obviously likely to care more about Europe, thus generating an over-inte-
grative assembly. At least the EP has a plurality of ‘anti-system’ delegates.  Some 
scholars  have  therefore  defended  a  selection  method  that  would  include  be-
havioural or attitudinal criteria, perhaps through a more complex preference 
tableau than simply asking people if they are Europhiles or Eurosceptics. Since 
random  sampling  is  anyhow  not  blind  sampling  when  stratified,  this  would 
not, in my view, undermine descriptive representation legitimacy in a political 
rather than simply sociological sense.

Regarding inclusiveness, many in the NGO sector advocate the inclusion 
of long-term resident third-country nationals who cannot vote in EP elections. 
I would strongly advocate such inclusion, which would partially compensate 
for the limitations of the EP franchise and the power of member states to de-
termine EU citizens under their own nationality laws. The selection pool for 
the ECA could thus provide a contrasting inclusive identity for a wider resi-
dence-based EU demos. The co-existence of this inclusive deliberative demos 
with a citizenship-based electoral demos for the EP would highlight the fluidity 
of  membership  boundaries  in  the  European  polity  in  a  productive  way  and 
perhaps facilitate migrants’ political integration.

Another route to inclusion would not add new criteria for the second stage 
of selection from a single pool but create several separate pools from which to 
draw different configurations of the assembly. To the pools of member states’ na-
tionals and residents, other kinds of pools can be added on an ad-hoc but princi-
pled basis, such as EU citizens living in third countries or even citizens from the 
rest of the world if the topic called for it (e.g. agriculture, trade policy). Demo-
cratic Odyssey activists have also proposed to create a separate pool of ‘veteran 
citizens’ (participants in earlier citizens’ assemblies) in later assemblies.

To reflect and convey its itinerant, local, but also translocal character, the 
assembly could consist in the merger of different pools. Thus, in addition to 
a purely transnational pool (with all the criteria discussed above), there could 
be a pool of local citizens that would join the assembly for its meetings in a 
specific city or region and remain involved remotely for the next six months as 
the Assembly moves on to the next city. 

Finally, beyond criteria or separate pools, the ECA can rely on a third path 
to inclusion and take on a mixed character, combining ‘ordinary citizens’ of 
the randomly selected kind with politicians to enhance political buy-in, as well 
as representatives of civil society organisations to enhance societal and activist 

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buy-in. To be sure, the inclusion of non-impartial actors with their political 
agendas will increase the influence of both locally grounded and transnational-
ly active citizens, which is not a given in the EP context.

This third path to inclusion could also introduce altogether new logics of 
representation – an ECA finding new creative ways to represent the absents, 
including future generations and non-humans. This is one of the key challeng-
es when dealing with environmental and biodiversity decision-making, but it is 
also relevant far beyond these issues. Inclusiveness here takes us all the way to a 
new kind of longue durée, ‘multispecies democracies’.38 These absents can be 
rivers, oceans, forests, and species affected by the actions of governments and 
other actors that do not take their needs or rights into consideration without 
necessitating  concurrent  responsibilities.  This  is  about  imagining  multi-spe-
cies justice encounters, recovering the ability to create new worlds within a re-
lationship that the Māori refer to as genealogical. Such a radical enlargement 
of  citizenship  can  burst  assumptions  about  who  or  what  matters,  given  the 
power structures of current worlds. The assembly can include spokespersons, 
or rather ‘guardians’, as in the cases of rivers granted legal in courts from Aus-
tralia  to  India  to  New  Zealand.39  More  creative  ways  to  do  so  include  more 
interpretative methods through the inclusion of civic artists who literally ‘in-
terpret’ these other worlds or life scientists who bring in stories about other 
species’ modes of collective action.

Taking into account this array of proposals, the standing ECA can repre-
sent Europe’s fluid and overlapping demoi in a quite different way from the 
familiar and traditional EP model and would allow MEPs themselves to explore 
new ways of ‘representing’ as they interact with these demoi.

Democratic Governance: The argument 
from integrity

The second group of arguments concern the processes of democratic govern-
ance, or what some refer to as open government.40 Arguably, the ECA could 
serve as an ally for those MEPs who seek to furthermore open governance in 
the EU.

38 

 Celermajer, D., Schlosberg, D., Wadiwel, D and Winter, C. (2023), ‘A Political Theory for a Multi-
species, Climate-Challenged World: 2050’, Political Theory, 51(1): 39-53.

39 

 O’Donnell, E. L and Talbot-Jones, J. (2018), ‘Creating legal rights for rivers: lessons from Australia, 
New Zealand, and India’, Ecology and Society, 23(1): 7.

40 

 ‘The Open Gov Challenge Tracker’, Open Government, https://www.opengovpartnership.org/. 

21

It is commonly argued that sortition addresses what is perhaps the most 
universal threat to the democratic character of governance, namely the risk of 
corruption and capture, the appropriation of the commons by the few. Preserv-
ing the idea of the common good that collective decision making is supposed to 
serve is especially important if we emphasise not only procedural but also sub-
stantive understandings of democracy. As I and others have argued in a 2023 
CEPS report, risks of formal and informal state capture abound in the public 
administrations  of  European  countries  (and  candidate  countries  in  particu-
lar).41 These include the politicisation of the civil service, nepotism in the dis-
tribution of public posts, budgetary capture by special interests, and general-
ised corruption at the highest level of government. An ECA could constitute a 
democratic tool par excellence to reduce social distinction in the distribution of 
power in Europe and to prevent power from being monopolised by a group of 
professionals (political, bureaucratic, judicial, or expert). At EU level, lobbies 
hold great sway and corruption scandals like the EP’s Qatar gate have further 
increased citizens’ distrust.42 

Moreover,  in  taking  a  systemic  approach  to  considering  an  ecosystem  of 
new institutions an ECA can also serve dedicated functions of oversight and 
monitoring, which could be integrated into the management of regulatory, cer-
tifying, and supervising agencies and in the distribution of EU funds. If EU in-
stitutions rightly allow for the expression of national interests and the agonistic 
confrontation of societal values, a system of CAs can help overcome the dead-
locks to which such confrontations give rise. These considerations are especial-
ly relevant in responding to authoritarian challenges to democracy. A powerful 
and impactful ECA could greatly contribute to the EU’s much needed demo-
cratic resilience.

I prefer the term integrity to impartiality here, as it is hard to imagine im-
partial  citizens  uninfluenced  by  prior  political  or  cultural  beliefs,  including 
through exposition of opposing views in the assembly itself. In this sense, this 
proposal  does  not  rest  on  criticising  members  of  political  parties  for  being 
partisan or loyal to a set of ideas. Integrity is not a quality imputed to the in-
trinsic  nature  of  our  randomly  selected  citizen  but  to  the  context  of  quick 
rotation, leaving no time and incentives to entrench corrupt practices.43 They 

41 

 Nicolaidis K., von Ondarza, N and Russack, S. (2023), The Radicality of Sunlight: Five Pathways to 
a More Democratic Europe, CEPS.

42 

 ‘Qatar corruption scandal at the European Parliament’, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Qatar_corruption_scandal_at_the_European_Parliament. 

43 

 Mungiu-Puppidi, A. (2023), Rethinking Corruption, Edward Elgar.

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have no political career nor party interests to defend. Special interests, lobbies, 
and factions do not have enough time to capture them. They are more immune 
to corrupting influences than career officials or politicians. Hence, for at least 
partially disconnecting politics from power, rotation is as much a key to an-
ti-corruption as sortition. And thus, the ECA would become a likely ally for 
all MEPs seeking to differentiate themselves for their peers who have proved 
highly vulnerable to capture by specific interest groups and lobbies. The ECA 
therefore would affect power balance within the EP.

Integrity matters all the more since the EU, as the rest of the world, is un-
dergoing a deep transition which impacts extremely powerful players, namely 
the fossil fuel industry, who have the means to resist the necessary legislative 
changes. Being more immune from special interests can help in balancing the 
imperative of social justice (without which transition towards net zero climate 
emissions will not be legitimate in the eyes of EU citizens) with a realistic un-
derstanding  of  the  road  that  has  to  be  taken  (through  public  hearings  of  all 
stakeholders) to fight climate change.

There  are  many  ways  how  this  ECA  and  its  members  could  connect  to 
other parts of the EU political system and its eco-system of power, influence 
and  decision  making.  Its  mandate  could  start  with  contributing  to  agenda 
setting for the EU as a force for translation of debates taking part in the EP, 
while also deliberating on concrete policy issues, discussing successful ECIs, or 
taking part in a mixed conference or convention. It could also be entrusted with 
scrutiny-related tasks to monitor the implementation of decisions and ensure 
good governance and the integrity of the European institutions alongside other 
bodies  such  as  OLAF  and  the  Ombudsman  office.  The  assembly  would  co-
operate closely and meet with the other three main institutions as well as civil 
society organisations, political parties, trade unions and other relevant organ-
isations. Arguably, an ECA at the heart of the EU could play a crucial moni-
toring role in this regard, as part of what I call the ‘democratic panopticon’.44

In doing so it would root participation infrastructure at the local level and 
work through multiple governance approaches to reach national and European 
structures and become part of a wider participatory turn that gives people con-
fidence  that  there  are  multiple  ways  to  bring  their  opinions  forward.  Such 
an open shared infrastructure for participation will rely to some extent on a 
learning mindset within government administration. This could help spread 
an  ethos  of  democratic  respect  throughout  the  various  EU  instruments,  in-

44 

 ‘The Democratic Panopticon’, Noema, https://www.noemamag.com/the-democratic-panopti-
con/. 

23

cluding democratic control over the spending of EU funds at all levels of gov-
ernance.

...But should the ECA be enabled to 
decide?

There are however serious debates around the pathways to impact, and in par-
ticular  the  binding  character  of  recommendations  issued  by  citizens’  assem-
blies.  Yet  what  would  be  the  point  of  following  Dahl’s  injunction  that  CAs 
should not decide and issue binding recommendations, keeping with a purely 
consultative role as with the current Citizen Panels? To make a difference in 
the  eyes  of  citizens,  an  ECA  ought  to  be  more  than  a  space  to  create  ‘good 
European citizens’. It must be a source of authority per se. Otherwise, it risks 
being perceived as just another tool that elites use to legitimate their policies 
rather than a tool of diffusion of power.

This does not mean however that the choice we are faced with is binary. The 
reason invoked not to give assemblies selected by lot a role in decision making 
has to do with accountability, which is often said to be based on the combina-
tion of personal choice on the part of the candidate involved with membership 
in a political party and standing for election, on the one hand, and the choice 
of the voters for such candidate, on the other hand. CA members, it is argued, 
neither choose nor are chosen. But is this argument as solid as Dahl or others 
would, have it? I would argue that acceptance of membership in an ECA is also 
voluntary and calls for a more complex sense of accountability, namely collec-
tive accountability as an assembly, even if members cannot be held accountable 
individually.

But there is a better reason to resist calls for ‘bindingness’ of ECA decisions. 
The EU is a system of shared and multi-level governance (this is for law-making 
of course, not executive decisions by the European Council or the EU’s finan-
cial  bodies  that  warrant  a  separate  treatment)  in  which  no  single  institution 
can issue binding edicts, hence the complex co-decision procedure between EP 
and Council. These processes need to remain tied to the electorate’s consent, 
however tenuous the connection.

More  promising  and  creative  is  the  option  of  linking  the  ECA  to  direct 
democracy instruments in cooperation with the EP. For theorists who seek to 
ground their argument in political history, it is worth remembering that if the 
randomly selected council (boule) did not take decisions in Ancient Athens, it 

Should a Citizens' Assembly Complement the European Parliament? 24

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did frame them for the popular assembly (ecclesia) akin to open air referenda. 
Here, we can imagine that for instance the ECA produces an ECI, which might 
then  go  to  the  EP  to  be  turned  into  a  legislative  proposal  if  the  EP  were  to 
acquire a right of initiative. The ECA could also produce directly questions for 
an EU referendum, or better multiple choice preferenda. The link with direct 
democracy could also happen upstream with the ECA taking on the agenda 
proposed by a winning ECI. 

If these options seem too radical, let us not forget that the boule and the 
ecclesia  could  not  avail  themselves  of  innovative  digital  technologies,  as  dis-
cussed in the next section. We would, of course, need to discuss the conditions 
of possibility for such a radical empowerment of the ECA, including the tech-
nologies of constraint it would be subject to, from the rule of law to various 
bureaucratic safeguards.

Civic Culture: The argument from 
epistemic democracy

A third question to examine concerns the broader impact of an ECA. My hope 
is that the democratic respect demonstrated by its existence and performance 
would prove contagious and contribute to fostering a sense of civic ownership 
and a more democratic civic culture throughout the EU even in the absence of 
a unified public sphere.

This, in turn, takes us back to the deliberative quality of the ECA, which 
in its diversity can embody ‘epistemic democracy’, or epistemic diversity as the 
expression  of  radically  different  types  of  world  views  connected  to  different 
cultures and languages, by confronting them under quasi-ideal circumstanc-
es: high-quality deliberation and moderation, wide-ranging information from 
all sides, contradictory viewpoints, general assembly sessions alternating with 
small group discussions, inclusive and reciprocal listening, as well as shared de-
cision-making by consensus.

Under these conditions, a permanent CA will not only enhance the legiti-
macy of EU institutions but also the quality of its policymaking, including by 
combating disinformation as  part of a broader institutional framework dedi-
cated to dealing with citizens’ ‘right to know’ and ‘right to know how to know’.45 

45 

 Alemanno, A and Nicolaidis, K. (2022), ‘Citizen Power Europe’ in Alemanno, A and Sellal, P 
(eds.), The Groundwork of European Power, Groupe d’études géopolitiques (hereinafter ‘Alemanno 
and Nicolaidis, 2022’).

25

In  ancient  democracy  citizens  had  incentives  to  keep  themselves  adequately 
informed because they could be selected in the political sortition at any time. 
This seems much less relevant today.46 But the negative argument that tradi-
tional  representative  democracy  provides  incentives  for  manipulation  and 
control of information flows by the elites has not lost its relevance.47

Even if we were to buy the neo-Platonic argument by Jason Brennan48 and 
others  that  ordinary  citizens  do  not  have  the  expertise  required  for  good 
government,  random  selection  combined  with  frequent  rotation  ensures 
that  the  many  are  wiser  than  the  few,  whatever  nuances  one  may  attach  to 
the ‘wisdom of the crowds’.49 New forms of citizen inclusion (not only CAs 
and citizen juries but also informal civil society, social entrepreneurship, and 
other non-electoral forms of participation) offer crucial ways of linking estab-
lished sources of expertise with new ways of harnessing collective intelligence, 
including  social  media  and  AI.50  As  brilliantly  documented  by  the  Collec-
tive  Intelligence  Project,  innovations  offer  the  opportunity  of  enhancing  all 
types of democratic representation and effective governing and more broadly 
rethinking  ascribed  claims  to  expertise.51  Civic  technologists  are  developing 
tech-enhanced tools for value elicitation to aggregate, understand, and incorpo-
rate the conflicting values of overlapping groups of people as a foundation for 
complex decision making, such as sense-makers quadratic voting,52 quadratic 
funding53 or deliberative tools like Pol.is. used in Taiwan and elsewhere, Barce-
lona’s Decidim approach, or platforms like Participatory Value Evaluation tool 
(PVE), which helps lay out the policy implications and long-term consequenc-
es  of  policy  preferences  to  manage  large-scale  deliberation  leading  to  recom-
mendation.54 These can create platform assemblies to generate decisions that 

46 

 Abbas, N and Sintomer, Y. (2021), ‘From Deliberative to Radical Democracy? Sortition and Poli-
tics in the Twenty-First Century’, Politics and Society, 46(3): 337-357.

47 

 Manin, 1997.

48 

 Brennan, J. (2016), Against Democracy, Princeton University Press.

49 

 Surowiecki, J. (2004), The Wisdom of the Crowds, Vintage.

50 

 Youngs, R., Milanese, N and Nicolaidis, K. (2020), ‘Informal Civil Society: A Booster for Europe-
an Democracy?’, Carnegie Europe.

51 

 ‘Collective intelligence for collective progress’, The Collective Intelligence Project, https://www.
cip.org/.

52 

 Rodgers, A. (2019), ‘Colorado Tried a New Way to Vote: Make People Pay—Quadratically’, Wired, 
https://www.wired.com/story/colorado-quadratic-voting-experiment/. 

53 

 ‘Plural Funding’, Radical Xchange, https://www.radicalxchange.org/concepts/plural-funding/. 

54 

 ‘Participatory Value Evaluation’, TU Delft, https://www.tudelft.nl/en/tpm/pve. 

Should a Citizens' Assembly Complement the European Parliament? 26

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can even be managed by AI boards.55

Instead of merely watching these dynamics, the EP could partake in them 
in tandem with the experimental space offered by the ECA and thus connect its 
own debates with the wider public, especially when these debates involve diffi-
cult trade-offs and choices that need to be debated in the open.

Arguably,  this  epistemic  advantage  of  the  ECA  would  be  even  stronger 
because its transnational nature could make it over time the visible incarnation 
of the EU as a ‘community of translation’ across political cultures and beyond 
politics,  exploring  ways  to  overcome  linguistic  barriers  between  ordinary 
people where diversity is radically magnified, and where learning systems vary 
as do cognitive and collective biases. Europe is more likely to make good on the 
demoicratic promise if it sets up ways of channelling the life wisdom, knowl-
edge spheres and expertise of a broader range of individuals than those self-se-
lected in the political and bureaucratic spheres.  

This effect would be all the more precious as a permanent assembly would 
visibly and publicly serve to counteract insidious polarisation, which even the 
EP is increasingly succumbing to, by elevating the value of collective compro-
mise and consensus and attracting members to the radical middle allowing for 
“participation  without  populism”.56  In  contrast  with  the  evidence  that  polar-
isation and elitism reinforce each other, there is empirical indication that in-
dividuals participating in CAs reduce their polarisation on the issue they are 
deliberating on whether we consider issues related to climate, migration, agri-
culture, or security.57 In such assemblies, citizens tend to own up more readily 
to their ambivalence and thus listen to the other side, including across cultural 
and  linguistic  barriers  where  positions  can  be  more  easily  framed  as  opposi-
tional.58

55 

 Aviv Ovadya, A. (2021), ‘Towards Platform Democracy: Policymaking Beyond Corporate CEOs 
and Partisan Pressure’, Belfer Center, https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/towards-plat-
form-democracy-policymaking-beyond-corporate-ceos-and-partisan-pressure. 

56 

 Gardels, N and Berggruen, N. (2019), Renovating Democracy: Governing in the Age of Globaliza-
tion and Digital Capitalism, University of California Press.

57  Dryzek, J et al. (2019), ‘The crisis of democracy and the science of deliberation’, Science, 363:1144-
1146; Grönlund, K., Herne, K and Setälä, M. (2015), ‘Does Enclave Deliberation Polarize Opin-
ions?’, Polit Behav 37: 995–1020.

58 

 Nicolaidis, K. (2020), ‘In praise of ambivalence- another Brexit story’, Journal of European Integra-
tion, 42(4): 465-488.

27

...But how does the ECA connect to a 
wider European public sphere?

Many have objected that CAs and, in particular, the argument of epistemic di-
versity feed into the fantasy that deliberative assemblies can legitimately serve 
as a proxy for the broader political constituency by abandoning mass democra-
cy59 feeding a kind of deliberative elitism60 and generally overlooking the need 
for broader citizens engagement.61  In sum, ‘lottocracy’ constitutes a ‘shortcut’ 
which in the end fails to address the quality of participation and deliberation 
in the broader public sphere that connects civil society with decision making 
and state apparatus.62 This is held to be especially true if assemblies cut across 
domestic political cultures and nationalised public sphere.63 In this view, there 
may be scientific value to an ECA as a sealed experiment but that would not 
count as a democratic exercise. When the idea of ‘self-representation’ feeds into 
the idea that intermediary actors are obstacles to realising the values of neutral-
ity and consensus, we lose the eminently progressive idea that politics enables 
the fair redistribution of various goods in highly unequal societies. Ultimate-
ly,  such  a  disintermediation  narrative  could  look  like  deliberative  populism, 
denying  the  importance  of  politics  and  the  relevance  of  struggles  that  have 
spearheaded social progress in the long run.

This is perhaps the hardest and most important issue in this story. How 
can the  ECA be  more than a form of co-optation and  ‘citizen-washing’  and 
contribute to transforming Europe’s civic culture and citizens’ sense of civic 
ownership of their institutions?

For one, an assembly that cuts across national controversies will need even 
greater agonistic confrontations than the national kind if it is to attract atten-
tion.  It  could  do  so  by  choosing  topics  with  high  political  salience,  lending 

59 

 Chambers, S. (2009), ‘Rhetoric and the Public Sphere: Has Deliberative Democracy Abandoned 
Mass Democracy?’, Political Theory, 37(3): 323-35.

60 

 Moore, A. (2018), ‘Deliberative elitism? Distributed deliberation and the organization of epistemic 
inequality’, in Elstub, S., Ercan, S and Fabrino Mendonça, R (eds.), Deliberative Systems in Theory 
and Practice, Routledge.

61 

 Lafont, C. (2015), ‘Deliberation, Participation & Democratic Legitimacy’, J Polit Philos, 23: 40-63.

62 

 Lafont, 2023.

63 

 Olsen, E and Trenz, H. (2015), ‘The micro–macro link in deliberative polling: science or politics?’, 
Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 19(6): 662–679.

Should a Citizens' Assembly Complement the European Parliament? 28

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themselves  to  express  disagreement  over  issues  that  require  making  difficult 
choices between alternatives and thinking through trade-offs between various 
costs  or  benefits  that  cut  across  borders,  as  well  as  overcoming  ascriptive 
profiles (northern vs southern societies, western vs eastern politics). If this is 
the case, there is a lot to be said for mixed member deliberative fora or ‘dem-
ocratic  coupling’  with  politicians  included  as  members  sitting  side  by  side 
with randomly selected citizens, as witnessed in Ireland, Finland, the UK, or 
Belgium.64  Procedural  safeguards  can  be  taken  against  the  risk  of  elite  dom-
ination  which  could  limit  the  Assembly’s  contestatory  role,  a  lesson  drawn 
from the end-game ‘plenaries’ during CoFE. As these configurations have been 
shown to increase trust in politics, it might be quite attractive for a subsection 
of the EP to rotate as ‘EP members’ of the Assembly.

Ultimately, as mentioned above, probably the most straightforward way of 
connecting an ECA to a wider public is to link it to some elements of direct 
democracy  as  the  Irish  case  demonstrated  where  assembly  proceedings  were 
followed  broadly  around  the  country  precisely  because  they  were  to  lead  to 
referenda  on  abortion  and  gay  marriage.  The  point  is  not  that  the  assembly 
dramatically changed public opinion, which had already undergone profound 
social change before, but rather that the difficult debate preceding the vote was 
filtered by a deliberative ethos.

The ECA needs to go further and engage not only with democratic audi-
ences who listen but with publics who speak on an on-going basis and not only 
through sporadic highly controversial debates.

Indeed, if the claim that an ECA ought to connect directly with the people 
is not embedded in a broader narrative, it feeds a logic of disintermediation. 
Such a logic is not only unrealistic but also potentially undesirable, suggesting 
that  an  atomised  group  of  individuals  ought  to  bypass  formal  and  informal 
civil  society,  les  forces  vives  de  la  societé  whose  mission,  commitment  and 
expertise is precisely to interfere with the decisions of elected officials between 
elections. Organised civil society actors will find an ECA irrelevant at best and 
threatening at worst if it fails to engage with their own campaigns, movements, 
and civic dialogue. If the ECA is to claim more than the kind of stakeholder 
consultations conducted by the Commission, it will need to cooperate in its 
agenda-setting with these actors rather than compete with them. In this sense, 
the relevant complementarity in terms of legitimacy is not between the EP and 

64 

 Harris, C., Farrell, D and Suiter, J. (2023), ‘Mixed-member deliberative forums: Citizens’ assem-
blies bringing together elected officials and citizens, in M. Reuchamps., J. Vrydagh and Y. Welp 
(eds.), De Gruyter Handbook of Citizens’ Assemblies, De Gruyter.

29

the ECA but between the EP and the eco-system of connected spaces of direct 
democracy, which the ECA could help support and interconnect.

Debates in the ECA need to be translated to the general public, but transla-
tion requires connection and transmission belts.  At a minimum, the assembly 
can ‘take the pulse’ of the broader citizenry through polls. It can do so before, 
during, and after a debate. But there are also more direct ways to crowdsource 
input  into  the  assembly,  as  experimented  with  by  the  Icelandic  assembly  of 
2011 or the Irish assemblies, which used public submissions with various actors 
sending their ideas for consideration.65 The Estonian People’s Assembly (2013) 
gathered inputs from wider society through an online platform.66

In the same vein, a media partnership supporting, following, and indeed 
debating  controversial  debates  can  help.  Special  attention  must  be  paid  here 
to so-called ‘solution journalism’, i.e., reports on how people solve problems. 
Such journalists, or also influencers and other kinds of informal activists could 
be embedded in the assembly. Connection through peers and social media that 
can generate content on the spot matters most for young people. We also need 
to explore more creative and interactive ways of connecting, from collabora-
tions with the gaming industry to various experimental methods of communi-
cation appealing to a broader public inspired by sport, music and festival gath-
erings, the Eurovision or political talk shows.

More  actively,  the  ECA  could  create  interface  channels  between  the 
assembly and the broader public through platforms and actors like NGOs or 
civil society organisations that have particular target audiences.

The travelling nature of the proposed ECA meeting in a polycentric way 
around  Europe  would  help  to  reach  beyond  the  ‘usual  suspects’  connecting 
cities through a kind of deliberative relay. Such a genuinely translocal dynamic 
could  thus  shine  a  light  onto  local  places  that  would  be  shared  in  the  social 
media space while adding a European dimension to local deliberative processes. 
And as a mostly young assembly, it can create or encourage European Wood-

65 

 Blokker, P and Gül, V. (2023). ‘Citizen deliberation and constitutional change’ in Reuchamps, M 
and Welp, Y (eds.), Deliberative Constitution-making: Opportunities and Challenges, Routledge; 
Gylfason, T. (2019), ‘Democracy on ice: a post-mortem of the Icelandic constitution’, Open 
Democracy, https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/democracy-on-ice-post-mor-
tem-of-icelandic-constitution/; Popescu, D and Loveland, M. (2022), ‘Judging Deliberation: An 
Assessment of the Crowdsourced Icelandic Constitutional Project’,  Journal of Deliberative Democ-
racy 18(1).

66 

 Jonsson, M. (2015), ‘Democratic Innovations in Deliberative Systems – The Case of the Estonian 
Citizens’ Assembly Process’, Journal of Public Deliberation, 11(1): 1-29.

Should a Citizens' Assembly Complement the European Parliament? 30

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stocks of Politics.67 In this process, local and translocal civil society organisa-
tions in Europe would also experiment with new ways of connecting with the 
general public while leveraging networks of cities like Eurocities68 and connect-
ing with projects like the European capital of democracy that could host the 
assembly.69

Regarding  the  proceedings  of  the  ECA  itself,  randomly  selected  citizens 
could be encouraged to engage with their local communities in preparation for 
and during their services, turning the table on who is to be considered as the 
source of expert knowledge. They would present their findings in the assem-
bly’s plenary from both their shared life experience and onboarding meetings 
in their local communities, while the experts would respond and ask further 
questions. This dynamic could encourage other citizen to take part directly or 
in their own spheres in the relevant deliberations.

Ultimately,  the  bet  here  is  that  by  a  kind  of  contagious  exemplarity  and 
porous  boundaries,  the  ECA  will  enable  deliberative  opening  beyond  both 
national  closure  and  the  ‘Brussels  bubble’  between  individuals  with  layered 
identities  –  local,  regional,  national,  and  transnational  ones  –where  it  could 
achieve impact in a broad array of settings beyond sortition. Arguably, since an 
ECA is meant to augment participation beyond the self-selection of elector-
al candidates, it could spearhead such non-elitist participation elsewhere. As 
itself a school of democracy, it could galvanise a civic culture in schools, firms 
and neighbourhoods across the continent, contributing to a growing participa-
tory ecosystem. If a European civic culture were to emerge, quipped The Econ-
omist “it might conclude that it would rather the union adapts its institutions 
to its people, and not its people to its institutions” (1 May 2024).   

67 

 Nicolaidis, K. (2007), ‘Our Democratic Atonement: Why we Need an Agora Europe’ in The 
People’s Project? New European Treaty and the Prospects for Future Negotiations, European Policy 
Centre; See also the European Movement International or the European Youth Event, EYE.

68 

 ‘Eurocities’, Eurocities, https://eurocities.eu/. 

69 

 ‘About European Capital of Democracy Initiative’, European Capital of Democracy, https://capi-
talofdemocracy.eu/about-ecod/. 

31

Conclusion: Contrasting imaginaries and 
academic debate as co-creation

I  have  suggested  ways  in  which  a  permanent  European  Peoples’  Assembly 
in the EU could redefine the contours of European citizenship and offered a 
holistic model of democracy in which such an ECA would work in synergy 
with the EP.

I  would  like  to  end  with  one  further  thought,  related  to  the  Democrat-
ic Odyssey’s theory of change that purports to combine top-down with bot-
tom-up dynamics. Reflecting on the questions raised above and my own very 
partial attempt to address them, I find that these dynamics correspond to two 
ideal types, or what Sintomer and Abbas refer to as the deliberative, antipolit-
ical and radical democracy imaginaries, which are almost impossible to recon-
cile.70 

On the top-down side we find what I have coined as ‘technocratic democ-
ratisation’, an anti-political imaginary which celebrates the disintermediation 
between  individuals  and  the  state  and  therefore  a  direct  link  between  politi-
cal institutions and the citizenry. As new creative ways allow for an assembly 
inclusive  of  otherwise  unrepresented  or  under-represented  people,  we  can 
create an inclusive alliance between civil servants and ‘the people’. But do we 
not risk a kind of bureaucratic or corporate populism that hollows out existing 
political institutions and bodies in the name of an illusionary marriage of de-
liberation,  neutrality  and  rationality?71Does  it  really  make  any  difference  to 
popular support for democratic institutions if 150 citizens are coopted every 
six months?

On the bottom-up side, we find in contrast variations on more radically 
political approaches, where the assembly is connected with local public life and 
transnational movements, embedded within vibrant agonistic struggles. These 
approaches value political conflict over consensus, while seeking to create civil 
exchanges  between  highly  contested  positions.  It  is  not  a  sealed-off  protect-
ed sphere, but one political space among others. And it serves to counter au-
thoritarian capture ‘under the radar’ by empowering local democracy through 
transnational means.

70 

 Abbas, N and Sintomer, Y. (2022), ‘Three Contemporary Imaginaries of Sortition’, Common 
Knowledge, 28(2): 242-260.

71 

 Nyberg, D and Murray, J. (2023), ‘Corporate populism: How corporations construct and repre-
sent ‘the people’ in political contestations’, Journal of Business Research 162.

Should a Citizens' Assembly Complement the European Parliament? 32

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I remain confused on how to bring together these two perspectives through 
a holistic democratic imaginary so that the various democratic spheres and sites 
of power enable each other in the quest to reconcile the transformative poten-
tial of deliberation with the agonistic nature of politics.

My solace here is that we are not building alone. I cherish the thought that 
this is a unique opportunity for the co-creation of European democratic theory 
and practice, among scholars as well as with civil society actors and social move-
ments.72 And the thought that, by creating a standing ECA, the EU could serve 
as a laboratory for a radical transformation of democratic citizenship beyond 
the state that is relevant globally.73 What is at stake is democratic stability and 
resilience in a world where growing numbers of citizens are inclined to support 
authoritarian forms of government.

The  idea  of  self-government  whereby  each  citizen  can  imagine  herself  as 
being ruled and ruling in turn throughout her life is both the oldest argument 
in favour of sortition-based political bodies and the hardest to translate in the 
context of contemporary states and the growing complexity of governing. Yet, 
imagine the look and feel of our EU polity if citizens throughout the conti-
nent were more than just intermittent voters who are only asked to give their 
opinion once every five years, in 2019, 2024, and next 2029. Imagine that our 
voices, opinions, and collective intelligence were heard on a permanent basis 
rather than on politicians’ whims. In spite of its imperfections, drawbacks and 
blind spots, let’s give this vision a chance.

72  Fleuß, D. (2021), Radical Proceduralism, Emerald Publishing Limited.

73 

 Nicolaidis, 2024a.

Why Citizens’ Assemblies 
Should Not Have 
Decision-making Power

Cristina Lafont74 and Nadia Urbinati75

Against the many democratic deficits of European institutions, Kalypso Nico-
laidis  offers  a  radical  institutional  cure:  introducing  a  permanent  European 
Assembly  (ECA)  of  randomly  selected  citizens  into  Europe’s  political 
landscape.76 This is an intriguing proposal. In contrast to the many Citizens’ 
Assemblies  that  have  been  recently  organised  in  several  countries,  the  ECA 
would  be  the  first  to  be  both  permanent  and  transnational.  As  Nicolaidis 
thinks of it, this assembly will not be in Brussels. Instead, it will be an itiner-
ant body travelling around Europe, meeting with different local actors, with a 
frequent rotation of members. The idea is that having a permanent assembly of 
randomly selected citizens would bolster bottom-up participation of ordinary 
citizens in political deliberation and encourage transnational debates on policy 
preferences  among  the  European  citizenry.  This,  in  turn,  would  “radical-
ly  bolster  the  sense  of  ‘democratic  ownership  of  the  EU’s  institutions  by  its 
citizens”.

In Nicolaidis’ opinion, complementing existing electoral institutions with 
a  permanent  assembly  of  randomly  selected  citizens  is  the  best  option  to 

74  Northwestern University

75  Columbia University

76 

 Nicolaidis, K. (2024), ‘Representing European citizens: Why a Citizens’ Assembly should comple-
ment the European Parliament’, GLOBALCIT, https://globalcit.eu/representing-european-citi-
zens-why-a-european-citizens-assembly-should-complement-the-european-parliament/ (hereinafter 
‘Nicolaidis, 2024’). 

34

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overcome  current  democratic  deficits.  Whereas  more  radical  proposals  that 
aim to replace electoral institutions (elected assemblies, political parties, etc.) 
with sorted assemblies would “run the risks associated with denying the import 
of  politics,  parties,  and  organised  civil  society”,  proposals  to  use  citizens’ 
assemblies in a subordinate role vis-à-vis electoral institutions are too timid to 
contribute to democratisation. Thus, in Nicolaidis’ opinion, the complemen-
tary model offers us the best of both worlds. We avoid the risks of giving sov-
ereign powers to randomly selected assemblies without losing the democratic 
benefits, as we would if they had only the subordinate role of issuing recom-
mendations that elected officials can simply ignore.

The pitfalls of complementing elections 
with sortition

Unfortunately, we do not share Nicolaidis’ optimism. In our opinion, the com-
plementary model runs the risk of giving us the worst of both worlds, elections 
and  sortition.  This  may  not  be  apparent  in  Nicolaidis’  proposal.  But  this  is 
mainly because she does not specify the exact division of powers between the 
European Parliament (EP) and the European Citizens’ Assembly (ECA). What 
type of legislative decisions can each of these institutions make? Do they have 
the same agenda-setting authority? Would the ECA have veto power over leg-
islative decisions of the EP or is it the other way around? In cases of conflict, 
which  of  them  has  final  authority?  These  are  very  important  questions  for 
assessing  the  stability  of  complementary  proposals  in  general.  If,  in  cases  of 
conflict,  electoral  institutions  prevail,  then  it  seems  that  the  complementary 
model collapses into the subordinate model that Nicolaidis rejects. The ECA 
would have merely advisory powers vis-à-vis the EP that would have the final 
say on political decisions. On the other hand, if, in cases of conflict, sorted insti-
tutions prevail, then it seems that the complementary model collapses into the 
lottocratic model that Nicolaidis rightly rejects. Indeed, if, in cases of conflict, 
the political decisions of a few randomly selected members of the ECA prevail 
against the political preferences of the majority of citizens, as expressed by their 
elected representatives, the democratic legitimacy of the ECA would be seri-
ously questioned. Why would it be democratic to empower a few randomly 
selected people to make political decisions as they see fit while the overwhelm-
ing majority of the citizenry is (both directly and indirectly) excluded from the 
exercise of that political power?

35

Accountability vs blind deference

Nicolaidis mentions that the ECA would receive input from the citizenry. But 
this in no way assuages the problem of exclusion from decision-making, since 
members of the ECA are supposed to make decisions as they see fit and thus are 
free to ignore the input they receive. But even if they decide to listen to citizen 
input,  by  what  criteria  do  they  do  so  if  not  by  their  own  personal  opinion? 
This would be an arbitrary decision, not subject to any accountability. This is 
so by design. Whereas the relationship between citizens and their elected rep-
resentatives  is  based  on  accountability,  the  relationship  between  citizens  and 
the  randomly  selected  representatives  is  based  on  deference.  Elected  officials 
ignore citizens’ political preferences at their own peril since they can be held 
accountable  by  the  citizenry  in  the  next  election  and  lose  their  power.  By 
contrast,  randomly  selected  individuals  cannot  be  held  accountable  by  non-
participating citizens. Randomly selected individuals are neither up for election 
to serve again in the ECA, nor do they have a mandate from the citizenry to make 
some policy decisions rather than others. To the contrary, they are supposed to 
make decisions as they see fit, simply based on the quality of the information 
they receive and the deliberative process that they engage in. But since the rest 
of the citizenry has not participated in the deliberative process, a misalignment 
between the political views of the ECA members and the rest of the citizenry 
is predictable. In cases of conflict, whose political preferences should prevail? 
Those of the citizenry or those of the very few randomly selected individuals? 
It is hard to see why it would be democratic for citizens to blindly defer to the 
political preferences of the few randomly selected members.77 It is even harder 
to see why doing so would bolster the sense of ‘democratic ownership’ of the 
EU’s institutions by its citizens.

77 

 Lafont, C. (2019), Democracy without Shortcuts: A Participatory Conception of Deliberative Democ-
racy, Oxford Academic (hereinafter ‘Lafont, 2019’).

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Why the ECA will be ignored by the 
wider public

This  connects  with  another  major  problem  we  find  in  Nicolaidis’  proposal. 
She claims that currently existing experiments with sortition, such as European 
Citizens’ Panels, have failed to generate any democratic revival because “they 
have been largely ignored by the wider public.” This is correct. It is indeed a 
major concern when thinking about the democratic prospects of such exper-
iments. Having a few randomly selected individuals giving recommendations 
to policymakers while bypassing the citizenry leads to a technocratic model of 
‘governance without politics’ that in no way contributes to revitalising and im-
proving political debates in the public sphere or citizen participation in demo-
cratic self-government. Nicolaidis suggests that the ECA would not suffer from 
this problem because it would reach out to the public to get input for their de-
liberations. But we fear that she misdiagnoses the nature of the problem. In our 
view, the reason why the public has largely ignored the work of Citizens’ Panels 
and many other citizens’ assemblies is not because their members have failed to 
reach out to the public. It is simply because the public had no role to play in the 
functioning of these institutions. It makes sense to expect people to be actively 
involved in a process if there is something important for them to do. If there is 
nothing that they have to do for the process to succeed, if all the decisive func-
tions are fulfilled by someone else, why would the citizenry pay attention? In 
elections or referenda, the citizenry is asked to play a very important role in the 
decision-making  process.  They  are  sharing  political  power.  This  is  why  they 
get  involved.  There  are  some  important  political  decisions  they  must  make. 
By  contrast,  the  ECA  proposal  seems  to  share  the  same  weakness  with  the 
European Citizens’ Panels. It expects citizens to pay attention to the ECA while 
failing to assign them any significant role in the decision-making process and in 
the absence of any power sharing. Of course, citizens would be allowed, even 
encouraged, to provide input to the institution. But if only the ECA members 
have agenda-setting and decision-making power, the wider public is very likely 
to ignore the process and let the ECA do its work.

37

Empowering citizens through a mediating 
role for Citizens’ Assemblies

We agree that citizens’ assemblies are promising institutional innovations that 
may  be  used  to  revitalise  democracy.  But  they  can  only  have  a  democratis-
ing effect if they are used to empower the many, not the few. As we argue in 
our book, The Lottocratic Mentality. Defending Democracy against Lottocra-
cy (Oxford University Press), a change of perspective is needed when thinking 
about  how  to  design  these  institutions.  The  important  question  is  not  how 
much  power  citizens’  assemblies  ought  to  have,  whether  only  consultative 
powers (subordinate model) or the sovereign powers of parliaments (lottocratic 
model). This is a false alternative. Both options are highly problematic, although 
for different reasons. The question we need to ask is who ought to be empow-
ered through these institutions, whether we should empower a few randomly 
selected individuals or the citizenry as a whole. It is hard to see how the first 
option  can  have  anything  to  do  with  revitalising  democracy.  Only  the  latter 
option could have the democratic effects that defenders of citizens’ assemblies 
promise (e.g. improving citizen participation in agenda setting, improving the 
responsiveness of the political system to citizens’ interests, needs and policy ob-
jectives, etc.). To do so, citizens’ assemblies should be designed to play a medi-
ating role between the political system and the wider public rather than being 
directly coupled with formal political institutions while bypassing the citizenry.

Imagine if, instead of having the randomly selected members of the ECA 
setting  the  political  agenda  as  they  see  fit,  multiple  citizens’  assemblies  were 
regularly organised all over Europe to review and improve citizens’ initiatives 
to  be  submitted  by  civil  society  groups  after  gathering  some  low  threshold 
of  signatures.  The  assemblies  would  review  and  improve  the  initiatives  they 
receive based on all the relevant information and inclusive deliberation. They 
could rank them by importance and/or urgency and either submit them to the 
relevant public authorities (e.g. the EP, national parliaments, local authorities) 
for (mandatory) discussion and decision-making or, in the appropriate cases, 
to general referenda (in the relevant jurisdictions). Institutionalising citizens’ 
assemblies in this mediating role would give the citizenry a clear role to play in 
the agenda setting process of the political system. Instead of ignoring the work of 
citizens’ assemblies, this design would energise the citizenry to actively partici-
pate in the process of proposing and publicly discussing initiatives, as they would 
know that there is an effective institutional mechanism to get them reviewed 

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and that, in many cases, it would be ultimately up to the citizenry whether to 
approve them. By strengthening citizen participation in this way, citizens’ as-
semblies  would  provide  a  very  much-needed  democratic  boost  precisely  at  a 
time of increasing citizen dissatisfaction with democracy. 

This bottom-up model for using citizens’ assemblies to empower the citi-
zenry is very different from the centralised model of a permanent ECA. Nico-
laidis writes that the permanent sorted assembly can “represent” the citizens of 
27 countries “at least to the extent that the selection process is communicated 
and explained to the broader public in a way that is radically transparent… Over 
time, the pedagogy of sortition can teach the wider public that the core ethos 
of randomness is equal chance, if explained well, in fun and accessible ways….” 
Plato wrote in The Republic that the rulers must be able to devise “beautiful 
lies” to convince citizens that they are the best possible. What would European 
citizens  gain  from  another  decision-making  body  that  makes  use  of  good 
rhetoric to make them believe that they must obey its decisions simply because 
they have an equal chance to be selected? Why would citizens believe that it 
is democratic to let a few individuals exercise unilateral power over them so long 
as everyone has an equal chance to do so?

Empowering European 
Citizens but Avoiding 
Illusionary Promises!

Sandra Seubert78 

Can  European  Citizens’  Assemblies  (ECAs)  bring  European  democracy 
forward? No doubt, they can offer a constructive response to challenges of rep-
resentative democracy, in particular on a European scale. But electoral forms 
of  democracy  are  not  as  worn  out  as  suggested.  The  “democratic  angst:  do 
citizens care at all?” has not been confirmed in the last European elections.79 
The increase in voter turnout since 2014 has not been reversed but stabilised 
at a (relatively) high(er) level.80 However, the rise of far-right parties is alarming 
and indicates persistent need for reform. ECAs, if carefully embedded in the 
EU’s institutional infrastructure, can play a role here. Yes, they should be in-
stitutionalised as routinised events, but not as a permanent body, as Kalypso 
Nicolaidis’ proposal seems to suggest.81 There is a serious risk that a permanent 
assembly promises more than it can deliver and gets in destructive rivalry to car-
icature-like representations of electoral democracy.

78  Goethe University Frankfurt

79 

 Nicolaidis, 2024. 

80 

 ‘Voter turnout in the European Parliament Elections in the European Union (EU) from 1979 to 
2024’, Statista, https://www.statista.com/statistics/300427/eu-parlament-turnout-for-the-europe-
an-elections/- 

81 

 Nicolaidis, 2024. 

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A distorted image of electoral politics

Although Nicolaidis frequently stresses that a permanent ECA would strength-
en progressive forces in the European Parliament, her text nevertheless shows 
a tendency of devaluating parliamentary processes and presenting assemblies 
chosen by lot as symbols of real (!) democracy. They are contrasted with a well-
known image of electoral politics: out-of-touch elites that hardly represent the 
people. Representation is unavoidably aristocratic, elections produce social se-
lectivity  rather  than  political  equality.82  Thus,  parliaments  and  governments 
cannot pretend to represent the “whole society”.  A permanent ECA is better 
at realising “descriptive representation” in  the  sense  of representativeness,  i.e. 
mirroring  society  as  a  whole.83  It  is  supposed  to  make  “non-elitist  participa-
tion” possible.

No doubt, citizens’ assemblies can function as a tool to fight the enclosure 
of power, open up encrusted party structures, overcome selective non-partic-
ipation  and  potentially  increase  inclusivity.84  But  what  does  it  take  to  make 
citizens’  assemblies  chosen  by  lot  really  more  inclusive  than  electoral  proce-
dures? How can they give equal consideration to all interests? These questions 
are  not  easy  to  answer.  True  representativeness  would  demand  mandatory 
participation, which is difficult to realise in liberal democracies. Nevertheless, 
representational  inclusion  can  approximately  be  achieved  if  the  procedure 
for drawing lots is arranged in a way that all affected social strata take part. In 
order to avoid that the problem of self-selection, which is observed in elections, 
repeats itself, special measures can be taken, e.g. over-representing minorities 
and disadvantaged groups. But there is a problem sneaking in here: according 
to which ascriptions do we measure representativeness? This is, as Nicolaidis 
frankly admits, far from evident and itself a political question.

Much  depends  on  the  details  of  institutional  design.  Nicolaidis  under-
lines the experimental character and suggests an itinerant body of around 300 
members,  rotating  every  six  months  and  travelling  around  Europe,  meeting 
with  local  actors,  thus  contributing  to  a  pan-European  participatory  ecosys-
tem. In her perspective, the strength of citizens chosen by lot is emphasised by 
the fact that they do not represent any party interest and do not pursue a party 
career.  Due  to  rotation,  “special  interests,  lobbies  and  factions  do  not  have 

82 

 Manin, 1997.

83 

 Pitkin, H. (1972), The Concept of Representation, University of California Press.

84 

 Landemore, 2020.

41

enough time to capture them”. Disconnecting politics from power is supposed 
to be a key to fighting corruption. But aren’t mediation of interests and gaining 
power  as  inherent  to  politics  as  reasoning  and  persuasion?  Suggesting  these 
phenomena should be completely excluded in the assemblies promotes a prob-
lematic image of “unpolitical democracy”.85 How are citizens supposed to get 
on an equal footing with the powerful players and gain the necessary profes-
sional expertise? How are citizens in the assembly supposed to be able to keep 
powerful  interests  in  check?  Professional  politicians  have  an  advantage  here. 
“[I]f citizens can literally see power diffused, they might start to believe they 
own  a  share  in  it”,  says  Nicolaidis.  But  will  a  permanent  ECA,  so  designed, 
really be a locus of power? I doubt it.

On  a  conceptual  level,  juxtaposing  “electoral  democracy”  and  “deliber-
ative  democracy”  is  misleading.  In  Habermas’  account  (to  which  Nicolaid-
is refers), the concept of deliberative politics is overarching any specific insti-
tutional  embodiments.  Habermas  explicitly  includes  parliamentary  bodies 
– in fact, as “strong publics”, they bear the main burden of mediating differ-
ent interests. Nicolaidis’ justification suggests an unfortunate dichotomy and 
tends  to  promote  a  distorted  image  of  electoral  politics  that  is  questionable 
and  can  finally  lead  to  a  self-fulfilling  prophecy  (a  logic  that,  e.g.  Sebastian 
Haffner observed in the declining Weimar Republic: Once the contempt for 
elected politicians has become pervasive, one will hardly find anyone entering 
this contested business but precisely those despicable figures).86

Concealing the power of experts

Equalising representation by introducing a sortition-based citizens’ assembly 
does not by itself lead to equalising voice and consideration. Providing equal 
access to information and moderating deliberation so that different perspec-
tives can be articulated is a difficult challenge. That is why, in all experiments 
with citizens’ assemblies, the role of experts becomes a crucial issue.

It  is  generally  agreed  that  in  order  to  give  a  constructive  response  to  the 
malaise of electoral democracy, citizens’ assemblies must meet certain criteria: 
apart from representational inclusion, this is, above all, high-quality deliber-

85 

 Urbinati, N. (2014), Democracy Disfigured: Opinion, Truth, and the People, Harvard University 
Press (hereinafter ‘Urbinati, 2014’).

86 

 Haffner, S. (2003), Defying Hitler: A Memoir, Picador.

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ation and systemic efficacy.87 The particular legitimacy of citizens’ assemblies 
is linked to their presumed epistemic advantage compared to traditional rep-
resentation: a form of deliberation that is distanced from party competition and 
political marketing. In order to achieve high-quality deliberation, the internal 
communication process must be organised and facilitated in a way that all par-
ticipants  can  interact  as  equals.  Organisational  committees,  advisory  boards, 
professional partners from the private sector – a whole range of actors come in 
here. These professionals are responsible for organising the procedures, prepar-
ing information, providing support in the selection of experts, etc. It is striking 
that their role is hardly discussed in the proposal. If traditional representative 
democracy is accused of providing incentives for the manipulation and control 
of information by the “elites”, it would be fair to concede that this is an issue 
in  citizens’  assemblies  as  well.  A  whole  consulting  business  has  emerged  to 
support  the  organisation  of  participatory  democracy.88  Professional  advisors 
are not only responsible for the institutional set-up of citizens’ assemblies but 
also for producing effective results because this is what they are paid for.

Many  experiments  have  proven  that  in  order  to  achieve  effective  results, 
citizens’  assemblies  must  not  only  follow  a  precise  design  but  should  also 
feature a binding, transparent set of targets. In order to avoid frustration, an 
ECA’s mission must be precisely defined. In Nicolaidis’ proposal, the ECA’s 
tasks seem very wide and, at the same time, rather restricted. They reach from 
“contributing to agenda-setting for the EU”, via “translation of debates taking 
part in the European Parliament” to “scrutiny-related tasks to monitor the im-
plementation of decisions”. The assembly has, above all, a “monitoring role”; 
it is supposed to complement the European Parliament, but there is no clear 
interinstitutional connection.

The  talk  about  the  monopolisation  of  power  by  “elites”  obscures  power 
asymmetries between and within European institutions. There is a huge dis-
crepancy between legislative and executive competencies when it comes to po-
litical decisions on a European scale. The real malaise of European democracy 

87 

88 

  Merkel, W., Milačić, F and Schäfer, A. (2021), Citizens’ assemblies: New ways to democratize democ-
racy, FES Regional Office for international Cooperation (hereinafter ‘Merkel, Milačić and Schäfer, 
2021’); IECA, 2022.

 Krick, E. (2022), ‘Participatory Governance Practices at the Democracy-Knowledge-Nexus’, 
Minerva, 60: 467–487; Krick, E. (2023), ‘Beteiligungsprofis in der Demokratie: Zur Professiona-
lisierung und Kommerzialisierung einer Wachstumsbranche’, Helmut Schmidt Stiftung, https://
www.nomos-elibrary.de/10.5771/0340-0425-2023-3-454/beteiligungsprofis-in-der-demokratie-
zur-professionalisierung-und-kommerzialisierung-einer-wachstumsbranche-jahrgang-51-2023-heft-
3?page=1. 

43

lies in the dominance of national executives. When it comes to veto power and 
majority decisions in the Council, the alleged national interest, unfortunately, 
often  consists  merely  of  powerful  domestic  interests  (e.g.  national  key 
industries).  This  tends  to  be  concealed  by  the  generalising  diagnoses  about 
“elite” politics.

The problem of legitimation rivalry

If citizens’ assemblies are associated with a myth of directness and as apparent-
ly unmediated deliberative institutions are contrasted with the supposedly al-
ienating logic of electoral democracy, they are likely to enter into a legitimising 
rivalry with the parliamentary process. Such a rivalry can further de-legitimise 
parliamentary procedures and encourage the executive branch to employ ECAs 
as top-down, technocratic modes of governance.89 Quasi-publics selected by lot 
bring a new logic into the representative system. This creates tensions which 
might well be productive.90 Nevertheless, there are two dangers lurking here: 
if citizens’ assemblies are too smoothly embedded in the institutional system, 
they can easily be instrumentalised and merely serve as a legitimacy-producing 
tool. On the other hand, if they keep a clear distance from power, the prize 
to be paid is the lack of influence on politics. In order to keep their promise, 
European  citizens’  assemblies  must  navigate  between  these  two  poles.  They 
should be embedded in the institutional architecture as an autonomous and 
influential factor and connect very clearly to the EU policy-making process.

In  Nicolaidis’  proposal,  ECAs  are  promoted  as  a  “radical  democratic  in-
novation” and tool for “systemic change”. But they can only capitalise on this 
opportunity  if  they  are  embedded  in  other  institutional  reforms.  “Transna-
tional societal empathy” needs strong institutional safeguards. In this respect, 
giving  European  elections  a  truly  European  character  would  be  a  real  game 
changer!91 European-wide election lists would be a breakthrough for European 

89 

 Bua, A and Bussu, S. (2021), ‘Between governance-driven democratisation and democracy-driven 
governance: Explaining changes in participatory governance in the case of Barcelona’, European 
Journal of Political Research, 60: 716-737.

90 

 Merkel, Milačić and Schäfer, 2021.

91 

 Alemanno, A. (2024), ‘Hitting the Pause Button on the EU Project? A Self-Inflicted Outcome 
Due to the Lack of Political Integration’, Verfassungsblog, https://verfassungsblog.de/hitting-the-
pause-button-on-the-eu-project/; Müller, M and Plottka, J. (2020), Enhancing the EU’s Democratic 
Legitimacy: Short and Long-Term Avenues to Reinforce Parliamentary and Participative Democracy 
at the EU Level, Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung.

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democracy. Transnational lists have been put on paper in several reform pro-
posals  (e.g.  by  Guy  Verhofstadt,  Daniel  Cohn-Bendit,  Philippe  van  Parijs), 
they have been debated for years, they were on Ursula von der Leyen’s agenda 
for her presidency for the European Commission in 2019, at the core of the 
latest EP proposal for revisions of the Direct Elections Act (2022) and a key 
claim of citizens in the Conference on Future of Europe’s Final Report.92 But 
we are still waiting for this important step forward. Isn’t it weird? We can set 
up a European Company (SE) if we want to do business across borders. We 
are  asked  to  build  up  a  European  consortium  of  researchers  when  applying 
for European research funding. We can even donate money to parties in other 
EU member states (in national elections in which we do not have a right to 
vote!).93 But when it comes to the voting procedure in European elections we 
are forced back into a national container: we are voting on national lists with 27 
different legal requirements. Recent attempts to further europeanise European 
elections have failed, a European association law for organising European civil 
society94 that could support transnationalisation is still missing.95 A permanent 
European citizens’ assembly with an unclear mission would do little to change 
this.

Conclusion: Routinisation without 
permanence!

But how would non-permanent ECAs change this? Their strength lies in the 
potential for civic education and the opening up of public space. Especially in 
a transnational context this is an important effect and already a good reason to 
introduce them. To make their effects sustainable, citizens’ assemblies should 
be  organised  on  a  regular  basis  so  that  interaction  between  traditional  and 
new  forms  of  representation  can  become  routine.  They  should  be  connect-

92 

 ‘Conference on the Future of Europe - REPORT ON THE FINAL OUTCOME’, Communi-
ty of Practice of the Competence Centre on Participatory and Deliberative Democracy, https://
cop-demos.jrc.ec.europa.eu/resources/conference-future-europe-report-final-outcome. 

93   Kersting, S. (2021), ‘Steven Schuurman erklärt seine Millionen-Spende an die Grünen: 
„Wir brauchen einen Systemwandel“’, Handelsblatt, https://www.handelsblatt.com/
politik/deutschland/interview-steven-schuurman-erklaert-seine-millionen-spende-an-die-
gruenen-wir-brauchen-einen-systemwandel/27588402.html. 

94 

 ‘The Project’, EUNITE, https://eunite4citizens.eu/. 

95  ‘Es ist die richtige Zeit für ein Europäisches Vereinsrecht’, Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, https://www.

boell.de/de/2022/09/13/es-ist-die-richtige-zeit-fuer-ein-europaeisches-vereinsrecht. 

45

ed  to  political  agenda-setting  and  legislative  processes.  There  must  be  some-
thing at stake in the political arena to attract citizen’s attention. As Lafont and 
Urbinati point out in their intervention, ECAs democratising effect depends 
on their mediating role between political system and the wider public.96 It is 
therefore important to connect them to the policy cycles in the European Par-
liament, first of all to the political work programme that the candidate for pres-
ident of the European Commission presents to the European Parliament when 
applying  for  office.  Connecting  ECAs  to  the  European  Commission’s  work 
programme might look like a very tight co-optation. Other proposals for rou-
tinisation connect them, e.g. to the president’s annual “State of the Union” 
address and suggest an annual open call mechanism).97 However, I am sceptical 
and would predict that these assemblies will nevertheless run parallel and un-
connected to the conventional legislative process, which should be avoided at 
all costs. Since Parliament plays an important role in co-determining the pres-
ident of the Commission as well as the topics of the work programme, ECAs 
connected to this programme would ensure public attention and increase le-
gitimacy.

Take, for instance Ursula von der Leyen’s agenda for her candidacy in 2019 
(“A  Union  that  strives  for  more”):  for  all  six  bullet  points  (“The  European 
Green Deal; An economy that works for people; A Europe fit for the digital 
age; Protecting our European way of life; A stronger Europe in the world; A 
new push for European democracy”) a citizens’ assembly could have been set 
up to concretise proposals and drive implementation forward.98 Is it implau-
sible to assume that the main pillar of her agenda, the European Green Deal, 
would have gained more legitimacy and resisted the aggressive disinformation 
campaign with which her own party group, the EPP, gave it a hard blow?

An important pillar of the Green Deal is the Nature Restauration Law. The 
law survived the vote in Parliament by a razor-thin margin after the EPP had 
announced to block it completely (and only passed the final hurdle of a quali-

96 

 Lafont, C and Urbinati, N. (2024), ‘Why Citizens’ Assemblies should not have Decision-making 
Power’ GLOBALCIT, https://globalcit.eu/representing-european-citizens-why-a-european-citi-
zens-assembly-should-complement-the-european-parliament/2/ (hereinafter ‘Lafont and Urbinati, 
2024’).

97 

 IECA, 2022.

98 

 Leyen, U. (2019), A Union that strives for more, My agenda for Europe : political guidelines for the 
next European Commission 2019-2024, Directorate-General for Communication (European Com-
mission).

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fied majority in the Council on June 17, 2024, after Austria’s U-turn).99 Inter-
estingly, a survey conducted from 1 to 9 May 2024 by Savanta, an independent 
research agency which investigated European citizens’ opinions on nature and 
biodiversity in countries whose governments blocked the Nature Restoration 
Law, brought clear results: a large proportion of the population is in favour 
of the EU Nature Restoration Law, even though the respective governments 
oppose it. 100 An ECA could have helped to draw attention to a central pillar of 
the Green Deal at an earlier stage and bring the issue to the public’s attention. 
When political dynamics are moving in one or the other direction, ECA’s rec-
ommendations will make a difference.

99  Niranjan, A. (2024), ‘EU passes law to restore 20% of bloc’s land and sea by end of decade’, The 

Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/17/eu-passes-law-to-restore-20-
of-blocs-land-and-sea-by-end-of-decade. 

100  ‘EU-Renaturierungsgesetz in Kraft’, Deutsche Stiftung Meeresschutz, https://www.stiftung-mee-
resschutz.org/presse/eu-renaturierungsgesetz/?gad_source=1&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIjLT97d-
zBhgMVDZCDBx2u7BwfEAAYASAAEgJejfD_BwE. 

Can a European Citizens’ 
Assembly Improve 
Political Equality and 
Overcome the Demoi-
cratic Disconnect?  

Richard Bellamy101  

Kalypso Nicolaidis’ argument for a permanent European Citizens’ Assembly 
(ECA)  of  randomly  selected  citizens  is  a  characteristically  imaginative  and 
bold  intervention  in  the  ongoing  democratic  deficit  debate.102  It  combines 
theoretical sophistication with a concrete, practical proposal. However, while 
I agree with the concerns driving her suggestion – the increasing disillusion-
ment with actually existing electoral democracy across the democratic world 
and the resulting allure of populism or technocracy as alternatives – I doubt 
that such randomly sorted assemblies provide an adequate or even an appro-
priate response to this problem – indeed, I fear they may exacerbate it. I start 
by raising some general issues with such schemes. I then turn to how far they 
can address a core source of democratic disaffection within the EU – that of the 
‘demoi-cratic disconnect’.

101  University College London.

102  Nicolaidis, 2024.

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How equal and empowering is 
representation by sortition?

Like  other  champions  of  lottery  or  sortition,  Nicolaidis  sees  citizens’  assem-
blies  as  offering  a  way  of  strengthening  political  equality  and  enhancing  the 
sense  of  democratic  empowerment  by  giving  everyone  an  equal  chance  to 
rule.  As  she  notes,  from  classical  antiquity  up  to  the  eighteenth  century, 
random selection rivalled election as the main form of democracy. Nicolaid-
is differs from those contemporary advocates of sortition, such as Alexander 
Guerrero103 and Hélène Landemore,104 who view lottocracy as an alternative to 
electoral democracy and regards the two instead as complementary. However, 
she  shares  arguments  by  Gil  Delannoi  et  al.,105  Peter  Stone,106  and  Arash 
Abizadeh107  that  random  selection  and  regular  rotation  in  office  provides  a 
way of giving everyone an equal chance to shape the political agenda and make 
decisions that are in some ways more effective than the equal opportunity to 
stand for office or the indirect influence of an equal vote for representatives. Of 
course, the likelihood of being chosen may be remote in a large society.108 An 
individual may be no more likely to serve in a lottocracy than they would be in 
an electoral democracy. For example, the EU has some 375 million registered 
voters. Suppose there were 1,000 places within a permanent ECA (more than 
Nicolaidis suggests). That would give the average citizen a roughly 1 in 375,000 
chance of selection every 5 years or so. (I’ve kept the maths simple here, but 
Nicolaidis’ tweaks do not change the picture much – she wants an assembly of 
around 300, with a third renewed every 6 months). Given these odds, the equal 
chance to rule per se seems rather a risky deal. As Thomas Christiano points 
out,  one  would  hardly  regard  a  welfare  system  that  entitled  all  citizens  (as  a 

103  Guerrero, 2014.

104  Landemore 2020.

105  Delannoi, G., Dowlen, O and Stone, P. (2011), The Lottery as a Democratic Institution, Policy 

Institute, SciencesPo.

106  Stone, P. (2011), The Luck of the Draw: The Role of Lotteries in Decision Making, Oxford Academ-

ic.

107  Abizadeh, A. (2021), ‘Representation, Bicameralism, Political Equality, and Sortition: Reconstitut-
ing the Second Chamber as a Randomly Selected Assembly’, Perspectives on Politics, 19(3): 791–806 
(hereinafter ‘Abizadeh, 2021’).

108  Christiano, T. (2008), The Constitution of Equality: Democratic Authority and Its Limits, Oxford 

Academic (hereinafter ‘Christiano, 2008’).

49

supplement to some form of basic income, say) to a single free weekly national 
lottery ticket that gave them all an equal chance of being a millionaire as an 
egalitarian  form  of  social  redistribution  just  because  everyone  had  an  equal 
chance of winning the benefits lottery.109

To  be  fair,  Nicolaidis  could  be  regarded  as  advocating  a  slightly  differ-
ent (and better) argument, whereby sortition offers a more equitable way of 
choosing  political  representatives  by  giving  rise  to  an  assembly  that  is  more 
likely to deliberate and make proposals that give equal weight to the views and 
interests of citizens, as Abizadeh has argued. The claim here is that random se-
lection avoids voter bias and the influence of those with wealth, connections 
and  other  forms  of  power  that  bedevil  selection  and  election  as  a  candidate 
in an electoral democracy.110 Consequently, sortition will likely result in rep-
resentatives from all walks of life and lead to greater diversity. Indeed, when 
combined with stratified sampling, as she suggests, whereby representatives are 
selected in proportion to their possessing certain socially, then salient features 
found in society as a whole, such as gender, age and ethnicity – an assembly 
chosen in this way is likely to be more representative of society as a whole, at 
least in its make-up – than an elected assembly.111 As such, it can offer what 
Philip Pettit has called indicative rather than responsive representation.112 That 
is, a randomly selected legislature will be apt to reason like the citizenry taken 
as a whole.

Yet that cannot be counted on. Notwithstanding the sampling strategies 
and the payment of members, the wealthy and better educated may be more 
able and willing to serve – having the resources and competence to do so – and 
exert greater influence in deliberations. Non-professional politicians may also 
be more susceptible to lobbying and the influence of conspiracy theorists and 
the like due to a lack of general information. Representatives may also just act 
on their own idiosyncratic views or do the bare minimum to draw a salary. In 
all these cases, there will be little that can be done about it. Citizens will be by-
standers to the deliberation for they lack any instruments to motivate repre-
sentatives to respond to their preferences.

This brings us to the key problem with sortition: as Lafont and Urbinati 

109  Ibid.

110  Abizadeh, 2021.

111  Ibid.

112  Pettit, P. (2010), ‘Representation, Responsive and Indicative’, Constellations, 17: 426-434 (herein-

after ‘Pettit, 2010’).

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have  noted  in  their  comment,  it  downplays  the  political  agency  all  citizens 
may  exercise  in  authorising  and  holding  to  account  their  representatives.113 
Choosing who should represent you is itself subject to negotiation and deliber-
ation, forcing party managers to screen candidates for qualities and views likely 
to play well with voters. The prospect of being held to account and sanctioned 
for poor performance incentivises representatives to consider how their deci-
sions will be received – both at the next election and in the future. While any 
system of representation involves inequality between the representatives and 
the represented, these processes narrow that gap. By contrast, lottocracy both 
weakens the agency of citizens and reduces the incentives of representatives.

Nicolaidis  hopes  that  regular  rotation  of  representatives  may  overcome 
some of the potential problems of the indicative representativeness of even an 
appropriately  sampled  membership  of  an  ECA.  However,  this  creates  other 
problems.  For, as Jonathan White points out, the unpredictability of sortition 
and the regular rotation of representatives also works against consistency in law 
and policy-making and long-term planning.114 Each selection will bring a new 
set of representatives who may hold quite different views to their predecessors 
and successors. As a result, whatever agreements they make will be likely to be 
transient. That may undermine one of the chief virtues of the rule of law – 
the managing of expectations and the provision of a stable framework within 
which citizens can plan. It can also hinder the tackling of persistent problems 
that  require  planning  and  investment  over  time  –  such  as  the  mitigation  of 
and adaptation to climate change. A feature of parties is that they unite rep-
resentatives around a programme of policies animated by a certain ideology or 
set of principles. It encourages politicians to see themselves as acting for others 
to achieve a certain vision of society through a set of short- and longer-term 
policies.  Meanwhile,  citizens  have  agency  in  both  informing  that  vision  and 
voting and campaigning for or against it.

An alternative, a supplement or a 
complement to electoral democracy?

It might be argued that the above criticisms have the most force against those 
lottocrats who see sortition as an alternative to electoral democracy. They have 
less force for temporary, single-issue citizen assemblies, such as those recently 

113  Lafont and Urbinati, 2024; See also, Christiano, 2008 and Abizadeh, 2021.

114  White, J. (2023), In the long run: the future as a political idea, Profile Books.

51

deployed  within  the  Convention  on  the  Constitution  in  Ireland  to  inform 
referendums  on  abortion  and  same-sex  marriage,  which  have  a  supplemen-
tary  role  to  the  legislature  and  a  popular  referendum.115  However,  Nicolaid-
is  believes  this  supplementary,  specific  and  temporary  role  is  insufficient  to 
produce the broader democratic role she envisages for the ECA. As she notes, 
the EU already uses Citizen Panels that focus on specific policies, such as food 
waste and energy efficiency. As she also points out, though, these bodies are 
largely unknown beyond EU experts and can hardly be regarded as improving 
the democratic legitimacy of decision-making in these areas. Hence her belief 
that a permanent assembly that can complement decision making by the EP is 
needed.

I think there are several reasons why the current Citizen Panels have, at best, 
a limited effect and why the complementary role advocated by Nicolaidis may 
well  exacerbate  rather  than  mitigate  their  flaws.  First  and  most  importantly, 
there is the aforementioned lack of citizen agency in the selection and sanction-
ing  of  representatives  with  the  ECA.  That  reinforces  rather  than  overcomes 
the sense of a democratic disconnect between European citizens and EU deci-
sion-making. Second, there is the fact that the more successful of these bodies 
– such as the Irish and Icelandic experiments – have been created in small and 
comparatively cohesive societies.116 That heightens the likelihood of a degree 
of identification of citizens with these bodies and the perception that people 
like them are involved. The EU is much more diverse. Third, these bodies have 
tended to deliberate on constitutional issues of principle rather than the highly 
technical  regulatory  economic  policy  issues  that  fall  within  the  EU’s  com-
petence.  Of  course,  these  latter  issues  can  have  important  consequences  for 
people’s lives, albeit usually indirectly. However, in general, they are harder for 
people to relate to or to express an informed opinion on. In electoral democra-
cy, the focus tends to be on general approaches to the economy – such as lower 
taxes vs higher public investment – rather than on specific policies. The much 
wider remit of the ECA is likely to enhance this difficulty.

115  ‘Convention on the Constitution’, Citizens Information, https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/

government-in-ireland/irish-constitution-1/constitutional-convention/. 

116  ‘The Constitutional Council hands over the bill for a new constitution’, The Constitutional 

Council – General Information, http://stjornlagarad.is/english/. 

Should a Citizens' Assembly Complement the European Parliament? 52

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Demoicracy and the democratic 
disconnect

One of Nicolaidis’ innovative ideas that I have adopted and found useful to 
develop  has  been  her  insight  into  the  EU’s  character  as  a  demoi-cracy  rather 
than a demos-cracy.117 By this term, she has sought to emphasise the pluralist 
character of the EU, one that is rooted in its multinational character, among 
other factors. While I owe a huge debt to her work in this area, my own version 
of demoicracy is more intergovernmental and statist than hers. Following Peter 
Lindseth I see the EU’s democratic deficit as reflecting a demoi-cratic discon-
nect between democratic decision-making at the national and subnational level 
within each of the member states and at the supra-national EU level.118 Such a 
disconnect is familiar in many federal schemes that have to balance self-govern-
ment within the constituent units of the federation with shared government 
at the federal level. It proves especially problematic to negotiate within divided 
societies,  characterised  by  segmental  cleavages  between  different  linguistic, 
cultural, religious, ethnic or other groups. The solution, in countries such as 
Belgium, tends to be a form of consociational democracy, that combines con-
siderable devolution of core competences, on the one side, with collaborative 
decision making at the national level, on the other. Little surprise, therefore, 
that the much more diverse EU should move in a similar direction.

One of the problems with consociational and other collaborative schemes 
of government is that it becomes much harder to assign responsibility for bad 
decisions or to ‘throw the scoundrels out’ when they are identified. Decisions 
tend to be shared, with all governments necessarily a coalition of some or all of 
the main parties, which thereby become eternally governmental. As a result, 
such systems are likely to suffer from a lack of responsiveness that can drive 
many sections of the electorate towards populist parties claiming to speak more 
directly for a given people.

117  Bellamy, R. (2019), A Republican Europe of States: Cosmopolitanism, Intergovernmentalism and 

Democracy in the EU, Cambridge University Press.

118  Lindseth, P. (2010), Power and Legitimacy: Reconciling Europe and the Nation-State, Oxford Uni-

versity Press.

53

Nicolaidis  sees  the  ECA  as  being,  in  some  respects,  a  demoi-cratic  body, 
albeit  of  a  transnational  kind,  aimed  at  deepening  mutual  recognition  and 
collaboration between the EU’s different demoi. To that end, she suggests as 
one of the sampling criteria that there should be an equal number of delegates 
(she suggests 12) from each member state. But  how  will  these  connect  with 
the populations they are supposed to represent, particularly if they are regu-
larly changed? The worry, as voiced by Sandra Seubert, is that the ECA will be 
seen as just one more unelected EU body. Giving it decisional power will likely 
increase rather than decrease the demoi-cratic disconnect.119

Conclusion

Although much of this comment has been negative, I want to stress that I share 
Nicolaidis’  concerns  regarding  the  weaknesses  of  the  EU’s  (and  its  member 
states’) current democratic arrangements. These flaws are real, worrisome and 
need urgent attention. However, unlike Nicolaidis, I think the answer lies in 
enhancing the responsiveness and deliberative character of the electoral system. 
My main complaint with her bold scheme is that it fails to address, and may 
even worsen, both these failings. 

119  Seubert, S. (2024), ‘Empowering European Citizens but Avoiding Illusionary Promises!’ GLO-

BALCIT, https://globalcit.eu/representing-european-citizens-why-a-european-citizens-assembly-
should-complement-the-european-parliament/3/ (hereinafter ‘Seubert, 2024’).

Should a Citizens' Assembly Complement the European Parliament? Would a European 
Citizens’ Assembly 
Justify a Sense of 
Democratic Ownership?

Svenja Ahlhaus120 and Eva Schmidt121

In  her  thoughtful  and  innovative  contribution,  Kalypso  Nicolaidis122  argues 
for  the  institutionalisation  of  a  European  Citizens’  Assembly  (ECA).  While 
we  agree  with  many  of  her  diagnostic  and  constructive  points,  we  want  to 
investigate her idea of proposing an ECA as a strategy for “radically bolstering 
the sense of ‘democratic ownership’ of the EU’s institutions by its citizens”. In 
our view, this idea of a “sense of democratic ownership” merits more critical 
attention.

Nicolaidis  has  high  hopes  for  an  ECA,  connecting  it  to  debates  about 
democratic  inclusion,  political  representation,  and  legitimacy.  An  addition-
al – and less often discussed – purpose is to enhance the sense of democratic 
ownership that citizens feel towards the EU institutions. It builds on the idea 
that “if citizens can literally see power diffused, they might start to believe they 
own a share in it”. What strikes us about Nicolaidis’ proposal is that she seems 
to understand the idea of a sense of democratic ownership as a purely empirical 
concept  that  does  not  include  a  normative  dimension.  She  aims  to  bolster 
citizens’ sense of democratic ownership so that they “might start to believe they 

120  University of Münster

121 University of Münster

122  Nicolaidis, 2024.

55

own a share in it”. But shouldn’t we insist on distinguishing between a justified 
and an unjustified sense of ownership?

A sense of democratic ownership: 
justified or unjustified?

Let us introduce our point by way of an analogy to other debates about politi-
cal concepts with an empirical and a normative dimension. Take the example of 
legitimacy. While empirical scholars ask whether an institution is de facto seen 
as legitimate by citizens,123 normative scholars ask whether it should count as 
democratically legitimate.124 The same bifurcation arises when we turn to po-
litical representation (who feels represented vs who should feel represented) or 
belonging (who has a sense of belonging vs whose sense of belonging is nor-
matively justified). In Nicolaidis’ proposal, the focus seems to be on whether 
citizens feel a sense of ownership and how that feeling can be bolstered. While 
this is an empirical question not without merit, we want to ask the normative 
question of when a sense of democratic ownership is justified. We will investi-
gate the concept of a sense of democratic ownership from a normative stand-
point to determine whether and how Nicolaidis’ proposal of an ECA might 
enhance a justified sense of democratic ownership.

Generating a sense of democratic ownership “requires us to think of our-
selves as participating in a form of collective agency”.125 We understand a sense 
of ownership as an affective-experiential reaction that is based on a particular 
interpretation of the relation between citizens and institutions. This interpre-
tation can be evaluated as justified or unjustified. Feeling a sense of democratic 
ownership is not merely the result of outcomes that necessarily align with one’s 
preferences (substantive dimension), as these outcomes may come about arbi-
trarily without the preference-holder having any share in the collective agency 
(procedural dimension). Especially deliberative institutions can be seen to fa-
cilitate  “a  form  of  collective  agency  which  allows  citizens  to  reasonably  see 

123  Goldberg, S. (2021), ‘Just Advisory and Maximally Representative: A Conjoint Experiment on 

Non-Participants’ Legitimacy Perceptions of Deliberative Forums’, Journal of Deliberative Democ-
racy, 17(1): 56-75.

124  Lafont, C. (2019), Democracy without Shortcuts: A Participatory Conception of Deliberative Democ-

racy, Oxford University Press.

125  McBride, C. (2015), Democratic Ownership and Deliberative Participation, in M, Barrett and B, 

Zani (eds.),

Political and Civic Engagement: Multidisciplinary Perspectives, Routledge.

Should a Citizens' Assembly Complement the European Parliament? 56

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themselves as sharing in ownership of the political institutions which shape the 
contexts of their lives”.126

To provide an intuition of what we mean by an unjustified sense of dem-
ocratic ownership, one can turn to the literature on democracy-/citizen-wash-
ing127 or cooptation,128 a question Nicolaidis is concerned with herself: “How 
can the ECA be more than a form of cooptation and ‘citizen-washing’ and con-
tribute to transforming Europe’s civic culture and citizens’ sense of civic own-
ership of their institutions?”. The worry here is that participatory institutions 
such as, for instance, mini-publics, only feign an improvement on the participa-
tory opportunities of citizens, all the while their efforts end up going nowhere.

We see two normative problems: First, citizens might feel they had a chance 
to be part of a political decision-making process, even though their contribu-
tions were not actually taken into account. This could lead to an unjustified 
sense of ownership as citizens feel connected to an undemocratic institution. 
Second, they might be disillusioned by the supposedly participatory process. 
They experience a lack of ownership, which, while justified, can be problemat-
ic for an institution that requires citizen support. Bolstering a justified sense of 
ownership would mean avoiding both of these problems: we need democratic 
institutions that generate and deserve the citizens’ sense of democratic owner-
ship.

The idea of a sense of democratic ownership plays a role in many democrat-
ic theories focusing on the citizens’ perspective. Understood in this way, the 
idea of a sense of democratic ownership is closely related to ideas mentioned 
in  previous  contributions  to  their  forum,  such  as  alignment129  (Lafont  and 
Urbinati) and disconnect (Bellamy).130 As Lafont puts it: “Once they under-
stand their function and significance, can citizens take ownership over these 
institutions?”131

126  Ibid.

127  Reuchamps, M., Vrydagh, J and Welp, Y. (2023), De Gruyter Handbook of Citizens’ Assemblies, De 

Gruyter.

128  Holdo, M. (2019), ‘Power and Citizen Deliberation: The Contingent Impacts of Interests, Ideolo-

gy, and Status Differences’, Journal of Public Deliberation, 15(3).

129  Lafont and Urbinati, 2024.

130  Bellamy, R. (2024), ‘Can a European Citizens’ Assembly Improve Political Equality and Overcome 
the Demoi-cratic Disconnect?,’ GLOBALCIT, https://globalcit.eu/representing-european-citi-
zens-why-a-european-citizens-assembly-should-complement-the-european-parliament/4/ (hereinaf-
ter ‘Bellamy, 2024’).

131  Lafont, C. (2020), ‘Against Anti-Democratic Shortcuts: A Few Replies to Critics’, Journal of Delib-

erative Democracy,16(2): 96–109.

57

A re-focused ECA: Three ideas

Our idea is that the danger of a lack of a (justified) sense of ownership needs to 
be addressed by taking into account the background diagnoses. Why is there 
a lack of democratic ownership in the European Union, and how could it be 
“bolstered” by an ECA? We distinguish three potential reasons for a lack of 
democratic ownership of EU institutions. These diagnoses are non-exhaustive 
and well-known in the literature about the EU’s democratic deficit132, but we 
think that they merit attention in the debate about democratic ownership and 
the ECA.

We propose to start by identifying the core political problems an ECA is 
supposed to mitigate and to design it specifically with this problem in mind. 
There are three potential constellations an ECA might be supposed to respond 
to: A first diagnosis is opacity. Citizens might lack a sense of democratic owner-
ship because they do not understand the complex interplay of EU institutions 
and the process of policymaking at the EU level. A second diagnosis is capture. 
Here, the problem is that citizens do not have a sense of democratic owner-
ship because they are not convinced that they actually have democratic control 
over  decision-making  as  it  is  controlled  by  others.  A  third  diagnosis  is  stuck-
ness. Here, we mean that citizens lack a sense of democratic ownership because 
they feel that EU institutions are stuck and are not changeable by citizens.

Depending on our background diagnosis of why there is a lack of a sense 
of democratic ownership, we can propose different remedies. While it might 
not always be the first and best idea to tackle these problems with a randomly 
selected assembly, we want to outline how we might refocus an ECA in three 
directions. The idea is not that these three proposals will lead to legitimate or 
responsive  or  participatory  EU  decision-making  but  rather  that  they  might 
help  to  address  three  underlying  challenges.  This  goes  in  a  similar  direction 
as Lafont’s and Urbinati’s idea to reconceive the ECA in a “mediating role” – 
but we focus more directly on the lack of a justified sense of democratic own-
ership.133

First, if our diagnosis is that EU institutions are opaque to citizens, an ECA 
could be reconceived as a “counter-opacity” institution whose goal would be to 
promote transparency with regard to their functions, processes, and policies. 

132  See for example, Bellamy, R and Kröger, S. (2016), ‘The politicization of European integration: 

National parliaments and the democratic disconnect’, Comp Eur Polit, (14): 125–130.

133  Lafont and Urbinati, 2024.

Should a Citizens' Assembly Complement the European Parliament? 58

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Members of an ECA would learn about EU institutions and policies in depth 
and  explain  their  learnings  to  other  lay  citizens.  The  idea  is  that  there  is  an 
epistemic  advantage  in  learning  from  “people  like  you”.  Participants  might 
be  more  capable  of  explaining  to  other  lay  citizens  what  they  have  learned 
because they are not entrenched in the processes or were not part of design-
ing the policies and probably do not have the same education as policymakers. 
Therefore, they can empathise with non-participants better than profession-
al  spokespeople  and  anticipate  where  misunderstandings  might  come  from. 
This could motivate citizens to engage more with the EU, as they understand 
it better, even if they disagree with the contents presented to them. Nicolaid-
is alludes to the importance of a connection between the ECA and the wider 
public and calls for more creative “interface channels between the assembly and 
the broader public”, for instance, “through platforms and actors like NGOs 
or civil society organisations that have particular target audiences.” Connect-
ing  the  normative  function  of  counter-opacity  with  creative  channels  as  she 
proposes might make it more likely that citizens feel a sense of democratic own-
ership over EU institutions.

If we hold instead that the sense of democratic ownership is lacking because 
citizens think that the EU institutions are captured by particular groups and 
elite interests, enabling a sense of democratic ownership could involve recon-
ceiving the ECA as a counter-hegemonic institution. It is important to keep 
in  mind  Seubert’s  remark  that  the  complex  EU  structure  does  not  make  it 
easy to say who should be seen as “the elite” that has captured decision-mak-
ing.134 Of course, the ECA is already envisaged by Nicolaidis as composed of 
ordinary citizens who do not have vested interests. But if we hold that the key 
problem preventing a sense of democratic ownership is capture, this would also 
mean that the institution’s primary role should be contestatory. If citizens are 
supposed to overcome their sense of capture, they should be able to see that 
their interests and positions are not easily overlooked or brushed aside. It is im-
portant to note that this does not automatically require an empowered ECA. 
Randomly selected assemblies are not free from the problem of capture them-
selves.  As  Bellamy  puts  it  in  his  contribution:  “Non-professional  politicians 
may also be more susceptible to lobbying and the influence of conspiracy the-
orists and the like due to a lack of general information”.135 This means that the 
interplay between ECA and other EU institutions would need careful calibra-

134  Seubert, 2024.

135  Bellamy, 2024; Landa, D. and Pevnick, R. (2021), ‘Is Random Selection a Cure for the Ills of Elec-

toral Representation?’ J. Political Philos, 29(1): 46-72.

59

tion. But we might consider potential veto powers or powers to delay decisions 
or reconceiving the ECA more in the direction of citizen oversight juries.136

If we think that the lack of a sense of democratic ownership stems instead 
from  the  fact  that  citizens  feel  that  the  EU  institutions  are  “stuck”,  the 
ECA  might  be  an  option  for  re-opening  the  institutional  debates  about  the 
European Union. As Nicolaidis points out, institutional innovation could lead 
to a sense of renewal and openness. Our “democratic imagination” is sparked 
by rethinking the EU’s institutional interplay from scratch. Here, it would be 
important to focus on fundamental (or constitutional) issues. Citizens might 
regain a sense of democratic ownership once they see that it is possible that EU 
institutions, their competences and interplay can change and even accommo-
date a new randomly selected institution.137 The experimental spirit prevalent 
in many debates about democratic innovations could lead some citizens to feel 
more connected to the EU institutions. It would be a justified sense of own-
ership if citizens actually had effective paths to initiate and influence debates 
about the future of the European Union.

Conclusion

We have argued that political theorists should look more critically at proposals 
to  bolster  citizens’  sense  of  democratic  ownership  of  EU  institutions.  From 
a normative perspective, we can distinguish between a justified and an unjus-
tified sense of democratic ownership. This means that not only the lack of a 
justified  sense  of  democratic  ownership  but  also  the  existence  of  an  unjusti-
fied sense of democratic ownership might be problematic. We propose a more 
limited role of an ECA in reaction to three diagnoses of why there is a lack of 
sense of democratic ownership. Reconceived as an institution whose function 
could be described as counter-opacity, counter-hegemonic, or counter-stuck-
ness makes it more likely that the ECA might contribute to bolstering a justi-
fied sense of democratic ownership among EU citizens.

136  Bagg, S. (2024), ‘Sortition as Anti-Corruption: Popular Oversight against Elite Capture’, American 

Journal of Political Science, 68(1): 93-105.

137  Patberg, M. (2024), ‘Farewell to constituent power? The Conference on the Future of Europe, 
citizens’ assemblies and the democratic minimum’, Global Constitutionalism, 13(2): 411-428.

Should a Citizens' Assembly Complement the European Parliament? Democracy 3.0 in 
the 21st Century: The 
Case for a Permanent 
European Citizens’ 
Assembly

Yves Sintomer138 

In her thoughtful essay, Kalypso Nicolaidis defends the creation of a permanent 
citizens’ assembly (ECA) at the EU level,139 further developing a proposal she 
had made with other authors140 and which has been previously discussed by 
scholars  such  as  Hubertus  Buchstein.141  Confronting  the  present  legitimacy 
crisis of European democracy, she claims that the creation of such a randomly 
selected collective body could be an important contribution to facing the chal-
lenges of a democracy under threat. The ECA should not replace electoral de-
mocracy  nor  be  subordinated  to  it.  It  should  complement  it,  together  with 
other tools and actors, such as a more powerful European Citizens Initiative 
and a vibrant and organised civil society. The goal would be to empower the 
citizenry in a radical-democratic perspective.

138 Université de Paris 8 Vincennes – Saint-Denis

139  Nicolaidis, 2024.

140  EUCA, 2023.

141  Buchstein, H. (2009), Demokratie und Lotterie: Das Los als politisches Entscheidungsinstrument von 

der Antike bis zur EU, Campus.

61

Cristina Lafont and Nadia Urbinati reply that the ECA should not have de-
cision-making power and should remain subordinated to the people as a whole 
deciding through their elected representatives or, in some cases, directly through 
referendum.142 Sandra Seubert is sceptical, too: citizens’ assemblies should be 
routinised but only have an advisory role and should not be permanent in order 
not to contribute to the devaluation of the legislative power.143 For Richard 
Bellamy, the disillusionment with actually existing electoral democracy could 
be exacerbated by the creation of a permanent ECA, and the answer lies in en-
hancing the responsiveness and deliberative character of the electoral system.144 
In  Svenja  Ahlhaus  and  Eva  Schmidt‘s  view,  the  ECA  would  be  normatively 
interesting  only  when  it  contributes  to  reducing  the  opacity  of  the  political 
system, limiting its capture by particular interests, and helping to get out of its 
deadlocks.145 As I share most of Nicolaidis’ argument,146 I will propose a com-
plementary perspective to justify the creation of the ECA. My claim is that de-
mocracy, especially in the EU, cannot duplicate what it was in the decades fol-
lowing World War Two. In order to face the huge challenges of the 21st century, 
a much different model, democracy 3.0, is needed. The ECA could be one of 
its key elements, integrated in a new political system where electoral democracy 
would be relativised.

For a non-ideal and historically-situated 
theory of democracy

Too often, political theorists claim to offer a view from nowhere.147 In this per-
spective, the main conceptual problems of society and politics can be discussed 
(1) in a nearly just and democratic world,148 with no pretension to engage with 

142  Lafont and Urbinati, 2024.

143  Seubert, 2024.

144  Bellamy, 2024.

145  Ahlhaus, S and Schmidt, E. (2024), ‘Would a European Citizens’ Assembly Justify a Sense of Dem-
ocratic Ownership?’, GLOBALCIT, https://globalcit.eu/representing-european-citizens-why-a-eu-
ropean-citizens-assembly-should-complement-the-european-parliament/6/ (hereinafter ‘Ahlhaus 
and Schmidt, 2024’).

146  Sintomer, Y. (2023), The Government of Chance: Sortition and Democracy from Athens to the Pres-

ent, Cambridge University Press.

147  Nagel, T. (1989), The View from Nowhere, Oxford University Press.

148  Rawls, J. (1999), A Theory of Justice, Harvard University Press.

Should a Citizens' Assembly Complement the European Parliament? 62

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the challenges of really-existing societies; (2) independently from the analysis 
of the period in which the conversation takes place; and (3) without reflexively 
questioning the link between the normative claims defended by political actors 
and the models elaborated by scholars. In short, ideas have no context.

However,  context  is  crucial.  Much  too  often,  the  critics  of  citizens’  as-
semblies analyse the challenges faced by the latter in a realistic perspective but 
contrast them with an idealised view of electoral democracy. This conceptual 
shortcut between ideal and non-ideal political theory is present in the contri-
butions of Lafont and Urbinati,149 Seubert,150 and Bellamy.151 It makes it diffi-
cult to balance the specific advantages and problems of sortition and elections.

The kind of democracy which used to be stable in the Global North during 
a couple of decades after WW2 is in crisis. This is why democratic innovations 
involving citizens’ assemblies and other mini-publics have flourished in the last 
decades and why a growing number of theoreticians have proposed institution-
al models coupling randomly selected bodies and deliberation. The medicine 
may be wrong, but the disease is real. A strong diagnosis is needed to try to save 
democracy. In the conversation opened by Nicolaidis, most authors agree that 
the  legitimacy  crisis  of  the  Western  political  system  is  real.  Nevertheless,  the 
causes of the disease are too superficially analysed, especially in the contribu-
tions of Lafont and Urbinati,152 and of Seubert.153

Context also plays a decisive role for understanding political models. The 
history of ideas in context has shown how deeply the most brilliant political 
philosophers were embedded in the conversation of their time.154 The same is 
true for more recent scholars. To a large extent, the abstract theories of democ-
racy proposed by great authors such as Rawls and Habermas were idealisations 
of Western democracies in the decades following WW2. This does not nullify 
the interest in their theories, but a careful reflexive analysis is required once the 
Golden Age of these democracies is over and when the empirical and theoret-
ical developments coming from the Global South provincialise the model at 
stake.155

149  Lafont and Urbinati, 2024.

150  Seubert, 2024.

151  Bellamy, 2024.

152  Lafont and Urbinati, 2024.

153  Seubert, 2024.

154   Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe : Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialer Sprache in Deutschland 8 

vol,  Klett-Cotta, 1972-1997.

155  Chakrabarty, D. (2008), Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference, 

Princeton University Press.

63

Provincialising Western democracy

The kind of democracy which provides the basis upon which most of the cri-
tiques of the ECA rely is a historical parenthesis rather than a universal model. 
During its Golden Age, the Western political system had three political pillars: 
a competitive party system based on free elections and mass political parties; 
a division of power protecting the rule of law, human rights and a free public 
sphere; and efficient meritocratic public administrations with strong state ca-
pacities.

In  the  third  decade  of  the  21st century,  the  first  and  the  third  pillars  are 
weakened, and the second is under threat. This is not only due to populists or 
authoritarians. This model used to rely upon a number of economic, social, 
geopolitical  and  ecological  conditions.  Political  parties  were  able  to  include 
the subaltern groups in the political system. The West was the centre of the 
world, economically and politically, and could take advantage of the human 
and natural resources of the whole planet. National states could be efficient, 
at least in the Global North. With the ‘social market economy’ and the welfare 
state, important resources were redistributed to citizens. This had quite a high 
price: a mode of production and consumption that produced the ‘great accel-
eration’ and the Anthropocene. This model was not (and still is not) universal-
isable, and the West was, therefore, an exclusive club.

In  the  21st  century,  all  these  conditions  tend  to  disappear  due  to  the 
cumulative  outcome  of  different  structural  crises.  The  ecological  disaster 
is  unsustainable. 
demonstrates  how  our  socioeconomic  development 
Neoliberal  capitalism  threatens  democracy.  The  welfare  state  is  destabilised. 
The nation states are weakened by globalisation – especially in Europe, with 
its small or middle-size states. Elections do not take place at the transnational 
level.  The  old  postcolonial  and  postimperial  world  order  is  subverted  by 
the  increasing  development  of  China  and  other  emerging  countries.  Extra-
European migration shakes old identities. The social acceleration of changes 
(internet, social networks, gender trouble…) contrasts with the inertia of the 
structures of institutional politics.

The  EU  is  particularly  vulnerable.  Its  strong  welfare  states  are  under 
threat, and inequalities are increasing. The continent is exposed to geopoliti-
cal turmoil. The EU has quite a weak centre, with only 33.000 civil servants, 
compared with 2.1 million for the US federal government and several million 
for the Chinese central government. It has strong normative power but weak 
financial and implementation power. The European economy is less innovative 

Should a Citizens' Assembly Complement the European Parliament? 64

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than the US or the Chinese ones. Politics is characterised by increasing polari-
sation. Multiculturalism works well among Europeans, but migrants from the 
Global South and Muslim countries are instrumentalised as scapegoats.

As a result, the gap is growing between a vibrant civil society and the subal-
tern groups on the one hand and institutional politics on the other hand. The 
crisis of Western democracy is structural. The Golden Age is over. The politi-
cal system is largely broken in the Global North. The extension of Western de-
mocracy to the world after the fall of European communism has largely been 
a failure, with the partial exception of Central East-European, and some Asian 
countries.

Global Governance and Citizens’ 
Assemblies

Confronted with this landscape, the normative model of reference implicit in 
the contributions of Lafont and Urbinati,156 Seubert,157 and Bellamy158 is one-
sided when referring to the past and mystifying for the present. It forgets the 
dark side of the Western political model, and it is far away from actually existing 
Western democracies. Let us give three significant examples.

The traditional division of power is largely gone. With the rise of global 
governance, crucial decisions are increasingly taken by non-elected bodies such 
as courts, transnational organisations such as the IMF or the World Bank, bu-
reaucratic agencies at national and transnational levels, and transnational cor-
porations.  (The  algorithms  that  deeply  shape  the  public  sphere  are  mostly  a 
corporate choice.) In this context, the concept of sovereignty is archaic. This 
is  even  more  so  in  the  EU  where,  as  Nicolaidis  convincingly  argues,  no  one 
body can sovereignly make the decision. This is why the debate on “who shall 
decide, the people or citizens’ assemblies?” is misleading. It reminds me of the 
one Marxists had decades ago about how to “solve” the dual power between 
the  elected  assembly  and  the  Soviets.  It  is  possible  to  empower  the  ECA  on 
certain  issues  without  necessarily  entering  into  a  zero-sum  game  with  the 
European  Parliament.  As  Arendt  wrote,  one  can  increase  power  through  its 
separation. This is widely accepted for constitutional courts and legislatures; 

156  Lafont and Urbinati, 2024.

157  Seubert, 2024.

158  Bellamy, 2024.

65

why should it be a problem with the ECA? This is all the more the case in the 
EU, where, as Nicolaidis argues, the decision-making process is shared among 
various bodies.159 Contrary to what Lafont and Urbinati claim, the real rela-
tions  between  the  citizenry  and  the  various  rulers  is  less  accountability  than 
deference – at best, when it is not indifference, distrust or anger.160

Political parties are no more efficient channels between the citizenry and 
the rulers. They have lost membership and legitimacy. They are considered by 
most European citizens as acting more for their own sake and for privileged 
groups than for the common good – realist political scientists tend to confirm 
this view. No democratic mass political party has been created in the last three 
decades. It is no more only in the Global South that electoral systems increas-
ingly materialise the government of the elite, by the elite and for the elite. To 
say the least, they are not very efficient in taming transnational capitalism. To 
pretend that actual electoral democracy enables the expression of the sovereign-
ty of the people is misleading, and to claim it could be so in a near future is 
naive.

It is also striking that none of the critiques of Nicolaidis’ proposal161 (with 
the partial exception of Seubert)162 discuss one of her most important claims, 
namely that citizens’ assemblies could help represent non-human entities. They 
could perform this task together with public agencies with a special mandate 
but would add a political dimension that is quite reduced in the latter. The eco-
logical crisis is the most crucial challenge humanity has to face in this century. 
A coherent answer can only be given when combining local, national and trans-
national scales. The electoral system tends to focus on the short term and has 
not been implemented at a transnational scale. The elections for the EU par-
liament are a sum of national votes. The founding fathers of electoral govern-
ments could not forecast global warming. Future generations and non-humans 
neither vote nor authorise, defer to, or control the rulers.

In  relation  to  these  examples,  the  ECA  and  other  citizens’  assemblies 
and mini-publics could play a crucial role. It is easier to conceive of them as 
adequate  representatives  of  the  future  generation  and  non-humans  than  of 
elected assemblies and executives. They could be officially given this function 
and  would  be  more  protected  from  short-termism  and  vested  interests  than 

159  Nicolaidis, 2024.

160  Lafont and Urbinati, 2024.

161  Nicolaidis, 2024.

162  Seubert, 2024.

Should a Citizens' Assembly Complement the European Parliament? 66

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a Brussels bubble where lobbies have a major influence in the conception of 
public policies.

A similar argument can be made about the taming of transnational capi-
talism, and the defence of the common good and of the interests of the vast 
majority of the people. Without having personal political career or partisan in-
terests to defend and reflecting the social diversity of experience of the citizen-
ry, the members of the ECA, chosen by lot for a short period of time, could 
deliberate under much better conditions than MEPs. They could be fair inter-
locutors for mobilised civil society and subaltern groups, which are marginal in 
electoral politics.

The ECA could also increase the global legitimacy of politics. Global gov-
ernance is here to stay, which means that we live in a world beyond sovereign-
ty, where no single entity has the last word in a given territory (with the partial 
exception of the USA and China). In order to challenge the relations of power 
and domination that structure our societies, it is necessary to multiply coun-
tervailing powers.163 The ECA would embody a descriptive representation of 
the people, much less distorted by fake news, political manoeuvres and private 
interests than the elected European Parliament. It could be a strong platform 
for the voice of subaltern groups. Its outcomes could be amplified by multiple 
mini-publics on specific issues or contribute to the monitoring of EU agencies. 
Other authorities could gain legitimacy when the permeability of the political 
system towards citizens’ demands increases.

For  sure,  the  ECA  and  other  citizens’  assemblies  will  face  many  risks: 
capture by lobbies, technocratic drift, instrumentalisation by the executive, dif-
ficulty to connect with the wider public sphere. But these dangers are mostly 
empirical and should be faced pragmatically in a go-between experimentation 
and theoretical analysis.

The ECA and randomly selected bodies are not a magic bullet. They should 
be part of a broader transformation of the political system, including the taming 
of capitalist corporations, the development of the European Citizen Initiative, 
the multiplication of participatory tools, and important reforms of EU elec-
tions. A mere lottocracy is unrealistic and undesirable. But as Nicolaidis con-
vincingly argues, “[s]ince an ECA is meant to augment participation beyond 
the  self-selection  of  electoral  candidates,  it  could  spearhead  such  non-elitist 
participation  elsewhere.  As  itself  a  school  of  democracy,  it  could  galvanise  a 

163  Fung, A. (2003), ‘Countervailing Power in Empowered Participatory Governance’ in Fung, A and 

Wright, E (eds.), Deepening Democracy, Verso.

67

civic culture in schools, firms and neighbourhoods across the continent, con-
tributing to a growing participatory ecosystem.”164

Conclusion: Democracy 3.0

In Europe, democracy was invented by hunter-gatherers and reinvented in city-
states. Much later, it developed within big nation states – a long and painful 
process that implied wars, empires, and revolutions, and had huge cost for the 
rest of the world and for the planet. But history does not end. We should look 
at the Western model after WW2 in the same way as we consider Athens: a fas-
cinating but non-reproducible experience. In the 21st century, the status quo is 
not an option. Nor is a nostalgic dream of going back to an idealised Golden 
Age. A Democracy 3.0 is needed. Elections are only part of it. New venues have 
to  be  created,  which  can  counter-balance  the  limits  of  electoral  politics,  the 
rising power of technocratic bodies, and capitalist transnational corporations. 
The ECA, as a real utopia, should play an important role in the new system.165 
It would be better not to wait for forthcoming disasters before experimenting 
with it.

164  Nicolaidis, 2024.

165  Gastil, J and Wright, E. (2019), Legislature by Lot: Transformative Designs for Deliberative Gover-

nance, Verso (hereinafter ‘Legislature by Lot, 2019’’).

Should a Citizens' Assembly Complement the European Parliament? Grounding ‘Democratic 
Innovations’ in Wider 
Decolonial Movements 
Within and Beyond EU 
Borders

Alvaro Oleart166 

Progressive ideas and movements have been travelling beyond national borders 
for a long time. Movements such as #MeToo, Fridays for Future, Black Lives 
Matter  or  the  ongoing  movement  for  solidarity  with  Palestine  illustrate  the 
increasingly  transnational  flow  of  politics.  This  process  contrasts  with  the 
national  anchoring  of  formal  institutions.  In  this  sense,  Kalypso  Nicolaidis’ 
proposal  of  a  European  Citizens’  Assembly  (ECA)  as  a  complement  (rather 
than as a substitute) to the European Parliament is interesting in its attempt 
to  connect  democratic  innovation  with  broader  collective  actors  and  move-
ments.167  It  aims  to  break  from  the  ‘disintermediated’  logic  of  previous  EU 
citizen  participation  experiences  and  combine  sortition  “with  politicians  to 
enhance political buy-in, as well as representatives of civil society organisations 
to enhance societal and activist buy-in”.

166  Université Libre de Bruxelles

167  Nicolaidis, 2024. 

69

So  far,  contributions  have  mostly  questioned  the  democratic  legitimacy 
of such an ECA and the extent to which it would contribute to (or worsen) 
the  quality  of  existing  electoral  democracies.  Cristina  Lafont  and  Nadia 
Urbinati argue convincingly that an ECA would structurally empower an ex-
clusive group of citizens selected through sortition and not articulate a relation-
ship of accountability to the wider public.168 Similarly, Svenja Ahlhaus and Eva 
Schmidt argue that an ECA should be reconceptualised as a “counter-opacity, 
counter-hegemonic” arena that would make more visible how the EU works, 
in a way that contributes to “bolstering a justified sense of democratic own-
ership among EU citizens”.169 Sandra Seubert170 and Richard Bellamy171 raise 
further  objections.  They  outline  the  risks  that  such  an  ECA  would  have  by 
potentially  creating  unrealistic  expectations  and  not  improving  the  main 
arenas of democracies: elected parliaments. While these critiques are valuable, 
I also agree with Kalypso Nicolaidis and Yves Sintomer172 that we should look 
for new ways forward. This entails avoiding the idealisation of existing electoral 
and  parliamentary  democracies  due  to,  for  example,  their  responsibility  for 
fostering  neoliberal  capitalism  and  maintaining  the  structural  oppression  of 
the Global Souths by Global North countries. Thus, there is a tension between 
criticising  the  legitimacy  of  ‘democratic  innovations’  and  championing  the 
existing electoral democracies in the EU.

This  is  a  timely  debate,  particularly  since  it  coincides  with  the  start  of 
the Democratic Odyssey project in September 2024, but also the transnation-
al movement of solidarity with Palestine. Why does Palestine, and the ongoing 
transnational activist mobilisation, matter for the debate on an ECA? When 
thinking of renewing democracy, I argue that we should encompass a global 
perspective that does not focus uniquely on the EU territory and on EU citizens 
and that incorporates anticolonial struggles and movements.

168  Lafont and Urbinati, 2024.

169  Ahlhaus and Schmidt, 2024.

170  Seubert, 2024.

171  Bellamy, 2024.

172  Sintomer, Y. (2024), ‘Democracy 3.0 in the 21st Century: The Case for a Permanent European 

Citizens’ Assembly’, GLOBALCIT, https://globalcit.eu/representing-european-citizens-why-a-eu-
ropean-citizens-assembly-should-complement-the-european-parliament/7/ (hereinafter ‘Sintomer, 
2024’).

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The EU’s ‘citizen turn’ and the private 
industry of ‘deliberative democracy’

The past five years have been marked by the emergence of democratic innova-
tions in the EU oriented towards establishing a ‘direct’ relation between EU 
institutions and EU citizens, which I have characterised as the ‘citizen turn’.173 
The European Citizen Consultations, the Conference on the Future of Europe 
(CoFE) and the post-CoFE citizen panels illustrate this process, in which the 
EU is increasingly attempting to use sortition as a way to bring together a ‘rep-
resentative’  group  of  ‘everyday  citizens’  from  across  the  EU  to  put  forward 
their  views  on  the  future  of  Europe.  However,  the  track  record  in  terms  of 
democratic outreach is poor, as only the political bubble working on EU affairs 
actually learned what was happening and collective actors were broadly side-
lined. Moreover, political conflict was heavily neutralised – as I have empirical-
ly scrutinised in my book Democracy Without Politics in EU Citizen Participa-
tion.174

This  is  not  to  say  that  citizens’  assemblies  are  inherently  a  depoliticising 
and undemocratic tool, but rather that the underlying philosophy with which 
the EU has deployed them poses fundamental problems. There are alternatives 
to this approach that include democratic innovations in a way that is coherent 
with an agonistic democracy logic. The Palestine encampments are a relevant 
example, as activists have innovated in mobilisation to find new ways to channel 
the energy of this movement. But is it possible to put forward these alternatives 
in a highly institutionalised body that would complement the European Par-
liament? What would be the specific relation between a potential ECA and the 
EP?

Furthermore, rather than actually disintermediating the political debate by 
articulating  a  direct  relation  between  EU  institutions  and  EU  citizens,  what 
is taking place is a redefinition of what mediation looks like. The EU citizen 
panels organised during the last five years illustrated this process, as they were 
operationally organised by a consortium of private consultancies subcontract-
ed by the EU. These actors frame themselves as neutral brokers, yet in fact their 

173  Oleart, A. (2023), ‘The political construction of the ‘citizen turn’ in the EU: disintermediation and 
depoliticisation in the Conference on the Future of Europe’, Journal of Contemporary European 
Studies, 1:15.

174  Oleart, A. (2023), Democracy Without Politics in EU Citizen Participation: From European Demoi 

to Decolonial Multitude, Springer.

71

depoliticised approach has a tendency to omit structural inequalities operating 
in society, as Maarten de Groot has argued.175 Thus, the same actors that largely 
drove the CoFE (Commission, EP, Council and private consultancies) would 
likely steer any future democratic innovation, such as an ECA, in a similar di-
rection. If the same actors that have driven the EU’s ‘citizen turn’ are also in 
the driving seat of the new ECA, would the results be different? Can the same 
actors that are part of the problem become part of the solution? Same, same, 
but  different?  There  is  a  risk  that  deliberative  democracy  in  a  newly  formed 
ECA is conceived by EU institutions as a way to claim democratic legitimacy 
without actually questioning the structural power relations that are at play.

The Palestine Encampments and the 
“decolonial project for Europe”

If  EU  institutions  and  private  consultancies  are  badly  suited  to  improve  de-
mocracy, who should we turn to? Here is where the ongoing movements on 
Palestine are exemplary. Against the background of the Eurocentric imaginary 
of democracy that situates its inception in ancient Athens through sortition 
and deliberation, we should turn to anticolonial movement struggles as a way 
to  reimagine  democracy.  Indeed,  as  Kalypso  Nicolaidis  and  Richard  Youngs 
have argued, the EU should reverse its democratic gaze by unlearning its Euro-
centric way of making sense of democracy and opening itself to learn from the 
Global Souths.176 For instance, while democracy is most often described in the 
literature as relating to elections, representation and deliberation, the Palestine 
encampments – democratic innovations in themselves through their capacity 
to  bridge  Global  Souths  movements  with  those  in  the  Global  North  –  that 
have emerged across the world remind us that we can’t circumscribe democra-
cy to national (or EU) borders and that if democracy is to be transnational, it is 
incompatible with colonialism and apartheid.

This might entail revising the starting question when thinking of new in-
stitutions.  Rather  than  aiming  for  the  ‘descriptive  representation’  that  sorti-

175  de Groot, M. (2023), ‘Towards a postcolonial future for democracy’, The Participatory and Delib-
erative Democracy Specialist Group of the Political Studies Association, https://deliberativehub.
wordpress.com/2023/02/07/towards-a-postcolonial-future-for-democracy/. 

176  Nicolaidis, K and Youngs, R. (2023), ‘Reversing the Gaze: Can the EU Import Democracy from 
Others?’, JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, 61(6): 1605–1621 (hereinafter ‘Nicolaidis 
and Youngs, 2023’).

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tion aims at as a horizon, we should be thinking about the kind of institutions 
that can channel the existing structural conflicts that exist in society in order to 
reverse material inequalities. In turn, such material inequalities are inherently 
related to epistemic injustices. In other words, how can we empower the social 
and political groups that are structurally absent from most institutional spaces? 
Perhaps a way forward is to construct spaces designed for under or non-repre-
sented groups to have a voice. Indeed, democratic innovations should articu-
late the ‘prefigurative politics’ of social movements: Putting forward an ECA 
without the explicit backing of social movements and civil society is likely to 
merely reproduce mainstream institutional narratives.177 

It follows that my institutional proposal emphasises process and purpose. 
Before launching a full-fledged institutional design proposal, EU institutions 
should first rethink their own understanding of democracy and responsibility 
for fostering a highly unequal world by engaging with civil society and move-
ments in the Global Souths. Second, they ought to orient new EU institutions 
towards the dismantlement of colonial legacies that unfortunately do not only 
concern the past but also the EU’s present. From the deadly EU migration and 
refugee policies to trade, the EU’s impact goes much beyond its member states 
on multiple dimensions. It seems only logical that civil society and social move-
ments in the Global Souths should play an important role in the democratisa-
tion of the EU.

The  need  to  rethink  democracy  is  also  based  on  current  challenges,  the 
climate emergency being the ultimate illustration of the difficulties of holding 
multinational corporations accountable. While some of these companies have 
a large share of responsibility, it is actors in the Global Souths that suffer most 
from it. Certainly, an ECA should make sure to connect to the European public 
spheres, but also beyond EU borders, and contribute to the “decolonial project 
for Europe” proposed by Bhambra,178 which begins with acknowledging that 
the  inherited  (capitalist)  material  structures  are  linked  to  colonial  relations 
and opening windows to contest them. The democratisation of transnational 
political institutions will require venues for movements and organisations to 
mobilise across borders with a democracy beyond the nation-state perspective 
and a strong decolonial understanding of the underlying material structures. 
The  broader  point  is  that,  without  reversing  the  unequal  distribution  of 

177 Flesher Fominaya, C. (2022), ‘Reconceptualizing Democratic Innovation: “Democratic Innovation 
Repertoires” and their Impact Within and Beyond Social Movements’, Democratic Theory, 9(2): 
78-100.

178  Bhambra, G. K. (2022), ‘A Decolonial Project for Europe’, JCMS: Journal of Common Market 

Studies, 60: 229–244.

73

wealth within and between countries, EU democracy will not be democratised. 
Institutional  design  changes  can  contribute  to  channel  the  energy  emerging 
from social movements, but there is no design that by itself will significantly 
democratise democracy.

Thus,  democratic  innovations  will  need  to  be  grounded  and  rooted  in 
social movements and collective actors striving for social justice, decolonisation 
and transnational democracy. It is difficult to imagine that a factory worker or 
a refugee fleeing from war as an individual citizen participating in an assembly 
can  have  as  much  political  weight  as  a  banker  who  has  the  social,  cultural, 
economic,  political  and  symbolic  capital  to  shape  EU  politics.  Rather  than 
aiming to ‘represent’ European citizens as a whole via sortition, any proposed 
innovation should contribute to amplifying the voices of movements and col-
lective actors that are (mostly) invisible and lack representation in institutional 
spaces.

Should a Citizens' Assembly Complement the European Parliament? The Advantages and 
Perils of a Civil-society-
Led European Citizens’ 
Assembly

Brett Hennig179  

The Sortition Foundation and Sortition Europe applaud the effort of the Dem-
ocratic Odyssey to kick off an impressive campaign to bring people into the 
heart of democratic decision making at the EU level.180

We are particularly impressed with the demand for a permanent European 
Citizens’  Assembly  (ECA),  something  dear  to  us  as  we  also  launch  our  858 
campaign to replace the anachronistic, and much loathed, House of Lords in 
the UK with a permanent citizens’ assembly, which we are calling a House of 
Citizens.181

Below I will not discuss whether sortition should complement or replace 
elections – I’ve made my point on that score in numerous publications (see the 
chapter “Who needs elections? Accountability, Equality, and Legitimacy Under 
Sortition”  in  Legislature  by  Lot;182  the  book  “The  End  of  Politicians:  Time 

179  Sortition Foundation.

180  ‘Sortition Foundation’, Sortition Foundation, https://www.sortitionfoundation.org/. 

181  ‘Campaign: It’s time to replace the House of Lords with a House of Citizens’, 858.org, https://

www.858.org.uk/house-of-citizens. 

182  Legislature by Lot, 2019.

75

for a Real Democracy”)183 and many times online (e.g. Ted.com: “What if we 
replaced politicians with randomly selected people?”184 and on National Public 
Radio in the US).185

Instead, I focus here on one element of the Democratic Odyssey campaign 
that Kalypso Nicolaidis mentions in her introduction, and specifically on the 
construction of a pilot European Citizens’ Assembly, kicking off in Athens in 
late September 2024, which we have been involved in.186 Nicolaidis’s essay can 
clearly be seen as laying out the intellectual foundations for this campaign and 
the pilot ECA for which she is a pivotal and inspiring leader.187

Of  course,  campaigning  is  a  long  and  arduous  process  and  civil  society 
organisations  have  many  and  multiple  strategies  and  theories  of  change  for 
achieving  their  aims.  One  of  these  –  also  identified  in  Alvaro  Oleart’s  com-
mentary188 – is prefigurative politics,189 more colloquially known as “building a 
new world in the shell of the old”190 or “building tomorrow today”.191 I locate 
the building of the pilot European Citizens’ Assembly within this strategy, and 
below, I focus specifically on the pros and cons of doing this via a civil-socie-
ty-led citizens’ assembly.

183  Hennig, B. (2017), The End of Politicians: Time for a Real Democracy, Unbound Digital.

184  ‘What if we replaced politicians with randomly selected people?’, Ted, https://www.ted.com/talks/
brett_hennig_what_if_we_replaced_politicians_with_randomly_selected_people?subtitle=en. 

185  ‘Brett Hennig: Should We Replace Politicians with Random Citizens?’ Ted Radio Hour, https://
www.npr.org/2018/10/12/656598660/brett-hennig-should-we-replace-politicians-with-random-
citizens. 

186  Nicolaidis, 2024.

187  Ibid.

188  Oleart, A. (2024), ‘Grounding ‘democratic innovations’ in wider decolonial movements within and 
beyond EU borders’, GLOBALCIT, https://globalcit.eu/representing-european-citizens-why-a-eu-
ropean-citizens-assembly-should-complement-the-european-parliament/8/ (hereinafter ‘Oleart, 
2024’).

189 ‘Prefigurative politics’, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prefigurative_politics (hereinafter 

‘Prefigurative politics’). 

190  ‘A New World in the Shell of the Old: prefigurative politics, direct action, education’, openDemo-
cracy, https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/new-world-in-shell-of-old-prefigura-
tive-politics-direct-action-education/. 

191  Raekstad, P and Gradin, S. (2019), Prefigurative Politics: Building Tomorrow Today, Wiley.

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Advantage: Freedom to experiment

One of the main advantages of a civil society-led assembly is the lack of con-
straints to follow “standard” practice and to adhere to narrow expectations and 
tight prescriptions of how a deliberative process should be conducted and what 
it should look like. For the Democratic Odyssey project, we see this primarily in 
two aspects: (i) the selection of members of the assembly and (ii) the informed 
deliberative process itself.

Specifically, the members of the first assembly in Athens in September 2024 
are veering dramatically away from standard practices of “pure sortition”, i.e. 
using a two-step democratic lottery process to create a representative sample 
of  the  relevant  community,  in  this  case  Europe.  Not  that  there  is  actually 
any such thing as pure sortition: even the Commission’s European Citizens’ 
Panels (ECP) over-represent youth (thankfully, as their voice is often unheard 
in EU politics) and thus don’t adhere to the pure model.192

The  Democratic  Odyssey’s  very  conscious  decision  to  include  non-EU 
citizens is, in my mind, also to be applauded, and follows standard practice at 
local and national level across Europe, where often the only requirement for 
inclusion in a citizens’ assembly is permanent residency. It should be highlight-
ed, however, that ECPs exclude non-EU citizens from their deliberations. As 
usual, with most of these topics, an advantage can also be a peril, as you will see 
below.

The freedom in process appears to be very exciting, especially as the typical 
deliberative process of plenary, small-group discussion, prioritisation and deci-
sions (then repeat) is highly prescriptive and, as many would claim, lacks imag-
ination. Proposals to use performance, art, and more humanly engaging pro-
cesses should be welcome and learning how they affect deliberative outcomes 
will be very interesting to observe.

Advantage: Freedom of topic and agenda

Another potential advantage is that the assembly could have the freedom to 
set its own agenda. I say “could” because obviously, there is a bootstrapping 
problem here: how does the first assembly set its own agenda without an agen-
da-setting meeting? And although there are some obvious solutions to this (the 

192  ECP.

77

members could have been brought together online first to set the agenda), there 
are practical and logistic reasons – not to mention (internal) political campaign 
reasons – why this was not done in this first instance. Instead, the first topic was 
discussed and decided on by the broad and expanding “constituent network” 
of civil society groups involved in the Democratic Odyssey campaign and left 
deliberately  broad  so  the  members  themselves  could  narrow  it  down  in  the 
future.

In the future, as is planned at the conclusion of the Athens assembly meeting, 
the assembly members themselves could usefully set the agenda for the next 
meeting  at  which  they  might  not  participate  due  to  rotation  of  membership. 
This would also separate some powers of agenda-setting and decision-making 
but locate the agenda-setting power firmly in the hands of ECA members.

Of  course  one  could  (should?)  also  consider  extending  agenda-setting 
power to broader civil society (perhaps through an ECI-like mechanism?) and 
even the wider public, using mass participatory “deliberate and vote” tools such 
as vTaiwan. This is an option that will be important to experiment with in the 
future.

Peril: Biased composition undermining 
legitimacy

The next two perils are both flip sides of the above two freedoms. With the 
freedom to experiment, the Democratic Odyssey has chosen to bring together a 
complicated, mixed, transnational and translocal group of people that includes 
– technically overrepresents – local residents (in the first example, those who 
live in Athens and the wider municipality of Attica) and will also give space on 
the floor of the assembly (so to speak) to civil society actors. I find this prob-
lematic for a variety of reasons.

Firstly,  even  though  the  local  residents  include  people  who  aren’t  Greek 
or even from the EU, they are necessarily overwhelmingly urban city dwellers, 
and the very significant urban-rural divide in Europe today will be dramatical-
ly skewed in the makeup of the assembly by such a decision. I understand the 
reason why this decision has been made, but in the trade-off between the pros 
and cons of such a model, I find myself more on the con side.

Secondly,  civil  society  actors  (even  if  chosen  by  lottery)  are  notorious-
ly  not  good  deliberators:  they  assume  they  know  the  answers,  are  typically 

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well educated, articulate, and very likely intimidating for so-called “everyday” 
assembly participants selected by lottery. In most (normal) citizens’ assemblies, 
civil society actors are asked to contribute either through expert and witness 
panels or by making written submissions but are never given decision-making 
power on the floor of the assembly. In my opinion, they should have the power 
to inform but not the power to decide. Which brings us to probably the most 
important peril.

Peril: Lack of (direct) political impact of 
the assembly outcomes

This is obviously and commonly brought up by many observers of the Demo-
cratic Odyssey assembly: will the outcomes of the assembly have any direct po-
litical impact? It seems almost certain that they will not. Although some of the 
EU institutions praise participatory and deliberative democracy – and have by 
now organised several ECPs – presumably, they only want to see this done on 
their own terms. Moreover, the topic will most likely not fit into the current 
agenda of those in power, and the discussions risk being too vague and rushed 
to be useful. I estimate the first event will include only around 12 hours of de-
liberations, mostly due to budgetary and logistical constraints. The EU insti-
tutions may even find the attempt to impose outcomes provocative and react 
defensively.

Of  course,  from  a  campaign  perspective,  if  the  purpose  of  the  assembly 
is prefigurative politics, then direct political impacts may not even be strategi-
cally important to the campaign, but they will be of the utmost importance to 
the assembly members who will have sacrificed a weekend away from family and 
perhaps taken days off work to participate. It will be potentially demoralising 
or even angering – as we have seen repeatedly when assembly recommendations 
are ignored by those in power, such as after the first French climate assembly – 
and may lead to a loss of interest and difficulty with future assembly meetings. 
As one person said in the online Democratic Odyssey forum in early Septem-
ber  (2024),  neglect  will  be  the  worst  outcome  in  our  responsibility  to  ECA 
members. Fortunately, this is being taken seriously by the Democratic Odyssey 
with several plans to amplify and connect outcomes to decision-makers.

79

Peril: Lack of independence leading to 
low legitimacy

Civil  society-led  citizens’  assemblies  are  becoming  more  common,  especially 
since Extinction Rebellion’s third demand calling for empowered citizens’ as-
semblies on the climate and ecological crisis.193

It seems obvious that no civil society organisation would call for a citizens’ 
assembly if they didn’t imagine that the outcome would support their objec-
tives – it is surely a calculated risk, but if they have done some thorough polling, 
then the risk is probably low. We see in the UK, for example, the People’s Plan 
for Nature – organised by the WWF, RSBP, and the National Trust – being 
used to push their climate-related agendas.194

To  keep  the  (perceived?)  legitimacy  of  such  a  process  high,  those  who 
organise and conduct the assembly must be independent of the organisation 
convening (read: paying for) the assembly. In the case of the “radically inclu-
sive” Democratic Odyssey, where these lines are blurred, and the convenors and 
many of the deliberative democracy practitioners organising the assembly are 
all part of the campaign, this will be difficult. The hope may be that the other 
academic and NGOs members of the Democratic Odyssey campaign will hold 
the organisers to transparent and clear standards of independence in member 
selection and deliberative process design and conduct.

The concern and risk, of course, is that external political actors will dismiss 
the assembly as an illegitimate and biased project, whose outcomes and pro-
cesses are controlled by those looking to support their own (typically progres-
sive) agendas.

The hope of civil society actors convening citizens’ assemblies is of course, 
that if they can point to independent conduct of those organising the assembly, 
they can point to the results and say “Look, we told you so. This is what a rep-
resentative sample of people think after going through a process of informed 
deliberation.” This is (almost) the best-case scenario.

193  ‘Citizens’ Assembly’, Extinction Rebellion, https://extinctionrebellion.uk/decide-together/citi-

zens-assembly/ (hereinafter ‘Extinction Rebellion’). 

194  ‘Read the People’s Plan for Nature’, People’s Plan for Nature, https://peoplesplanfornature.org/. 

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Peril: Lack of budget leading to low 
quality

A third key problem is that transnational assemblies cost a small fortune. Our 
guess  for  the  budget  of  a  European  Citizens’  Panel  of  150  people  brought 
together for 2 weekends in person and 1 weekend online to discuss one topic 
thoroughly with experts and a variety of “witnesses” is around 2 million euros. 
I stress that this is merely an educated guess, as the venue and the very signifi-
cant translation costs for an ECP are done “in house” by the European Com-
mission  (I  believe).  Others  in  the  Democratic  Odyssey  network  know  these 
details better than I do.

One caveat here is that demonstrating that transnational assemblies can be 
done on low budgets, in a climate-friendly way, alongside a “festival of democ-
racy” will be a significant Democratic Odyssey achievement.

In any case, what must be clear is that to do justice to a transnational delib-
erative process – to have adequate time, simultaneous translation, and to cover 
the participants’ food, travel, and accommodation – is expensive. Without the 
resources of a national government or the EU, shortcuts must be made, and the 
peril is, obviously, that these shortcuts undermine the quality of the delibera-
tive process to such an extent that the outcomes are meaningless, giving further 
ammunition to those who would wish to see the project fail.

Advantage: Spreading the deliberative 
word!

The  pedagogy  of  sortition  Nicolaidis  emphasises  is  an  important  advantage, 
even  if  I  find  “pedagogy”  condescending  and  would  prefer  the  more  banal 
“raising awareness of democratic lotteries”.195 As she points out, public aware-
ness of EU-level deliberative events is extremely low; even when the European 
Commission threw substantial budgets at the problem, it failed to produce any 
noticeable increase (that I am aware of). Deliberation is not a spectacle, no one 
bleeds (“if it bleeds, it leads”, say the media cynics – or gets clicks, we might say 
nowadays), and therefore, it will be an uphill battle, to say the least.

Therefore, trying to convey the power and (dare I say) excitement of dem-

195  Nicolaidis, 2024.

81

ocratic  lotteries  is  an  immensely  valuable  aim.  We  at  the  Sortition  Founda-
tion, inspired by Adam Cronkright’s forthcoming campaign and film in the 
US (I got a sneak preview),196 used a simple system of numbered balls in plastic 
containers197  where  the  President  of  the  German  Bundestag  pulled  out  the 
“winning numbers” for the first government-commissioned citizens’ assembly 
in German (on nutrition).198 The live lottery got significant positive coverage in 
the Germany press, noticeably from Tagesschau, ZDF,199 Welt200 and RTL,201 
and  the  Democratic  Odyssey  appears  committed  to  organising  something 
similar in the future.

Furthermore, as seen in Ireland, after many years of high-profile citizens’ 
assemblies, public awareness of these processes is now high, and response rates 
to join such assemblies appear to be (finally) climbing.

The Democratic Odyssey’s civil society network will be very important in 

spreading this word, which brings me to my final point.

Conclusion & Advantage: Concrete 
activity building a movement to upgrade 
democracy at the EU level

The above perils are merely intended as warnings and are surely well appreciat-
ed by those organising this Democratic Odyssey campaign. The prefigurative 
angle for campaigning can be a powerful one: as everyone knows, “show, don’t 
tell” can be inspiring.

The assembly is, of course, only one part of a wider campaign being actively 

196  ‘Of by For*’, Join Of by For, https://joinofbyfor.org/. 

197  ‘Germany’s national conversation about nutrition and food’, Sortition Foundation, https://www.

sortitionfoundation.org/bundestag_2023_report. 

198  ‘Parlament; Zufallsauswahl’, Deutscher Bundestag, https://www.bundestag.de/parlament/buerger-

raete/zufallsauswahl-947196. 

199  ‘Andere Sicht: Darum geht‘s beim Bürgerrat’, ZDF, https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/politik/buer-

gerrat-ernaehrung-faq-100.html. 

200  ‘Bundestagspräsidentin Bas lost Teilnehmer von erstem Bürgerrat aus’, Welt, https://www.welt.de/
politik/deutschland/article246522220/Buergerrat-Bundestagspraesidentin-Bas-lost-Teilnehmer-aus.
html. 

201  ‘Bürgerlotterie im Bundestag’, RTL, https://www.rtl.de/videos/buergerlotterie-im-bundestag-

64babee2d27bb408b70d6416.html.

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constructed  by  the  Democratic  Odyssey:  they’re  building  a  network  of  civil 
society actors with a vested interest in the success of the project and develop-
ing closer relationships through working together on such a project is impor-
tant and powerful. I agree wholeheartedly with Oleart that “Putting forward 
an ECA without the explicit backing of social movements and civil society is 
likely to merely reproduce mainstream institutional narratives.”202

Hopefully,  alongside  the  civil  society  organisations,  we  will  also  see 
“everyday” people taking an interest in democratic reform (which is typically 
not high up on people’s list of concerns). Such a movement will be indispensa-
ble if the project is to move from a comforting activity that civil society organ-
ises but is ignored to actually challenging political power, which is ultimately 
what a permanent European Citizens’ Assembly will do.

202  Oleart, 2024.

How to Make Citizens’ 
Participation Successful: 
The Case for Citizens’ 
Panels on Key 
Commission Proposals

Daniel Freund203* 

In  recent  years,  the  concept  of  citizens’  assemblies  has  gained  traction  as  a 
means  of  enhancing  democratic  engagement.  While  the  idea  of  involving 
citizens  in  decision-making  processes  holds  significant  potential,  it  is  crucial 
to  recognise  that  such  assemblies  can  only  be  effective  under  specific  condi-
tions.  In  her  essay,  Kalypso  Nicolaidis  argues  for  establishing  a  permanent 
assembly  composed  of  European  citizens  and  residents  selected  by  lot  that 
should complement the EU institutions.204 Here, I will argue why a permanent 
and unfocused general European Citizens’ Assembly is a recipe for disappoint-
ment and why, instead, a successful use of citizens’ assemblies needs concrete 
questions, political backing, institutional support, clear objectives, and trans-
parency. This is based on my observations during one of the biggest citizens’ 
assemblies so far, the Conference on the Future of Europe (CoFE), in which I 
was involved as a member of the Executive Board on behalf of the Greens/EFA 
Group. During this time, I accompanied citizens as they made numerous sug-

203 * MEP European Parliament, Greens/EFA.

204  Nicolaidis, 2024.

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gestions – which unfortunately have not yet been implemented. Here is what I 
have learned from this experience.205

Thematic scope: Focus on concrete issues

First  and  foremost,  citizens’  assemblies  are  most  effective  when  addressing 
current and specific issues, particularly those that can be framed as yes/no ques-
tions  or  the  balancing  of  two  principles,  such  as  how  to  reach  climate  goals 
in  combination  with  social  justice,  the  question  posed  to  a  French  citizens’ 
assembly 2019-20. Tasking a European Citizens’ Assembly with a broad range 
of  issues  undermines  its  effectiveness.  Complex,  overarching  issues,  such  as 
world peace or broad constitutional reforms, are often too abstract and mul-
tifaceted for a citizens’ assembly to handle meaningfully and create the risk of 
generating vague discussions without actionable proposals.

By concentrating on specific issues, citizens’ assemblies can yield tangible 
results that resonate with the public and that are not easily dismissed by pol-
iticians.  The  risk  of  engaging  in  broader  discussions  lies  in  the  potential  for 
participants  to  feel  overwhelmed  or  disengaged,  ultimately  undermining  the 
assembly’s  purpose.  Therefore,  limiting  the  scope  to  clear,  actionable  ques-
tions  enhances  the  potential  for  meaningful  democratic  participation.  For 
example, Ireland’s successful citizens’ assembly on abortion had a clear, focused 
question that allowed for direct citizen involvement in a concrete decision. At 
least a number of the proposals made by the similarly focused French citizens’ 
assembly on social climate protection led to changes in French law, such as a ban 
of short distance flights. At the Conference on the Future of Europe (CoFE), 
our  scope  was  often  too  wide,  which  contributed  to  the  fact  that  the  wider 
public  never  really  engaged  with  the  CoFE.  That  is  why  fewer  and  concrete 
issues are better.

205  CoFE.

85

Support: The necessity of political and 
institutional backing 

Another  critical  factor  for  the  success  of  any  citizens’  assembly  is  political 
backing  and  institutional  mechanisms  to  implement  its  recommendations. 
The legitimacy of any assembly hinges on the assurance that its recommenda-
tions will lead to real policy implications. Without genuine commitment from 
political leaders or institutions to act on the outcomes of such assemblies and 
without a clear pathway for implementation, the entire process can foster dis-
illusionment among participants and the public. Citizens may invest time and 
energy into discussions only to see their conclusions ignored or sidelined, in-
creasing their distrust in democratic processes and institutions.

For  instance,  if  a  European  Citizens’  Assembly  were  to  propose  a  policy 
change but lacked the backing of key political figures or institutions, the results 
could backfire. Instead of enhancing democratic legitimacy, the assembly might 
instead reinforce perceptions of inefficacy and detachment within the political 
sphere. A rather positive case is the French Citizens’ Convention on Climate, 
where President Emmanuel Macron promised to follow up on the citizens’ 149 
proposals. Around 50 of their proposals have become French law meanwhile, 
e.g. on better insulation of buildings. Without such follow-ups, the assembly 
risks becoming an exercise in futility, leading to greater disillusionment rather 
than meaningful change.

While the European Parliament gave strong backing to the CoFE citizens’ 
panels,  the  Council  was  never  ready  to  guarantee  a  proper  follow-up.  The 
Commission has claimed that they followed up but proposed a reform of the 
Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) that took the opposite direction of what 
the citizens wanted. The lack of any commitments by the re-elected Commis-
sion president Ursula von der Leyen and the new majority in the European Par-
liament for those parties that mostly rejected the CoFE citizens’ panels in prin-
ciple gives rise to little hope that a European Citizens’ Assembly would have 
any formal powers in the EU. The Commission or Council will only be ready 
to follow up on the citizens’ assemblies’ recommendations once the Commis-
sion commits to including their input into a legal proposal. To further democ-
ratise the instrument, citizens’ panels could be triggered not only by the Com-
mission top-down but also by European Citizens’ Initiatives bottom-up.

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Transparency: Representing and Including 
the wider public

Transparency is another essential element for the credibility and effectiveness 
of any citizens’ assembly. The deliberations and outcomes of these gatherings 
must be accessible to the public to foster a sense of ownership and accountabil-
ity. If citizens feel excluded from the process or unaware of its developments, 
the legitimacy of the assembly’s findings may be called into question. The se-
lection of randomly chosen candidates balanced for gender, different regions, 
and those with higher and lower formal education for the CoFE citizens panels 
meant a lot of calls to randomly composed telephone numbers. By ensuring 
that debates are open and outcomes are communicated clearly, the assembly 
can  build  trust  among  the  wider  population.  Transparency  also  allows  for 
constructive criticism and public discourse, which can enrich the democratic 
process and lead to more robust outcomes. In contrast, a lack of transparency 
can contribute to further alienation and scepticism towards political institu-
tions.

Backup: Optional decision by referendum

Citizens’ assemblies lead to proposals directed towards elected decision makers. 
Usually it is up to parliamentarians and governments to decide whether pro-
posals are adopted or rejected. Yet, in Ireland, the citizens’ assemblies recom-
mendations on the right to an abortion and for gay marriage were eventually 
voted on in referenda, both confirming the citizens’ recommendations. If a ref-
erendum becomes an option, this creates a strong incentive for parliaments and 
governments to find answers that truly convince a majority of citizens since, 
otherwise, they would face a referendum forcing their hands. The practice of 
the majority of German Länder that offer referenda after stages of collecting 
signatures for a proposal demonstrates that even if referenda remain rare, their 
“threat” motivates governments to find more far-reaching compromises to ac-
commodate bottom-up citizens’ proposals.

87

Conclusion

In conclusion, while Citizens’ Assemblies can involve citizens more directly, re-
connect politicians to public sentiment and unblock political questions stuck 
in deadlock between political actors, they  function  only  under  a  number  of 
conditions. They work best when they focus on concrete current issues, leading 
to  implementable  policy  objectives  and  have  the  political  backing  assuring  a 
serious political follow-up. 

A general European Citizens’ Assembly with no restrictions on its topics, 
with no clear process for a follow-up is more likely to disappoint participants 
and those who follow the public process. For European Citizens’ Assemblies to 
succeed, they need at least the commitment of the EU Commission to include 
their  recommendations  in  legislative  proposals  or  of  the  European  Parlia-
ment to vote on them. Ideally, the EU treaties would be changed to allow for 
a European referendum to decide whether citizens’ recommendations should 
become law in case the EU institutions do not follow citizens’ recommenda-
tions. In the Parliament’s Constitutional Affairs Committee, the introduction 
of EU referenda found a majority as part of the proposals for treaty change. It 
was in a slightly chaotic vote in the Plenary that Christian-Democrats and right-
wing  MEPs  deleted  this  proposal.  The  occasional  use  of  European  Citizens 
Panels for key policy questions as part of the Commission’s process to work out 
legislative proposals could be a good next step to prepare the ground for a next 
step towards introducing EU referenda.

Should a Citizens' Assembly Complement the European Parliament? Can a Complementary 
ECA Democratise 
European Democracy?

Jelena Džankić206 

Kalypso  Nicolaidis  advocates  for  a  permanent  European  Citizens’  Assembly 
(ECA)  to  complement  the  European  Parliament.207  She  puts  forward  the 
argument that this proposal would restore ‘democratic ownership’ across the 
transnational  European  space,  challenged  by  mounting  populism  and  the 
return of the far right. Yet, can a rotating and itinerant ECA without a clear 
mandate save European democracy?

Like  Richard  Bellamy,  I  applaud  the  boldness  and  sophistication  of  the 
proposal and very much agree with the basic premises behind the idea.208 Rep-
resentative democracy has failed to deliver its promise of independent, equal 
and just governance.209 With limited deliberative input in the policy process, 
representative  democracy  has  disconnected  citizens  from  decision-making, 
turning them into mere recipients of elite policy decisions. This disconnect is 
visible at all levels of democratic governance across the European Union (EU) 
and even more so at the supranational level. To address it, democratic innova-
tion and thinking outside the box is essential. This is what I like about Nico-

206  European University Institute.

207  Nicolaidis, 2024.

208  Bellamy, 2024.

209  Landwehr, C and Schäfer, A. (2023), The Promise of Representative Democracy: Deliberative Re-

sponsiveness, Res Publica.

89

laidis’s proposal.210 At the same time, as a scholar focusing on comparing po-
litical  institutions,  I  am  trying  to  imagine  how  this  would  work  in  practice. 
The proposal is rather unclear about three fundamental questions essential for 
understanding its practical value – the who, the how, and the what questions.

Who? Those vicious technicalities of 
eligibility and sortition 

In  her  proposal,  Nicolaidis  puts  forward  the  idea  that  the  ECA  would  be 
constituted by 300 persons, a third of whom would be substituted every six 
months.211 These 300 people would be assembled by sortition, on the basis of 
a “purely random technique […] chosen to create the base pool from which 
willing participants will be extracted by applying criteria that will create a suffi-
ciently diverse assembly”. Other contributors to this forum (Sandra Seubert,212 
Richard Bellamy213) have already discussed the normative implications of lot-
tery-style sortition. Bellamy has highlighted that a person’s chances of partici-
pating in the ECA are indeed roughly similar to winning a lottery. But beyond 
that, there are very practical issues related to both the base pool and the selec-
tion method. 

First, the proposal is unclear on eligibility for the base pool. Nicolaidis refers 
to the European population, but this term is rather elusive, as it does not specify 
whether only EU citizens and holders of long-term residence permits would be 
included, or perhaps also various other categories of residents.214 Eurostat has 
reported that 27.1 million third-country nationals lived in the EU on 1 January 
2023.215 Only 10 million of them have the legal status of long-term residents, 
while the rest reside in the EU on a different type of permit. Some of those 17.1 
million third-country nationals, like myself, have lived in the EU for decades 

210  Nicolaidis, 2024.

211  Ibid.

212  Seubert, 2024.

213  Bellamy, 2024.

214  Nicolaidis, 2024.

215  ‘Migrant population: 27.3 million non-EU citizens living in the EU on 1 January 2023’, Eurostat, 
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Migration_and_migrant_popu-
lation_statistics#:~:text=%3A%20Eurostat%20(migr_imm2ctz)-,Migrant%20population%3A%20
27.3%20million%20non%2DEU%20citizens%20living%20in%20the,compared%20to%20the%20
previous%20year.. 

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but – for different reasons - cannot access long-term resident status. A  country 
of 17.1 million inhabitants would be the size of the Netherlands. Hence, the 
question  of  whether  those  actually  living  in  the  EU  would  be  recognised  as 
having stakes in such a democratic exercise is an important one.216 It is perhaps 
more normatively desirable than including on certain issues, as Nicolaidis rec-
ommends, external EU citizens who possess EU passports but do not live in 
the Union.217 In view of our previous forum on the ‘weaponisation of citizen-
ship’, this option would be particularly problematic for those countries that 
instrumentalise  ethnic  kinship  for  supporting  nationalist  projects  (Croatia, 
Romania), cementing the rule of authoritarian leaders (Hungary), or destabi-
lising neighbouring countries (Bulgaria). 218

Eligibility for the base pool also raises questions of age thresholds, particu-
larly  in  view  of  Nicolaidis’  suggestion  of  overrepresenting  the  youths.219  As 
already noted by Seubert, the 27 Member States of the EU operate different 
electoral regimes with different rules for the exercise of active and passive voting 
rights. The threshold for casting a vote is commonly 18 years (16 in Austria, 
Belgium, Germany and Malta, 17 in Greece for EP elections).220 In a similar 
vein, to stand as a candidate in EP elections, some countries require candidates 
to  have  reached  21  (Bulgaria,  Cyprus,  Czechia,  Estonia,  Ireland,  Lithuania, 
Latvia, Poland and Slovakia), 23 (Romania) or 25 (Italy and Greece) years of 
age. While perhaps reaching the candidacy age may not be necessary for taking 
part in a consultative citizens’ assembly, the question of how old one should be 
in order to be a part of innovative democratic processes should not be over-
looked. Equally, the potential inclusion of prisoners, individuals with cogni-
tive impairments, and vulnerable groups all warrant substantive reflection in 
the proposal. 

Second,  the  sortition  method  remains  unclear,  especially  as  regards  who 
the ‘willing participants’ from the base pool would be. Would the entire pool 
receive  sufficient  information  to  be  able  to  decide  if  they  are  willing  to  take 
part in the deliberation? How would that information be distributed, and who 

216  Bauböck, R. (2007), ‘Stakeholder Citizenship and Transnational Political Participation: A Norma-

tive Evaluation of External Voting’, Fordham L. Rev, (75): 2393-2447.

217  Nicolaidis, 2024.

218  ‘Weaponized Citizenship: Should international law restrict oppressive nationality attribution?’, 
GLOBALCIT, https://globalcit.eu/weaponized-citizenship-should-international-law-restrict-op-
pressive-nationality-attribution/. 

219  Nicolaidis, 2024.

220  Seubert, 2024.

91

would distribute it? How would they confirm their consent to take part in the 
ECA,  and  whether  and  at  what  point  could  they  withdraw  it?  Again,  these 
rather technical questions reflect the basic contestations over democracy, about 
the  ‘will’  to  be  consulted  in  collective  decision-making,  about  rights  that  an 
individual has as the creator and recipient of democratic processes, and the re-
sponsibility of institutions vis-à-vis citizens. 

A  different  set  of  questions  emerges  when  it  comes  to  choosing  criteria 
for  the  ‘random’  selection  that  ‘will  create  a  sufficiently  diverse  assembly’. 
An assembly of 300 people drawn from a population a million times as large 
will likely be representative of the macro-elements of diversity (e.g., Member 
State,  gender,  age,  race).  It  is,  however,  unlikely  to  guarantee  substantive  di-
versity  along  different  axes  (e.g.,  socio-economic  status,  disability,  sexual  ori-
entation,  religion)  and  their  intersections.  In  her  contribution,  Nicolaidis 
carefully avoids unpacking the tacky issue of diversity, calling for democratic 
deliberation on the matter.221 The peril is that, in a community constituted of 
27 demoi, the only consensus on the matter might replicate the format of the 
existing European institutions. 

How? Itineration and rotation – a costly 
exercise? 

An itinerant assembly is an interesting idea and, just as Alvaro Oleart,222 I very 
much  appreciate  the  conversations  and  the  achievements  of  the  Democratic 
Odyssey project. However, I cannot help but wonder what is the value-added 
for  the  local  community  of  hosting  300  pre-selected  persons  for  six  months 
(besides the economic gains from hosting). How would the ECA engage with 
the place and the people that host it at different points, and what would be the 
essence of this exchange? In other words, does the place matter, and how and 
by whom will the decision on this be made? The host city will need to have 
the necessary infrastructure for this exercise. This is likely to exclude the of-
ten-overlooked remote rural areas or poorer regions, again running the risk of 
perpetuating existing inequalities, including urban-rural and East-West divides. 
The choice of the place will also have financial implications for an already po-
tentially expensive exercise. 

221  Nicolaidis, 2024.

222  Oleart, 2024.

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I also wonder how the exchanges among participants will take place. Pre-
sumably, people will be drawn from different corners of the EU, but the whole 
idea rests on the premise that they will be able to understand one another. A 
2019  study  of  the  EP  noted  that  in  2016,  “over  one-third  (35.4%)  of  adults 
in the EU-28 did not know any foreign languages. A similar proportion (35.2 
%) declared that they knew one foreign language, while just over one-fifth (21 
%) said they knew two foreign languages”.223 Cutting out over a third of the 
European population from the exercise because they are monolingual would 
be directly in conflict with the spirit of the ECA: bringing in the overlooked 
voices in discussions about Europe-wide political issues. To be truly inclusive, 
the ECA would, therefore, require a massive budget for interpretation. As a 
matter of comparison, in 2024, the EP spent 53.48 million euros on the simul-
taneous translation of its meetings into 24 official EU languages.224 Given the 
structure of the ECA and its inclusion of minority peoples and their languag-
es,  enabling  meaningful  communication  will  be  a  daunting  endeavour  (and 
expense). 

What? Input is precious, but output and 
support matter too

The input of citizens as key stakeholders in a polity is invaluable. The fact that 
this  input  has  been  limited  in  representative  democracies  is  possibly  one  of 
the reasons for the ‘democratic disconnect’ and, more generally, citizens’ dis-
enchantment with this form of governance.225 Nicolaidis’ proposal does seek 
to address this issue, but it is unclear what the outputs of the ECA would be 
and how they could inform European decision-making.226 In this regard, I very 
much support Daniel Freund’s four points – thematic focus, institutional/po-

223  ‘Multilingualism: The language of the European Union’, European Parliament, https://www.
europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2019/642207/EPRS_BRI(2019)642207_EN.pdf. 

224  ‘The Union’s annual budget for the 2024 financial year’, European Commission, https://eur-lex.

europa.eu/budget/data/DB/2024/en/SEC01.pdf. 

225   Stefan Foa, R and Mounk, Y. (2016), ‘The Danger of Deconsolidation: The Democratic Discon-

nect’, Journal of Democracy, 27(3): 5-17.

226  Nicolaidis, 2024.

93

litical backing, transparency, and backup.227 While the latter two are engrained 
in the baseline concept of the ECA, I believe that the first two warrant some 
attention. I imagine issues discussed in the ECA would focus around the EP 
agenda,  but  I  would  again  agree  with  Freund228  and  Brett  Hennig229  that  a 
broad thematic focus will likely lead to rushed and vague deliberations. Hence, 
what  would  be  the  topics  of  deliberation  and  who  would  decide  on  which 
concrete issues should be debated? 

This decision then also calls for a reflection of the possible outputs of the 
deliberation  and  their  linkage  to  the  existing  political  processes.  Nicolaid-
is  presents  a  case  against  making  any  of  the  outputs  of  ECA  deliberations 
binding.230 Cristina Lafont and Nadia Urbinati convincingly unpack why they 
shouldn’t be.231 However, it is not quite clear how the decisions or initiatives 
that  result  from  deliberations  would  be  taken  up  by  European  institutions. 
Will  the  MEPs  and  their  teams  refer  to  such  decisions  and  initiatives?  How 
would they get salience amidst the growing focus on thematic expert knowl-
edge utilised by various institutions? If the ECA is to have a meaningful impact, 
some of these issues would need to be addressed. 

So what? 

Nicolaidis’s idea is bold, and reflects her passion for democratic innovations, 
for the idea and ideal of a democratic society.232 And while I have been critical 
of  some  of  its  practical  aspects,  I  believe  we  need  to  debate  different  visions 
of democracy for the future. Deliberative exercises are certainly a part of this 
vision but suffer from problems of scale and limited impact.233 Deliberative ex-

227  Freund, D. (2024), ‘How to Make Citizens’ Participation Successful: The Case for Citizens’ Panels 
on Key Commission Proposals’, GLOBALCIT, https://globalcit.eu/representing-european-citi-
zens-why-a-european-citizens-assembly-should-complement-the-european-parliament/9/ (hereinaf-
ter ‘Freund, 2024’).

228  Ibid.

229  Hennig, B. (2024), ‘The advantages and perils of a civil-society-led European Citizens’ Assembly’, 
GLOBALCIT, https://globalcit.eu/representing-european-citizens-why-a-european-citizens-assem-
bly-should-complement-the-european-parliament/8 (hereinafter ‘Hennig, 2024’).

230  Nicolaidis, 2024.

231  Lafont and Urbinati, 2024.

232  Nicolaidis, 2024.

233  Bua, A. (2017), ‘Scale and Policy Impact in Participatory-Deliberative Democracy: Lessons from a 

Multi-Level Process’, Public admin, 95(1): 160-177 (hereinafter ‘Bua, 2017’).

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periments have so far had the strongest effect when localised and focused on a 
specific issue. Their impact on upper levels of governance, strategic decisions 
and high politics has so far been limited. For this reason, on top of the concerns 
expressed above, I am a bit hesitant about the ECA. Democracy as a govern-
ance system definitely needs an upgrade in which citizens’ voices will resonate 
in political decisions, an upgrade in which citizens will ‘claim’ and ‘own’ dem-
ocratic processes, but it is not clear that an ECA will achieve a breakthrough in 
this regard. 

In a transnational European political space, perhaps we should think about 
using new digital technologies more creatively. At the most basic level, utilising 
a digital platform might lower the financial costs and ecological footprint of de-
liberative experiments compared to itinerant and rotating assemblies. It would 
allow  for  broader  participation,  particularly  if  acquiring  skills  to  use  such 
a platform were to become a part of the existing digital education234 endeav-
ours aimed at enhancing digital literacy of EU citizens.235 It would also allow 
multiple policy debates to take place at the same time, and artificial intelligence 
tools could be used for transcription and translation. At a next stage, such plat-
forms could be used to develop flexible modes of participation and representa-
tion in the spirit of the ‘liquid democracy’236 experiments, where participants 
could decide – in view of the topic – whether to participate, delegate to experts, 
or seek input from the community before making that decision. We can think 
of many other options, such as apps, especially if the idea is to involve youths. 
In other words, digital technologies have already ‘democratised’ access to infor-
mation, education, and communication, to say the least. Could they also help 
to democratise democracy? 

234  ‘Digital Education Action Plan (2021-2027)’, European Commission, https://education.ec.europa.

eu/focus-topics/digital-education/action-plan. 

235  ‘Digital literacy in the EU: An overview’, European Union, https://data.europa.eu/en/publica-

tions/datastories/digital-literacy-eu-overview. 

236  Blum, C and Zuber, C.I. (2016), ‘Liquid Democracy’, J Polit Philos, 24(2): 162-182 (hereinafter 

‘Blum and Zuber, 2016’).

The Two European 
Demoi: Authorizing 
EU Legislation and 
Deliberating on Affected 
Interests

Rainer Bauböck237 

How should a European Citizens’ Assembly (ECA) relate to the European Par-
liament (EP) and the other institutions of the EU? In her lead essay, Kalypso 
Nicolaidis proposes a complementary role for the ECA.238 Richard Bellamy is 
sceptical  that  an  assembly  of  randomly  selected  citizens  will  improve  trust 
in  European  democracy.239  Cristina  Lafont  &  Nadia  Urbinati,240  Sandra 
Seubert,241  Daniel  Freund242  and  Jelena  Džankić243  see  useful  consultative 
tasks for such an assembly vis-à-vis the EP and the Commission, which would 

237 European University Institute.

238  Nicolaidis, 2024.

239  Bellamy, 2024.

240  Lafont and Urbinati, 2024.

241  Seubert, 2024.

242  Freund, 2024.

243  Džankić, J. (2024), ‘Can a Complementary ECA Democratise European Democracy?’, GLOBAL-

CIT, https://globalcit.eu/representing-european-citizens-why-a-european-citizens-assem-
bly-should-complement-the-european-parliament/10 (hereinafter ‘Džankić, 2024’).

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amount  to  a  subordinate  role  for  an  ECA.  By  contrast,  Yves  Sintomer,244 
Alvaro Oleart245 and Brett Hennig246 advocate for a more competitive relation 
and transformative role, in which the ECA would ‘prefigure’ a new model of 
democracy 3.0 that gives stronger weight to the agenda of protest movements, 
the  interests  of  the  Global  South  and  of  future  generations.  Finally,  Svenja 
Ahlhaus & Eva Schmidt keep the question of the ECA’s relation to existing 
political institutions open by arguing that the design of an ECA should depend 
on  whether  its  task  is  to  enhance  transparency,  to  counter  the  hegemony  of 
dominant interests, or to overcome reform deadlocks.247

In my intervention, I will agree with Nicolaidis that an ECA should com-
plement  the  EP  rather  than  being  subordinate  to  it  or  aiming  to  replace  it. 
My argument for complementarity builds on the idea that the mode of selec-
tion of assembly members (sortition vs. elections) corresponds with different 
powers (deliberative vs. legislative authority) and the representation of differ-
ently composed demoi (affected interests vs. the citizenry). European democ-
racy needs more institutionalised and publicly visible deliberation about the 
common European good, and it needs a stronger representation of the interests 
of those who are not presently citizens of the Union but are deeply affected by 
its policies. This is what an ECA could potentially deliver if it is institutionally 
sufficiently strong and autonomous. But it cannot by itself generate democratic 
legitimacy of supranational legislation. Legislative authority in Europe is held 
jointly by member state governments in the Council and by MEPs in the EP. 
The mandate of the Council and the EP for making collectively binding deci-
sions comes from the collective of all citizens voting in national and European 
elections. Random selection cannot provide such a mandate.

Strengthening deliberative democracy in 
Europe

As  Nicolaidis  points  out,  randomly  selected  citizens’  assemblies  are  not 
instruments  of  direct  democracy,  which  involve  all  enfranchised  citizens 

244  Sintomer, 2024.

245  Oleart, 2024.

246  Hennig, 2024.

247  Ahlhaus and Schmidt, 2024.

97

directly  in  decision-making.248  She  identifies  them  instead  as  institutions  of 
deliberative democracy. One could object that parliaments are, of course, also 
supposed to deliberate before taking decisions, and this is what the EP certain-
ly does in its committees and plenary debates. Why do we then need a separate 
deliberative institution?

Proponents of lottocracy answer that parliamentary democracy has been 
captured by the partisan interests of political parties competing with each other 
for power and powerful lobbies for special interests whose influence corrupts 
elected officials with long periods in office. These dynamics greatly reduce the 
space for deliberation about the common good in elected assemblies. There is 
some truth in this, but, as Sandra Seubert249 points out (citing Urbinati), ideal-
ising non-partisanship risks chasing a problematic ideal of “unpolitical democ-
racy” without competition for power.250 The real problem to which citizens’ 
assemblies  respond  is  a  growing  political  polarisation  and  alienation  among 
citizens in European societies, which lead to declining support for democracy 
and rising vote shares for authoritarian parties. The core task of an ECA is to 
create a ‘mini-public’ that does not mirror the actual European publics, splin-
tered as it is along national and ideological lines of fracture, but where partic-
ipants respect each other as equals and are willing to listen to each other, to 
compromise and to prioritise the common good.

Descriptive representation is important for the ‘input legitimacy’ of CAs. 
An  assembly  of  experts  may  claim  epistemic  authority  for  its  recommenda-
tions but lacks democratic legitimacy. By contrast, an assembly whose compo-
sition mirrors that of European society has some initial democratic credibility. 
Yet its main purpose is not descriptive but ‘indicative representation’, as sug-
gested by Philippe Pettit251 and mentioned by Bellamy.252 Precisely not indica-
tive of the general public’s views as they currently are, which can be captured 
through opinion polls, but as they might be if well-informed citizens deliberat-
ed in a public arena. The CAs’ task is to create mini-publics in which political 
choices and legislative proposals are debated, as they should ideally be in the 
macro-publics of European societies. They are much better suited for this task 
than elected assemblies.

248  Nicolaidis, 2024.

249  Seubert, 2024.

250  Urbinati, 2014.

251  Pettit, 2010.

252  Bellamy, 2024.

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As a merely epistemic tool for gleaning policy preferences of citizens under 
ideal conditions for deliberation, citizens’ assemblies may be an interesting tool 
for social scientists but will not do much to transform democratic politics. They 
could achieve real impact if they had independent legislative power, but this 
would be extremely problematic. In democracy, such power can be either exer-
cised directly by citizens in referenda or by delegates who receive their mandate 
from all citizens through elections. If this power were exercised by randomly 
selected citizens, this would breach a principle of popular sovereignty. 

Alternatively, citizens’ assemblies can gain power vis-à-vis law-making in-
stitutions if the latter have to vote on their legislative proposals. There is no 
fundamental  democratic  objection  against  extending  legislative  initiative 
rights to a randomly selected assembly if it is endowed by legislators with an 
appropriate mandate. I agree with Nicolaidis that in order to exercise such a 
right responsibly, and also to monitor how legislators deal with its initiatives, 
a  citizens’  assembly  would  have  to  be  a  permanent  institution  rather  than  a 
one-off  and  issue-specific  experiment.253  The  most  interesting  suggestion  is, 
however, to give a citizens’ assembly the power to reinforce its recommenda-
tions  through  direct  democratic  instruments,  such  as  popular  initiatives  or 
referendums.  Instead  of  bypassing  popular  sovereignty,  citizens’  assemblies 
would then call on all citizens to endorse or reject their proposals. As Daniel 
Freund  points  out,  the  mere  threat  of  using  direct  democratic  instruments 
might cajole legislative assemblies into taking seriously proposals generated by 
citizens’ assemblies.254

The powers of legislative initiative and of triggering direct democratic votes 
would do much to make sure that citizens’ assemblies do not remain in a sub-
ordinate  and  consultative  role  in  relation  to  legislative  ones.  And  if  handled 
and publicised well, these powers could also capture the attention of wider au-
diences.

By contrast, I would place less confidence in the “pedagogy of sortition” 
than  Nicolaidis.255  Random  selection  creates  conditions  of  equality  among 
participants  that  may  change  the  ways  they  think  about  fellow  EU  citizens 
from other member states or social backgrounds. It will not by itself transform 
attitudes among the wider citizenry from which participants are selected. Dif-

253  Nicolaidis, 2024.

254  Freund, 2024.

255  Nicolaidis, 2024.

99

ferent from the equal right to vote, equality of probability will hardly strength-
en  a  sense  of  equal  and  common  ownership  of  political  institutions  among 
citizens if chances to be called to serve are infinitesimally small for each indi-
vidual, as Bellamy256 and Džankić257 emphasise. We should abandon the idea 
that sortition-based assemblies in a polity as large as the EU could reinvigorate 
an  Aristotelian  conception  of  citizenship  as  ruling  and  being  ruled  in  turn. 
Citizens’ assemblies invite too few citizens to participate and do not give those 
who accept to participate any real power to rule.  

Why the deliberative demos must be 
wider than the legislative demos

It seems natural to assume that participants of an ECA should be selected from 
the same demos that is entitled to vote in European elections, i.e. the citizens of 
the Union at voting age. Nicolaidis proposes, however, to expand this demos by 
including the non-citizen long-term residents of Europe, as a way of overcom-
ing the exclusion of a large part of the EU population of immigrant origin who 
cannot vote because they are not nationals of a member states. Džankić goes a 
step further by urging the inclusion also of those without permanent residence 
status.258

I want to endorse this proposal but on somewhat different grounds. Instead 
of regarding an extension of the demos for an ECA as transformative and pre-
figurative for EP elections, I will once again defend complementarity, and this 
time between two distinct demoi: a legislative and a deliberative one.

Citizenship of the European Union is derivative of member state national-
ity and strictly linked to the latter. It builds on a federal principle according to 
which the citizens of the federation are the citizens of its constituent polities. 
The EU is a union of states that have pooled their sovereignty under the condi-
tion that they retain their international recognition as independent states. As 
Brexit has demonstrated, they have even retained a right to unilateral secession 
that does not exist within federal states. Citizenship in the sense of nationality 
is an essential feature of international statehood. If EU citizenship were derived 

256  Bellamy, 2024.

257  Džankić, 2024.

258  Džankić, 2024.

Should a Citizens' Assembly Complement the European Parliament? 100

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from residence rather than member state nationality, this would jeopardise the 
union character of the EU.

I agree with Nicolaidis and many other scholars that the exclusion of im-
migrant origin populations from EU citizenship is a real and pressing concern. 
We differ, however, in identifying the main cause, which I find in restrictive cit-
izenship laws of member states that unjustly disenfranchise these populations 
in national as well as European elections. Disconnecting voting rights for the 
European Parliament from citizenship status would do little to correct this ex-
clusion and would devalue European citizenship.

I have argued elsewhere that voting rights and citizenship should generally 
remain connected.259 As discussed in an earlier GLOBALCIT forum,260 this 
does not rule out a domicile principle that automatically turns long-term resi-
dents into citizens and voters. Ius domicilii is indeed appropriate for local citi-
zenship and has been adopted by twelve member states that grant local voting 
rights not only to EU citizens but also to third country nationals.261 

Applied at national and supranational level, however, ius domicilii would 
have the perverse consequence of making citizenship a status that is no longer 
held securely for a full life but is automatically lost with emigration. If we want 
to make EU citizenship more inclusive for all long-term residents, we must put 
pressure on the member states to adopt a ius soli principle for children born 
in their territory, to liberalise the conditions for naturalisation, and to accept 
multiple citizenship for those with genuine links to several countries.

The democratic principle behind this proposal is the following: the demos 
that  authorises  legislation  through  elections  should  consist  of  all  those  and 
only those who have a stake in the common good of the polity. For the member 
states and their Union, these are individuals that qualify for life-long citizen-
ship (under the liberal rules mentioned above).

The  inclusion  of  democratic  stakeholders  as  enfranchised  citizens  is, 
however, not the only important principle of democratic inclusion. Democ-
racies  restrict  individual  autonomy  by  imposing  coercively  binding  laws  on 
everybody present in their territories. They must, therefore, extend equal pro-

259  Bauböck, R. (2017), Democratic inclusion: Rainer Bauböck in dialogue, Manchester University 

Press.

260  ‘Cities vs states : should urban citizenship be emancipated from nationality?’, GLOBALCIT, 

https://globalcit.eu/cities-vs-states-should-urban-citizenship-be-emancipated-from-nationality/. 

261  Bauböck, R. (2019), ‘A Multilevel Theory of Democratic Secession’, Ethnopolitics, 18(3): 227–246.

101

tection of the law to all those who are subjected to them – generally in virtue 
of residing in the territory – and they must give them equal opportunities to 
contest these laws by exercising their rights of free speech and association and 
by appealing against them. Interestingly, the 1992 Maastricht Treaty heeded 
this principle when giving all natural and legal persons in the EU – rather than 
only EU citizens – the right to petition the EP.262

A third and last principle of democratic inclusion is that democratic deci-
sions are only legitimate if they emerge from deliberations in which all interests 
that will be severely affected by a proposed legislation have been duly consid-
ered. It is this principle that is most systematically violated and ignored when 
a powerful polity like the EU adopts laws after deliberation into which only 
legislators  elected  by  separate  national  demoi  and  some  powerful  corporate 
interest lobbies can provide relevant inputs. Among the main deficiencies of 
European democracy is that its legislation pursues national and European in-
terests at the expense of global ones and those of other countries’ citizens who 
are negatively affected by its policies (such as most notoriously EU agricultural 
policy). The composition of the European demos and dynamics of electoral 
politics also means that the interests of future generations get systematically 
neglected in favour of the interests of presently living older cohorts.

If  citizens’  assemblies’  main  task  is  to  indicatively  represent  how  citizens 
would deliberate on policy proposals under ideal conditions, they must rep-
resent a deliberative demos that is considerably wider than the demos that au-
thorises a legislative assembly through elections.263  At the minimum, this de-
liberative demos must include all residents in the European Union. I welcome, 
therefore, Nicolaidis’ proposal to balance the composition of an ECA not only 
by  nationality,  gender,  income,  and  education  but  also  by  including  a  pro-
portionate number of non-EU citizens.264 This will, however, not be enough. 
When  an  ECA  deliberates,  for  example,  on  a  policy  responding  to  climate 
change, the demos whom it ought to represent is a global one that includes 
all  humans  and,  arguably,  also  non-human  animals.  For  practical  reasons,  it 
will not be possible to randomly select participants from such a wide demos. 

262  ‘The right to petition’, Fact Sheets on the European Union, https://www.europarl.europa.eu/

factsheets/en/sheet/148/the-right-to-petition#:~:text=The%20right%20to%20petition%20aims%20
to. 

263 Owen, D. (2017), ‘Response’, in Bauböck, R. (eds.), Democratic inclusion: Rainer Bauböck in dia-

logue, Manchester University Press.

264  Nicolaidis, 2024.

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However, it is crucial that the ECA includes representatives of interests that 
are most severely affected by the policy that is being considered. It can do so 
by inviting virtual representatives of these interests who can credibly speak for 
populations in countries in the Global South worst hit by the climate crises, 
non-human animal species decimated by it or future generations that will bear 
the brunt of current failures to act decisively in cutting carbon emissions.

I acknowledge that this proposal leaves many questions open: How many 
virtual  representatives  should  be  added  to  an  ECA?  Should  their  selection 
depend on the specific issue that is debated? Should they merely have an advisory 
role,  or  should  their  votes  be  counted?  Purists  of  sortition-based  democracy 
may object that giving such representatives a stronger role than that of experts 
and including them in significant numbers would distort the descriptive rep-
resentation of European societies. However, this objection begs the question: 
Why should only European residents form the demos that is represented in an 
assembly deliberating about European policies that severely affect the interests 
of  so  many  non-Europeans?  Sortition-based  descriptive  representation  of  all 
these interests is practically impossible. So the second-best solution seems to 
me a mixed ECA that combines random selection of European residents with 
purposefully designed representation of other interests.

The test of effective transformation of 
citizens’ preferences

An ECA that meets its task of deliberating on EU policies by considering all 
interests that would be severely affected by them may still fail to change public 
opinion and the views of those citizens for whose votes national and European 
legislators  compete.  If  it  then  initiates  referendums  or  puts  its  proposals 
forward for a vote in the EP, these may simply get voted down. The ultimate 
test for an ECA is, therefore, whether and how its deliberations and proposals 
will feed back into the public spheres of European societies. This is the con-
straint that democrats have to accept: Citizens’ assemblies may fail to endorse 
policies that are urgently necessary, and even if they do endorse them, they may 
fail  to  reach  out  and  convince  those  citizen  voters  who  form  their  opinions 
under far less ideal conditions. Nicolaidis’ proposal contains interesting ideas 
on how to reduce this risk, but it is in the nature of democracy that it can never 
be fully overcome.265

265  Ibid.

Perceptions and 
Practicalities of a 
Standing European 
Citizens’ Assembly

Anthony Zacharzewski266  

In this response to Kalypso Nicolaidis’ article,267 I want to focus on two issues 
that have not yet been extensively considered in this series – the political and 
the practical aspects. I also acknowledge the depth and value of other authors’ 
contributions; as a late contributor I have benefited much from reading them.

By  way  of  background,  I  have  worked  for  Democratic  Society  on 
participation and governance since 2010 and have run and designed numerous 
deliberative democracy events.268 Before that, I spent fourteen years in national 
and local government, and I have been active in a political party for over twen-
ty-five years. I therefore bring several different angles to the politics of participa-
tion, and specifically to a standing European Citizen Assembly (ECA).

There is much to like in Nicolaidis’ proposals. I am a supporter of delib-
erative democracy as a complement to representation, not a replacement, and 
while (like Christina Lafont and Nadia Urbinati)269 I think the division of re-

266  Democratic Society.

267  Nicolaidis, 2024.

268  ‘Making Democracy Work for Everyone’, Democratic Society, https://www.demsoc.org/. 

269  Lafont and Urbinati, 2024.

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sponsibilities needs to be clear, I believe that it is not difficult to devise terms of 
reference for a deliberative process that runs alongside and feeds into tradition-
al legislative activity (as is imagined for the ECA).

I  also  support  Nicolaidis’  call  for  continuity,  in  this  case,  by  building  a 
standing ECA. At every level of participatory practice, it is widely understood 
that  we  need  to  use  our  work  to  build  long-term  democratic  instruments 
rather than single events, as the issues we face in Europe and the world surpass 
any political cycle. A standing assembly (at any level) helps to meet that need. 
However, I think that the politics of an isolated ECA may be more difficult 
than Nicolaidis expects.

Media reporting: between invisibility and 
inaccuracy

Whatever  the  systemic  arguments  for  change,  political  understanding  must 
always start from the individual citizen. Does an initiative enhance or at least 
not decrease any given citizen’s sense of power or agency? Does it give them 
greater confidence in the systems that govern them?

Nicolaidis argues that an ECA would enhance a citizen’s sense of owner-
ship of the European political space, but I would argue that this depends on 
trust in the new ECA and the process that cannot be assumed. Even if they 
had heard of it at all, there would be a risk of it being a negative rather than a 
positive impact for citizens’ sense of democratic agency.

The heart of the issue is representation. Given the number of citizens in 
Europe,  and  the  ECA  selecting  each  year  six  hundred  citizens,  the  average 
European would have to live ten thousand lifetimes to be selected once, and 
perhaps a hundred lifetimes even to receive an invitation.

Nicolaidis’  argument  is  that  this  risk  can  be  mitigated,  in  part  by  the 
“roaming”  nature  of  the  ECA,  giving  it  a  more  media-friendly  story  and  a 
higher profile, in part by the process itself being an education in sortition.

I find it hard to imagine that public media that barely covered the Confer-
ence on the Future of Europe will do more for an ECA, even in instances where 
a meeting is taking place in a particular place. Editors seek stories that have a 
clear  link  to  readers’  interests,  and  since  their  readers  can  have  no  concrete 
impact on the ECA and the issues under deliberation are likely to be abstract, 

105

I suspect that coverage would be minimal. This may be a blessing in disguise, 
as I think it more likely that coverage would be skewed against the ECA than 
towards it. This is not just because editors prefer bad news to good and scandal 
to democratic innovation, as Brett Hennig suggests.270 Two aspects of the ECA 
risk providing a hook for negative stories.

Nicolaidis says that the ECA would be drawn from  willing  participants, 
with  attitudinal  questions  being  used  to  prevent  a  repeat  of  the  attitudinal 
skew seen in the Conference on the Future of Europe. Even with that, the par-
ticipants are by definition those who want to make a significant commitment 
of time to discussing European issues, and so are at least to some degree unrep-
resentative. It is not hard to imagine the caricature that they are “hand-picked 
Europhiles”. This framing would, of course, be deeply unfair both to the in-
tention and the reality of the ECA, but we must take public media as they are, 
we cannot assume fair framing and serious enquiry. More generally, the media 
would likely emphasise edge views and differences rather than fairly reporting 
the selection logic and process or telling balanced stories about individual par-
ticipants.

The legitimacy challenge: Who selects the 
questions?

Second, the more binding power the ECA has, the more it will face the accu-
sation  that  it  is  an  undemocratic  or  anti-democratic  –  a  small  group  taking 
power away from ordinary citizens (an argument with which some contribu-
tors to this series would agree). The lightning-strike odds of selection will be 
highlighted, and a comparison will be drawn with the regularity of participa-
tion in electoral cycles. Unfamiliarity and pervasive distrust make this darker 
reading likely, at least in a significant part of the population and, as suggested in 
the previous section, a fair public understanding of sortition is unlikely to be 
brought about by the public media.  

A post-ECA referendum (suggested by Nicolaidis) addresses but does not 
solve this problem. Referendums are popular democratic instruments (more 
than  they  deserve  to  be),  but  from  a  democratic  perspective,  the  problem 
remains: The referendum questions have been selected from all other possible 
policy issues that could have been put to a vote. The choice of the question is 
itself a decision which would be taken by an unaccountable group.

270  Hennig, 2024.

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This is to leave aside the huge questions of how a Europe-wide referendum 
would be organised, what the threshold and criteria for victory would be, and 
how effectively binding it would be. It is notable that the oft-cited Irish example 
had a parliamentary stage between the citizen assembly and referendum, and in 
Ireland the rules for constitutional referendums are widely accepted and un-
derstood.

On political grounds, therefore, I would argue that an ECA should be con-
sultative, and that its organisers need to devise better approaches for publicis-
ing it than relying on media coverage. The scale of the challenge this opens up 
–  building  understanding  of  deliberative  processes  using  a  remote  under-re-
ported process dealing with European policy – leads naturally to my second 
point: practicality.

Not running before we can crawl: ECA as 
the goal, not the starting point

On practical grounds I would argue that the ECA should be seen as a goal, not 
the starting point in the creation of a European infrastructure for democracy 
which Nicolaidis and I agree is needed.

Nicolaidis’  own  description  of  the  horizontality  of  European  politics 
and  her  demoicratic  theory  acknowledges  the  need  for  a  governance  system 
that  reflects  the  lives  of  multiple,  overlapping  ‘citizenships’  that  each  of  us 
inhabits.  Such  a  demoicratic  approach  needs  to  rest  on  a  broader  public 
understanding of deliberation, informed by practices at local scale, and needs 
to be actively supported by a network of organisations that extends across the 
continent.

However, in starting with an ECA, we are jumping to the end of a long 
process. No clear-eyed observer would say that participatory and deliberative 
processes were widely understood or widely embedded in governance at local 
and national level, even in the most advanced regions.

The  problem  of  fragmentation  and  underfunding  in  the  sector  is  well 
known. Trained facilitators are hard to come by, particularly those with experi-
ence of large-scale processes and working in multi-lingual environments.

Various  network-building  and  capacity-building  initiatives  are  currently 

107

underway, for example, the Networks for Democracy project,271 in which both 
my own organisation and the Democratic Odyssey are members. There are also 
numerous organisations supporting democratic innovation and participation 
at the local level. For all their good work, years or decades of work lie ahead 
to  build  the  civic  trust  and  structures  on  which  deliberative  democracy  and 
sortition at the European scale will depend.

An  ECA  under  current  conditions  risks  skimming  across  the  surface  of 
Europe’s democracy without having an impact and potentially creating more 
political disillusionment than it overcomes. In five or ten years, we can hope 
that it will be able to be supported by multiple structures of multi-level democ-
racy and collective policy making, and a democratic culture at citizen level that 
has built citizen trust in deliberative processes from regular local experience.

Focusing  on  building  that  infrastructure  and  practice  will  also  create 
some of the practical elements that a successful ECA will need – multi-lingual 
networks of facilitators and independent guarantors, groups of independent 
experts and experts-by-experience to share their stories, and a set of connected 
digital environments to ensure that the ECA can be actively transparent as it is 
happening, using the networks established for trusted and local national pro-
cesses as its underpinning infrastructure.

Finally,  longer  and  deeper  experience  will  build  the  robustness  of  pro-
cesses in the sector, which needs to be improved before big issues are handled 
through continental-scale deliberation. The absence of a standardised process 
for the working groups of the Conference on the Future of Europe plenary is 
just one example of where deliberative initiatives fall short of the predictability, 
transparency and accountability that any effective parliament would take for 
granted.

I do not believe we should rule out a standing ECA on principle, but we 
should create it with a cautious approach, aiming to build the right conditions 
first  (including  through  piloting  and  other  initiatives).  I  believe,  like  Nico-
laidis, that a standing citizen body deliberating alongside MEPs and the other 
European institutions could provide a valuable source of ideas and a sounding 
board for proposals, as long as the powers and responsibilities of such a body 
are well defined, and the role of deliberative democracy has broad support and 
understanding among the public.

271  ‘Nets4Dem - innovating European democracy together’, Democratic Society, https://www.dem-

soc.org/projects/nets4dem. 

Should a Citizens' Assembly Complement the European Parliament? Rotation, Task Definition 
and an Increased 
Membership: An 
Alternative Imaginary for 
a Permanent ECA

Graham Smith272 and David Owen273

We are sympathetic to the idea of a European Citizens’ Assembly (ECA) as a 
means of invigorating the democratic culture and practices of the European 
demos.  And  we  appreciate  the  thought  leadership  offered  by  Kalypso  Nico-
laidis and the Democratic Odyssey project more generally.274 The issue for us is, 
first, how any ECA is conceived and realised, and second, how it is embedded 
within the wider institutional ecology of the EU. Many of the contributions 
have  addressed  this  second  issue,  with  some  reflecting  on  the  ECA  while 
holding the rest of the current institutional context stable and others seeing the 
ECA as part of, and a spur to, wider institutional transformation. We suggest 
that focusing on the first issue is a prerequisite for thinking through the second 
issue.

272 University of Westminster.

273 University of Southampton. 

274  Nicolaidis, 2024.

109

The dominant imaginary for most proponents of permanent citizens’ as-
semblies is that of a single sortition assembly that functions somewhat like a 
parliamentary chamber: it works across a number of issues at the same time. 
Although  Nicolaidis’  proposal  is  a  little  opaque  in  this  regard,  it  appears  to 
follow this logic.

Our concern is that such an assembly imaginary is a long way from the “de-
liberative wave” of citizens’ assemblies and other processes from which Nico-
laidis and others draw inspiration. The majority of assemblies have been ad-hoc 
and focused on a single issue. Where permanent citizens’ assemblies have been 
established  –  for  example,  the  Ostbelgian  Citizens’  Dialogue,275  the  Brussels 
Capital Region Climate Assembly276 and the Paris Citizens’ Council277 – remits 
have been similarly limited to single topics. Or, where there has been more than 
one topic, assembly members have been broken into different groups or dealt 
with them sequentially.

We offer an alternative imaginary to those who advocate for a permanent 
European Climate Assembly, or national sortition legislatures for that matter, 
who  tend  (implicitly  or  explicitly)  to  think  in  terms  of  a  single  body  where 
members work together across multiple issues. Our alternative rests on a couple 
of design principles: (1) sortition combined with rotation and clear task defini-
tions; (2) larger membership from which individual sub-assemblies – or juries 
– are drawn to undertake specific tasks.278

Rotation, specific task assignment, and 
two-stage sortition

Rotation and clear task definition is critical because our concern is that a single 
body wrestling with a range of different issues will quickly develop the dysfunc-
tions we associate with existing legislative bodies: from horsetrading between 
proponents  of  different  proposals  through  to  corruption  as  those  with  in-

275  ‘Permanent Citizen Dialogue in Ostbelgien’, Buergerdialog, https://www.buergerdialog.be/filead-

min/user_upload/Presseinfo-allg_V20200107_EN.pdf. 

276  ‘Permanent climate assembly in Brussels’, Buergerrat, https://www.buergerrat.de/en/news/perma-

nent-climate-assembly-in-brussels/. 

277  ‘Paris creates a permanent Citizens’ Council’, Sortition Foundation, https://www.sortitionfounda-

tion.org/paris_creates_permanent_citizens_council. 

278  Owen and Smith, 2018.

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terests (and resources) outside the body target individual members as politi-
cal amateurs who, as Richard Bellamy279 notes (and Svenja Ahlhaus and Eva 
Schmidt concur),280 may ‘be more susceptible to lobbying and the influence 
of conspiracy theorists and the like’. It is hard to believe that such a multi-issue 
body  could  be  deliberative  in  the  way  that  Nicolaidis  and  other  proponents 
hope.

Second, we agree with some of the other contributors that the member-
ship of the ECA, as currently proposed, would be rather limited: a relatively 
small number of European residents would be able to exercise their judgement 
and power at any one time. Our proposal, following the ancient Greek jury se-
lection model, is that the ECA should be really big! At least several thousand 
European residents selected by democratic lottery perhaps once every couple of 
years, potentially growing much more as the diversity of functions that these 
mini-publics  can  play  become  embedded  into,  and  act  on,  the  institutional 
ecology of the EU.

Those several thousand citizens may only ever meet together online once or 
twice as part of an orientation programme. Instead, for each issue that emerges, 
a smaller sub-assembly – a jury – is drawn from the wider pool. Each such citi-
zen’s jury is limited in time and remit.

At the same time, the membership of the assembly is radically expanded 
meaning that familiarity of the institution amongst wider European publics is 
increased – particularly at those moments when the full body is selected – and 
the random selection of each jury from within the wider pool protects against 
targeted corruption by nefarious interests.

Agenda-setting in a responsive ECA

Where  more  work  needs  to  be  done  is  on  a  third  design  principle.  How  are 
the agendas for individual juries set? That’s still up for debate, but a number 
of  options  exist  –  and  could  exist  side-by-side.  European  institutions  always 
have  problems  figuring  out  how  to  deal  with  successful  European  Citizens’ 
Initiatives  (ECIs).  By  their  very  nature,  we  are  only  hearing  one  side  of  the 
argument from them. ECA juries could be empowered to consider successful 

279  Bellamy, 2024.

280  Ahlhaus and Schmidt, 2024.

111

ECIs, as Nicolaidis281 and Daniel Freund282 suggest, thereby giving European 
institutions a sense of the broader support (or otherwise) for propositions. The 
ECA  could  be  empowered  to  consider  major  pieces  of  proposed  legislation 
from  European  institutions,  potentially  with  the  right  to  send  the  proposal 
back for further consideration if it does not achieve (super) majority support. 
Or, more radically, chambers of previous jury members could set agendas for 
subsequent juries having taken evidence from a range of stakeholders – as is 
done in Ostbelgien and the Brussels Permanent Climate Assembly. ECA juries 
could also play a range of roles in terms of scrutiny whether of agenda-forma-
tion in the Parliament or Commission, or in terms of the implementation of 
policy in EU institutions (e.g., Frontex) or member states.

The  ECA  jury  is  a  multi-functional  tool  that  can  play  a  multiplicity  of 
roles within the architecture of the EU. It serves as a way of allowing citizens 
both  to  give  visibility  to  voices  and  perspectives  that  the  professional  politi-
cal elites may fail to engage and of holding the EU to public account. In this 
respect,  we  concur  with  Ahlhaus  &  Schmidt’s283  argument  that  the  ECA 
can  address  problems  of  opacity,  capture,  and  stuckness  that  are  all  present 
within the current EU system. On our construal, although the functions of 
ECA  juries  may  variously  be  generative  (expanding  agendas  and  proposing 
policy directions), critical (reviewing and potentially revising legislative/policy 
proposals), or regulatory (exercising oversight on policy implementation and 
institutional  conformity  to  constitutional  norms),  its  powers  are  essentially 
negative  powers  of  requiring  bodies  that  exercise  decision-making  (and 
decision-execution) powers to be more responsive to the perspectives, reasons 
and interests of those who are subject to their rule: citizens and non-citizens, 
on the grounds that Rainer Bauböck adduces.284 The rationale for this restric-
tion of the powers of the ECA is that while ECA juries are well-designed to 
act  as  fora  for  holding  other  bodies  to  account,  they  have  an  accountability 
problem: they cannot be held to account for their decisions in the same way 
as electoral institutions. If ECA juries are to become the final arbiters of de-
cisions, more work is needed to ensure the democratic legitimacy of such ar-
rangements. For us, at this time, this is sufficient grounds to limit ECAs to the 

281  Nicolaidis, 2024.

282  Freund, 2024.

283  Ahlhaus and Schmidt, 2024.

284  Bauböck, 2024.

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exercise of negative powers. Hence, like Lafont and Urbinati, we see them as 
“mediating” institutions albeit ones that can play a wide multiplicity of critical 
democratic roles.285    

Our intervention is a plea for those advocating for permanent citizens’ as-
semblies to broaden their imagination as to what an ECA looks like and how 
it  functions.  We  must  not  be  constricted  into  thinking  that  a  permanent 
citizens’  assembly  should  roughly  mimic  existing  legislative  bodies.  It’s  not 
enough to simply replace elected with randomly selected members and assume 
that everything else will be fine. Sortition-based assemblies can and should be 
designed  and  function  differently.  And  that  can  be  in  ways  that  make  them 
more participatory so that more European residents are able to see themselves 
as participants in EU democracy rather than spectators of it.

285  Lafont and Urbinati, 2024.

Connecting to Publics: 
Challenges and 
Possibilities for the 
European Citizens’ 
Assembly

Melisa Ross286 and Andrea Felicetti287

The debate on the introduction, precise design, and function of a European 
Citizens’ Assembly (ECA) is not merely an academic exercise. In a few years, 
theoretical  reflections  on  multinational  and  multilingual  deliberation  have 
become  concrete  proposals  embodied  in  campaigns  like  Citizens  Take  over 
Europe and the Democratic Odyssey.288 Direct citizen engagement in European 
governance has been proven feasible by the European Citizens’ Panels289 and 
the Conference on the Future of Europe.290 Most importantly, the European 
Union and European practitioners may be in an unparalleled and privileged 
position to effectively advance such a democratic experiment.

286 Universität Bremen.

287 Università degli Studi di Padova.

288  ‘Mission and vision’, Citizens Takeover Europe, https://citizenstakeover.eu/about/. 

289  ECP.

290  CoFE.

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Nicolaidis’  proposal  for  such  an  ECA  is  ambitious,  multifaceted,  and 
meticulously  articulated.  We,  too,  see  the  introduction  of  deliberative  and 
democratic bodies as an important means to reinforce democracy, including 
in the EU.291 This debate is thus both timely and necessary. Contributions so 
far have focused on the composition, selection mechanisms, and legitimacy of 
the  citizen  body  (Seubert,292  Bellamy,293  Sintomer294)  and  on  the  connection 
– or what we have called ‘docking’ in previous research295 – between an ECA 
and existing European institutions, such as the European Parliament and the 
European Commission (Džankić,296 Lafont and Urbinati297).

Our  intervention  instead  foregrounds  a  less  explored  aspect,  namely 
the relationship between the ECA and the diverse publics that make up the 
European space, thinking in particular about existing organised sectors, such as 
civil society and social movements.

Transnational publics, plural

Nicolaidis points to the centrality of the ECA’s relationship with the public 
sphere  throughout  her  initial  contribution  to  this  debate,  referring  to  the 
current  fragmentation  of  the  European  public  sphere.298  Following  Nancy 
Fraser, we would go further and instead think of transnational public spheres 
in the plural. In the European space, these public spheres are articulated at the 
national level, and/or along linguistic lines, and then further fragmented within 
these spaces.299 This presents specific challenges. For example, Nicolaidis states 
that in the ECA, ‘a German worker or a Latvian teacher can feel closer to re-

291  Nicolaidis, 2024. 

292  Seubert, 2024.

293  Bellamy, 2024.

294  Sintomer, 2024.

295  Curato, N et.al. (2023), Global Assembly on the Climate and Ecological Crisis: Evaluation Report, 

https://researchsystem.canberra.edu.au/ws/portalfiles/portal/82182314/Global_Assembly_Evalua-
tion_Report.pdf (hereinafter ‘Global Assembly, 2023’). 

296  Džankić, 2024.

297  Lafont and Urbinati, 2024.

298  Nicolaidis, 2024.

299  Fraser, N. (2007), ‘Transnationalizing the Public Sphere: On the Legitimacy and Efficacy of Public 

Opinion in a Post-Westphalian World’, Theory, Culture & Society, 24(4): 7-30.

115

spectively a Spanish worker or an Irish teacher than to their co-nationals’. This 
is a great quality of citizens’ assemblies. However, outside of that assembly, a 
German worker will be part of public spheres overwhelmingly made of fellow 
Germans. Though European publics are finding new ways to connect across 
countries, national borders and languages remain a real barrier to the construc-
tion of transnational public spheres.

The implication is that, while the ECA recreates a truly European (mini-)
public,  the  effective  publics  where  transnational  issues  are  debated  remain 
national, and even (hyper)local. The assembly member will have an exception-
al opportunity to participate in a miniature transnational public sphere for a 
time, but their fellow countrypeople will not. This brings back the issue raised 
by Jelena Džankić,300 namely, ‘How would the ECA engage with the place and 
the people that host it at different points, and what would be the essence of 
this exchange?’. From our perspective, the broader question at hand is how the 
ECA  can  foster  connections  between  and  across  different  European  publics 
and  their  demoi  (Bauböck,301  Oleart302)  beyond  the  still  very  few  selected 
assembly members.

From issue salience to issue ownership

We agree with Nicolaidis that fostering the relationship with public spheres is 
key to avoiding that the ECA becomes a form of co-optation and ‘citizen-wash-
ing’. We think, however, some of the offered solutions deserve greater scrutiny. 
The idea that ‘choosing topics with high political salience’ could lead to more 
agonistic  engagement,  foster  constructive  disagreement,  and,  in  so  doing, 
create more public attention to the issues at hand is a case in point. It seems 
unwarranted to expect that issue salience alone will earn the support of already 
mobilised  civil  society  and  social  movements  already  active  in  the  respective 
policy space.

Public sphere actors are generally strategic actors, not unlike other polit-
ical agents. Some might have an interest in transforming existing institutions 
in more deliberative directions. Others might not. High stakes might exacer-
bate other logics in actors’ behaviour than deliberation, including among civil 

300  Džankić, 2024.

301  Bauböck, 2024.

302  Oleart, 2024.

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society  actors.303  In  turn,  less  pressing  issues  might  be  irrelevant  enough  for 
publics and their actors to disregard the process altogether. So, choosing topics 
is an uphill struggle, regardless of salience.

Moreover, public sphere actors are a very mixed set of actors, and so the 
ECA is bound to leave some publics unhappy. Take social movements. They 
are capable of deliberating and favouring societal deliberation.304 Yet, they are 
informal networks with a distinct collective identity and involved in conflict-
ual relations.305 This is quite at odds with the procedural buy-in required by 
mini-publics. We agree with Nicolaidis that if the ECA were just a consultative 
body,  its  democratic  effectiveness  would  be  limited.  Something  ‘actionable’ 
would be desirable, as Daniel Freund306 explains, and connecting the ECA in 
some ways to referendums or initiatives seems promising, according to many, 
including Rainer Bauböck.307 However, if it were to make decisions, more chal-
lengers may rise, as Urbinati and Lafont argue.308 This may be the case with 
organised sectors that have ‘ownership’ of a policy issue, such as climate policy, 
and all the more so if the ECA’s recommendations are not in line with their ad-
vocated outcomes.

In such context, Nicolaidis is rightly wary of the risk that an ECA might be 
perceived as an agent of disintermediation. She proposes, therefore, that this 
body should be part of an ‘ecosystem of connected spaces of direct democracy 
which the ECA could help support and interconnect’. This is crucial because it 
implies that the ECA should ultimately be grounded in public spheres, not just 
attached to institutions. However, it is not for the ECA to decide how it will be 
received by others. It is to be hoped that an ECA does not fail ‘to engage with 
[organised  civil  society’s]  own  campaigns,  movements,  and  civic  dialogue’. 
How this is to be attained is thus central to the proposal. The following section 
outlines some considerations in this regard.

303  Fung, A. (2005), ‘Deliberation before the Revolution: Toward an Ethics of Deliberative Democra-

cy in an Unjust World’, Political Theory, 33(3): 397-419

304  Mendonça, R. F and Ercan, S. A. (2015), ‘Deliberation and protest: strange bedfellows? Revealing 
the deliberative potential of 2013 protests in Turkey and Brazil’, Policy Studies, 36(3): 267–282.

305  Della Porta, D and Diani, M. (2006), Social movements: an introduction, Blackwell.

306  Freund, 2024.

307  Bauböck, 2024.

308  Lafont and Urbinati, 2024.

117

Bridging across publics

Demoicratic theory, as formulated by Nicolaidis and others, maintains that the 
European  Union’s  mandate  rests  on  ‘a  polity  of  multiple  distinct  but  inter-
dependent peoples committed to the ‘mutual opening’ of their respective de-
mocracies’.309 Considering the challenges listed above, how can that ‘mutual 
opening’ take place, exactly?

Concretely, we see potential for an ECA to contribute to existing European 
governance by informing institutional and public debate with the granularity 
of  experiences  as  directly  expressed  by  individuals  and  felt  by  their  commu-
nities, harnessing the assembly for ‘deliberation-making’ rather than decision 
making, as proposed by Simon Niemeyer.310 This can take place in two direc-
tions: by bringing the plurality of lived experience across European communi-
ties to European institutions and by creating bridges across those communities. 
Let’s take a look at each possibility.

The first implies harnessing the richness of deliberation in an ECA ‘ver-
tically’  to  inform  debates  in  European  institutions.  For  example,  thinking 
about ‘how to systematise discussions from thousands of citizens across lan-
guages  and  cultures’,  Iñaki  Goñi  proposes  that  citizen  contributions  can 
indeed complement debates on highly complex, science-based policy debates.311 
He advocates for spotlighting little data along with the big data that informs 
decision-making  arenas.  Such  an  approach  foregrounds  contributions  from 
‘everyday  people’  that  can  shed  light  on  how  global  issues  concretely  affect 
communities. In the realm of climate policy, the Global Assembly has shown 
how  stories  that  emerge  in  deliberative  forums  can  powerfully  illustrate  the 
stakes in transnational governance, such as the cost of inaction for peripheral 
communities that will bear the brunt of too-slow climate policy or the epis-
temic  transformation  in  communities  once  they’re  granted  access  to  climate 

309  Nicolaidis and Liebert, 2023.

310  Niemeyer, S. (2014), ‘Scaling up Deliberation to Mass Publics: Harnessing Minipublics in a 

Deliberative System’, in K. Gronlund, A. Bachtiger, and M. Setala (eds.), Deliberative Mini-Publics: 
Involving Citizens in the Democratic Process, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers (hereinafter ‘Niemey-
er, 2014’).

311  Goñi, I. (2024), ‘Make it make sense: the challenge of data analysis in global deliberation’, Deliber-
ative Democracy Digest, https://www.publicdeliberation.net/make-it-make-sense-the-challenge-of-
data-analysis-in-global-deliberation/. 

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education.312

This is the added value of iterative, localised deliberation: it makes policy 
debates tangible. Yet, informing debates at transnational institutions with local 
stories may move listeners but may not suffice to counter power-holders. Even 
when building vertical strategies, the ECA will continue to grapple with the 
limit of who gets a seat at the table, namely those select few who are drawn 
from the civic lottery to join the assembly, as rightly pointed out by Cristina 
Lafont.313

The  second  possibility  is  that  an  ECA  can  advance  the  horizontal  con-
nection  among  European  demoi  and  across  multi-level  publics.  As  high-
lighted by Álvaro Oleart in this debate, transnational social movements have 
long  created  strategies  to  both  ground  structural  problems  in  and  inform 
transnational  strategy  with  the  experience  of  local  communities.314  An  ECA 
can draw inspiration from them. In the realm of climate governance, Nicole 
Curato  suggests  that  global  climate  assemblies  can  connect  ‘deliberations  of 
everyday citizens from around the world on climate action’.315 The infrastruc-
ture of citizens’ assemblies can help create bridges among the lived experience 
of the policy problem at hand, but also of resilience and affect despite differ-
ences in context. Similarly, recent research led by Lucas Veloso suggests that 
existing  citizens’  assemblies  often  represent  a  ‘missed  opportunity’  in  terms 
of connecting deliberations with existing, ongoing mechanisms for participa-
tion, community leaders and movements, and mobilised civil society already 
active in the policy field at hand.316

Where assemblies are ad-hoc, their potential connection to those existing 
mechanisms for advocacy and community mobilisation may create the other-
wise missing bridge with the so-called ‘maxi public’. This form of intermedia-
tion may be undesirable from the perspective of those already mobilised public 

312  ‘Farhat Parveen – Pakistan’, Global Assembly – Youtube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-

52TIw59YQyE&ab_channel=GlobalAssembly. 

313  Lafont, 2019.

314  Oleart, 2024.

315  ‘Stockholm Series #2 with Nicole Curato – video and manuscript’, Idea International, https://

www.idea.int/news/stockholm-series-2-nicole-curato-video-and-manuscript. 

316  Veloso, L and Luís, A. (2023), ‘Embedding global citizens’ assemblies: A bottom-up perspective 
from Mozambican rural communities’, Global Citizens’ Assembly Network Technical Paper No. 3, 
Available at: http://glocan.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/TechnicalPaper-3-2023-Veloso-and-Luis.

pdf (hereinafter ‘Veloso and Luís, 2023’). 

119

actors,  especially  those  who  claim  issue  ownership,  as  argued  above.  But  an 
ECA could present itself as an opportunity for networking those actors across 
publics, potentially opening up spaces for alliances rather than confrontation.

The cost of experimentation

Procedural questions regarding how an ECA should be run, with how many 
participants, from what kinds of pools, and in what precise function with regard 
to existing institutions are all questions that can be tackled from existing experi-
ence with citizens’ assemblies across Europe317 or from expansive imagination, 
as suggested by Graham Smith and David Owen.318 But consequentiality and 
impact  remain  one  of  the  thorniest  questions  in  democratic  innovations  in 
general,319 and increasingly with deliberative forums in particular. Proposers of 
an ECA must then clearly articulate the advantages of an ECA in Europe-wide 
policies and polities.

While there is broad support for citizens’ assemblies within certain com-
munities of inquiry and practice, this does not necessarily translate to the wider 
society,  as  highlighted  by  Anthony  Zacharzewski  in  this  debate.320  Citizens’ 
assemblies are often targeted by critics because they are high-cost, low-stakes 
processes. They demand significant financial and organisational resources to 
mobilise relatively few citizens for a short period of time. Intense epistemic, 
emotional, and political labour is demanded of assembly members to produce 
recommendations that, more often than not, fail to find their way into political 
decision-making. Nicolaidis does not shy away from also listing technocratic 
deliberation at the EU level as a pitfall; similar problems are found at national 
and local levels too. Moreover, given the contemporary political climate world-
wide, one must consider that the relationship with public spheres would have 
to be nurtured in contexts that might be less than amenable to deliberative de-
mocracy’s premises and core values.

317  OECD. (2021), ‘Eight ways to institutionalise deliberative democracy’, OECD Public Governance 

Policy Papers, No. 12, OECD Publishing.

318  Smith and Owen, 2024.

319  Jacquet, V., Ryan, M and van der Does, R (eds.). (2023), The Impacts of Democratic Innovations, 

ECPR.

320  Zacharzewski, A. (2024), ‘Perceptions and Practicalities of a Standing European Citizens’ Assem-
bly’, GLOBALCIT, https://globalcit.eu/representing-european-citizens-why-a-european-citi-
zens-assembly-should-complement-the-european-parliament/12 (hereinafter ‘Zacharzewski, 2024’).

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Inspiring cases are often paid attention to in the media, as was the case with 
the Irish Assembly321 or Extinction Rebellion’s endorsement of Citizens’ As-
semblies.322 Yet, these experiments coexist with a much larger set of cases with 
very limited impact that, taken together and over time, can wear out activists 
and supporters, and easily move out of the news cycle. We agree these are useful 
learning experiences, but they might come at a price. We are not so free to ex-
periment if this is more than an academic exercise, as it is. See, for instance, Ex-
tinction  Rebellion’s  withdrawal  from  Scotland’s  Climate  Assembly,323  given 
the  assembly’s  narrow  scope.  The  more  ‘failures’,  the  more  disillusionment 
towards democratic innovations.

We  see  potential  in  Europe-wide,  permanent  deliberation  infrastructure 
– if it can advance the connection with and among publics and meaningfully 
engage  locally  anchored  actors  and  demands.  This  makes  careful  reflection 
along any strategic institutional experimentation all the more relevant.

321  ‘Government responds to the Citizens’ Assembly on Biodiversity Loss’, The Citizens’ Assembly, 

https://citizensassembly.ie/. 

322  Extinction Rebellion.

323  ‘Extinction Rebellion hits out at Scotland’s climate change citizen assembly’, BBC, https://www.

bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-54830823. 

Enlarged 
Complementarity: How 
an ECA Should Relate to 
Other Institutions and 
Actors

Lucile Schmid324  

In her introductory essay to this debate, Kalypso Nicolaidis proposes creating 
a permanent, transnational, and itinerant assembly of 300 randomly selected 
citizens, whose mandate would be renewed by thirds every six months.325 Unlike 
other citizens’ assemblies that have ruled on specific topics in Ireland (abortion, 
same-sex marriage), in France (climate), or in Iceland (rewriting the Constitu-
tion),  this  assembly  would  have  general  jurisdiction  and  work  in  interaction 
with the European Parliament. Free from political parties and interest groups, 
it would implement deliberative democracy, complementary to representative 
democracy  and  direct  democracy.  The  European  Citizens’  Assembly  (ECA) 
would benefit from a favourable ecosystem, supported by NGOs, transnation-
al activism, and solution-based journalism. It would act as a bridge between 
society and other institutions and would allow for new alliances, for example, 
between European civil servants and citizens. It could also propose resorting to 
direct democracy by calling for a referendum, as was the case in Ireland. The 

324  La Fabrique écologique, Paris.

325  Nicolaidis, 2024.

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objective of this reform would be to strengthen European citizens’ sense of in-
stitutional belonging.

I participate in this forum as a co-founder and Vice President of the think 
tank “La fabrique écologique,” which closely followed the work of the French 
Citizens’ Convention on Climate.326 This national convention was a very im-
portant step to acknowledge the legitimacy of citizens’ assemblies in France. 
But it was also a disappointment as the following reforms did not match ex-
pectations. This is why in my contribution I will focus on a central element, 
the interaction of a citizens’ assembly with existing institutions. This observa-
tion on an experience at the national level needs, of course, to be transposed to 
the European level. It might be even more relevant at that stage as European 
institutions are always on the quest of enhancing their legitimacy. I am also a 
member of the journal Esprit, which has long been committed to European 
engagement.327

I have been impressed by the quality of the arguments exchanged in this dis-
cussion, in which I am intervening somewhat late. Though no contributor put 
into question of the proposal of creating an ECA, there was a strong dividing 
line between them on its status and thus the place to give it in the institution-
al scheme. Cristina Lafont and Nadia Urbinati,328 and Richard Bellamy329 are 
clearly rather sceptical about its role. The discussion has addressed a wide range 
of issues concerning 1) the initiative itself – the legitimacy of random selection 
versus election), the role of the Citizens’ Assembly, concerns about an “apolitical 
democracy,” general versus specialised competence, visibility versus invisibility; 
2)  the  institutional  context  –  the  imbalance  caused  by  the  dominance  of 
national  executives,  the  interaction  between  the  Citizens’  Assembly  and  the 
European Parliament (cooperation, conflicts), links between deliberative/rep-
resentative/direct democracy; and 3) political challenges – the rise of populism, 
democracy 3.0, new transnational and decolonial activist movements.

326  ‘Qui sommes nous?’, La Fabrique ecologique, https://www.lafabriqueecologique.fr/. 

327  ‘Revue Esprit’, Esprit, https://esprit.presse.fr/. 

328  Lafont and Urbinati, 2024.

329  Bellamy, 2024.

123

Why complementarity is key

In my response to Nicolaidis’ essay, I will focus on the complementary relation-
ship she envisions between the future Citizens’ Assembly and the European 
Parliament.  Several  contributors  contest  or  are  sceptical  about  this  comple-
mentarity, preferring to see the ECA as a mediating body between institutions 
and society. Moreover, how can we imagine that those in power within the in-
stitutions would agree to share it? This is a difficulty not to be underestimated, 
given that the Parliament, the Commission, and the Council of Member States 
are often in a competitive rather than complementary mindset.

Nevertheless,  complementarity  is  a  key  element.  It  is  the  foundation  for 
the ECA not being just a simple citizens’ panel, but a full-fledged institution. 
This justifies its permanence and general competence. This concern for an in-
stitutional  foundation  is  directly  related  to  Nicolaidis’  reference  to  Hannah 
Arendt’s idea that “power is not a zero-sum game.” By creating an ECA that 
complements the European Parliament, the bet is that this new institution will 
alter the institutional landscape and generate new dynamics. Complementa-
rity between the European Parliament and the ECA could trigger broader in-
stitutional  complementarity  within  the  European  institutions.  The  bet  also 
assumes that the citizens who are members of the Assembly will be on equal 
footing with the members of other European institutions. This is a fundamen-
tal  point,  especially  since  the  division  between  elites  and  the  people  is  being 
highlighted everywhere by populists and resonates particularly when it comes 
to how Europe functions. It is also a point of caution because, in most cases, 
when citizens are given a voice, there is an asymmetry in rights: citizens partici-
pate, but elected officials decide. This traditional division of roles must at least 
be challenged.

But how do we define this complementarity? If the competence of the ECA 
is general, this does not preclude choosing an agenda that prioritises current 
issues, on which feedback from citizens would be useful to the institutions.

Should a Citizens' Assembly Complement the European Parliament? 124

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Putting the Green Deal on the ECA 
Agenda

In concluding her contribution, Sandra Seubert observes that issues related to 
the Green Deal could offer interesting material for a future European Citizens’ 
Assembly.330  Yves  Sintomer,331  Alvaro  Oleart332  and  Daniel  Freund333  also 
address this question. Environmental issues are a topic on which the European 
Union has long been engaged and possesses substantial internal and external 
expertise. However, the current situation is paradoxical. Adapting Europe to 
climate disruptions is urgent. Yet, climate-sceptic discourse is advancing every-
where. As we have recently seen with the European Nature Restoration Law 
and  the  agricultural  mobilisations,  there  is  a  risk  that,  out  of  fear  of  social 
protests, the European Union may suspend some of its commitments to the 
Green Deal.

These challenges are directly linked to the incapacity of the current insti-
tutions  to  tie  social  and  environmental  issues  together.  Regarding  the  social 
consequences of the Green Deal and the definition of public mechanisms to 
address them, it is particularly necessary to create a space for deliberation with 
representatives of European society. The ECA would enable this. Pragmatical-
ly, it is worth recalling that, on environmental issues, there are a large number 
of associations and NGOs that could mobilise and support the creation of an 
initiative like an ECA in connection with supporters within the European Par-
liament. Finally, it should be noted that the work of the European Commis-
sion’s services in support of the Green Deal has been of high quality and offers 
all the necessary knowledge and expertise on these issues.

Moreover, if we refer to the example of the French Citizens’ Climate Con-
vention of 2019/2020, it is striking to note that it was the failure to account for 
the complementarity between this citizens’ convention and other institutions 
– the parliament, the government – that caused misunderstandings that were 

330  Seubert, 2024.

331  Sintomer, 2024.

332  Oleart, 2024.

333  Freund, 2024.

125

never resolved.334 The French President had promised a “filter-free” implemen-
tation of the Convention’s proposals, which was impossible within the insti-
tutional  framework  unless  a  referendum  was  organised  (direct  democracy). 
However, given the Convention’s broad mandate, it was not possible to submit 
all these proposals in a single referendum. In any case, failing to organise col-
laboration between Parliament and the citizens’ convention from the outset, 
and  not  recognising  their  complementarity,  fuelled  conflicts  and  mutual  re-
sentment.

The possibility to include MP associates as early as possible in the process 
would then be mutually beneficial for citizens and representatives. It should 
be properly defined so that citizens keep their freedom of discussion and rec-
ommendation. But there could be particular moments in the convention for 
organising acculturation on both sides. This is currently even more important 
as there is a growing distrust between citizens and their representatives. Devel-
oping a common view and language between both sides could be an objective 
for the ECA.

An expanded vision of complementarity

It is, therefore, clear that thinking about complementarity from the outset is es-
sential. Furthermore, this complementarity must be envisioned in an expanded 
way. In addition to the initial complementarity with the European Parliament, 
a broader vision of complementarity should include the services of the Com-
mission, the Commissioners, the European Economic and Social Committee, 
NGOs, associations, and trade unions. This would be a sort of complementari-
ty-mediation. A permanently functioning ECA could not operate in isolation 
from the world; as Nicolaidis suggested it should interact with local actors, give 
voice to people not having a right to vote like migrants, it would need to engage 
with other actors and work with society in the broad sense. Nicolaidis’ approach 
of openness could be a way to respond to arguments contrasting minipublics 
with the people as a whole. If there is interaction and openness, the deliberative 
process would gain legitimacy. This would be different from the rules applied 
to certain thematic citizens’ conventions, where external contacts were strictly 
regulated -in Ireland for example the citizens could not have contacts with the 
press. Permanence and general competence must be coupled with openness. 

334  ‘The Citizens’ Convention on Climate, what is it?’, Convention Citoyenne pour le Climat, 

https://www.conventioncitoyennepourleclimat.fr/en/. 

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But it means that modalities of openness should be defined in the functioning 
of the ECA. Otherwise it could result in weakening the responsibility attached 
to membership.

Recognising that “complementarity” would benefit institutional dynamics 
and  would  ground  the  legitimacy  of  the  ECA  does  not  exhaust  the  subject. 
How,  indeed,  should  we  define  what  we  mean  by  complementarity  in  this 
specific case?

Complementarity is first considered here in terms of the composition of 
the two assemblies (randomly selected citizens on one side, elected deputies on 
the other). It is also considered in terms of functioning—deliberative democ-
racy versus representative democracy. But this remains a point of discussion, as 
ensuring more deliberation within elected assemblies is still an objective.

I  see  the  main  complementarity  between  the  European  Parliament  and 
a Citizens’ Assembly as revolving around how political responsibility is con-
cretely experienced. In her contribution, Seubert is concerned that a Citizens’ 
Assembly  might  encourage  a  form  of  “apolitical  democracy”.335  The  experi-
ence of the French Citizens’ Climate Convention shows rather the opposite, 
with  citizens  who,  once  the  Convention  ended,  created  a  follow-up  associ-
ation and, in some cases, became active politically or in unions, often at the 
local level. They took their role seriously and with responsibility.336 This can, 
of course, also be seen in the case of elected officials. But in that case, the sense 
of responsibility is sometimes diluted by party membership, the desire to be 
re-elected, and difficulties of listening to the other side. In a permanent ECA 
with rotating membership, these drawbacks would be less likely to happen. But 
what is central to preventing these distortions is the deliberative process. Devel-
oping arguing skills is key in keeping democracies alive and giving citizens the 
desire to be active. This is why the concern for deliberation should be promoted 
everywhere inside the institutions as well as in the ECA.

Finally,  I  believe  that,  as  European  texts  and  regulations  are  increasingly 
openly attacked and largely misunderstood by citizens, there is a strong need 
to  explain  and  make  understandable  both  the  process  and  the  usefulness  of 
European  law-making  and  the  rule  of  law.  I  feel  that  the  ECA  could  be  the 
proper institution to contribute to this aim and could, in that way, serve the de-
velopment of a common language among Europeans. Due to its composition 

335  Seubert, 2024.

336  ‘Les 150’, Les150, https://les150ccc.fr/. 

127

and the fact it does not participate directly in elaborating the texts themselves, 
it would have an advantage compared to other institutions. Another way to 
prove its complementarity to them.

In conclusion, it is time to reverse the usual way of thinking and promote 
a complementary institutional approach in opposition to a competitive insti-
tutional  approach.  When  the  people  feel  more  and  more  distant  from  their 
elected representatives, the latter should understand their interest in creating a 
European Citizens’ Assembly and back it. It might be the most promising way 
to relegitimate their own institutions.

Should a Citizens' Assembly Complement the European Parliament? Why a European 
Citizens’ Assembly 
Should Replace Sortition 
with Liquid Democracy

Chiara Valsangiacomo337 and Christina Isabel Zuber338

Several previous contributions to this debate identify a dilemma in Kalypso Nico-
laidis’ thought-provoking proposal for a European Citizens’ Assembly (ECA) 
(Cristina  Lafont  and  Nadia  Urbinati;339  Richard  Bellamy;340  Svenja  Ahlhaus 
and  Eva  Schmidt341).  Nicolaidis  aims  to  promote  a  “pan-European  partici-
patory  ecosystem”  characterised  by  a  transnational  “demoicratic  ethos.”  She 
argues  that  the  ECA  could  foster  these  goals,  enhancing  input,  throughput 
and output legitimacy of collective decision-making within the EU. As critics 
point out, for the ECA to have such an impact on the quality of transnational 
democracy, it would have to be equipped with some degree of decision-making 
authority. However, if it did have such authority, it should not rely on selec-
tion by lottery. These critical contributions solve the dilemma by downgrad-
ing the ECA to a merely consultative body, arguing that we should strengthen 
traditional forms of electoral democracy instead. We support both Nicolaidis’ 

337  University College Dublin.

338 European University Institute and University of Konstanz

339  Lafont and Urbinati, 2024.

340  Bellamy, 2024.

341  Ahlhaus and Schmidt, 2024.

129

ambition  to  radically  reimagine  EU  institutions  beyond  elections  and  the 
arguments against lottocracy. Our contribution, therefore, suggests a different 
way  forward,  one  that  Jelena  Džankić  briefly  hints  at:  replacing  selection  by 
lottery with liquid democracy.342

The problem with sortition

Faced with citizens who neither care about nor feel represented by the institu-
tions of the EU, Nicolaidis suggests that we shift gears and consider “radical in-
stitutional innovation”. Her specific proposal is to complement the European 
Parliament  (EP)  with  a  deliberative  ECA,  whose  members  would  be  drawn 
by lot from all 27 states and rotate on a regular basis. Džankić emphasises the 
underspecified nature of this proposal.343 What does seem clear, however, is that 
Nicolaidis envisions the ECA as an institution that is permanently embedded 
in the EU’s institutional regime. With an independent position and budget, 
it  would  contribute  to  legislative  agenda-setting,  deliberate  on  policy  issues 
and prepare European Citizens’ Initiatives (ECIs), work closely with the EP, 
monitor policy implementation, scrutinise other EU institutions, and cooper-
ate with civil society actors. According to Nicolaidis, such an assembly would 
enjoy input, throughput, and output legitimacy because it would give citizens 
an equal chance to be selected, help combat problems of corruption and elite 
capture  that  bedevil  electoral  institutions  and  foster  epistemically  valuable 
forms of collective intelligence.

Nicolaidis discusses several ways in which the ECA could connect to the 
EU’s wider public sphere and help citizens come to feel that they own collective 
decisions made at the European level: mixing ECA members with professional, 
elected members of the EP, coupling the ECA with direct democracy, embed-
ding it in civil society, crowdsourcing, fostering media partnerships, and giving 
the ECA an itinerant, traveling nature.

Nicolaidis  is  cautious  to  not  grant  the  ECA  binding  decision-making 
power on its own, but foresees it playing a co-decision role in the EU’s pow-
er-sharing system. As Cristina Lafont and Nadia Urbinati point out, in case of 
conflict over the substance of decisions between the ECA and other European 

342  Džankić, 2024.

343  Ibid.

Should a Citizens' Assembly Complement the European Parliament? 130

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institutions, there would need to be a rule on who prevails.344 For the ECA to 
genuinely play the role of increasing input, throughput and output legitimacy 
that Nicolaidis hopes for, it would need some kind of binding decision-mak-
ing authority. However, if it did have such authority, it should not be selected 
by lottery. As Bellamy, among several other contributors, points out, sortition 
stands in the way of overcoming the present “demoi-cratic disconnect”.345 In 
particular, we share Lafont’s and Urbinati’s diagnosis that a lottocratic ECA 
must, by design, rely on the “blind deference” of the vast majority of citizens to 
the decisions of a small group of randomly selected – and thus democratically 
unaccountable – individuals.346 Since the wider public has “no role to play in 
the  functioning  of  these  institutions,”  low  participation  and  disinterest  are 
bound to remain the norm. As long as citizens are denied genuine agency,347 
the lottocratic ECA is bound to remain just another “shortcut”348 that cannot 
justify a sense of “democratic ownership”.349 

The  solutions  offered  by  Nicolaidis’  critics,  by  and  large,  aim  at  preserv-
ing the benefits of lotteries for selecting the ECA’s members. They, therefore, 
opt to downgrade the role of the ECA from collective decision-making to me-
diation  or  consultation.  Lafont  and  Urbinati  propose  an  intermediary  ECA 
that  is  not  “directly  coupled  with  formal  political  institutions”.350  This  idea 
is welcomed by Sandra Seubert351 as well as Ahlhaus and Schmidt.352 Others 
prefer  to  stick  to  temporary  and  issue-specific  assemblies,  similar  to  earlier 
citizens’ panels (Daniel Freund,353 Graham Smith and David Owen354). What 
all of these proposals have in common is that they ultimately abandon Nico-
laidis’ ambition to give ordinary citizens the power to participate more directly 

344  Lafont and Urbinati, 2024.

345  Bellamy, 2024.

346  Lafont and Urbinati, 2024.

347  Bellamy, 2024.

348  Lafont and Urbinati, 2024.

349  Ahlhaus and Schmidt, 2024.

350  Lafont and Urbinati, 2024.

351  Seubert, 2024.

352  Ahlhaus and Schmidt, 2024.

353  Freund, 2024.

354  Smith and Owen, 2024.

131

in the EU’s legislative process. By continuing to limit the exercise of democratic 
sovereignty to elected representatives, they can offer no solution to the challeng-
es of elite capture and wide-spread citizen disengagement. Because we support 
both  Nicolaidis’  ambition  to  radically  reimagine  EU  demoicracy  beyond 
elections  and  the  arguments  against  lottocracy,  we  want  to  suggest  a  non-
lottocratic, non-electoral alternative: a so-called liquid ECA. This innovation 
would perform the same institutional functions as Nicolaidis’ lottocratic ECA, 
but the selection of its participants would be based on a completely different 
logic, namely liquid democracy.

A liquid european citizens’ assembly

Liquid democracy is a technology-enabled mechanism for distributing voting 
power  that  has  recently  gained  attention  in  several  disciplines,  including 
computer science and political theory.355 It came to prominence in the 2010s 
thanks to the experience of the German Pirate Party, and it can be technical-
ly implemented with software such as LiquidFeedback or Adhocracy+.356 The 
liquid ECA we envision would have to incorporate all the defining features of 
liquid democracy: “direct democracy, flexible delegation, meta-delegation, and 
instant recall”.357 For each decision, members of the political community can 
either vote directly or delegate their vote to another citizen. They are free to 
recall these delegations at any time. The delegates are called “proxies”, and they 
cast as many votes as they received, plus their own. Proxies can also meta-del-
egate votes to other proxies, creating a transitive chain of delegations. Because 
liquid democracy does not limit the total number of active participants, the 
group of decision-makers can potentially encompass all members of the politi-
cal community. Moreover, even proxies with few delegations are allowed to act 

355  See; Halpern, D et al. (2023), ‘In Defense of Liquid Democracy’, EC ‘23: Proceedings of the 24th 

ACM Conference on Economics and Computation; Ford, B. A. (2002), Delegative Democracy, EPFL; 
Landemore, 2020; Valsangiacomo, C. (2021), ‘Political Representation in Liquid Democracy’, 
Front. Polit. Sci, 3(1): 1-14.

356  Behrens, J et al. (2014), The Principles of LiquidFeedback, Interaktive Demokratie e. V.; Deseriis, 
M. (2022), ‘Is Liquid Democracy Compatible with Representative Democracy? Insights from the Ex-
perience of the Pirate Party Germany’, Partecipazione e Conflitto, 15(2): 466-481; Paulin, A. (2020), 
‘An Overview of Ten Years of Liquid Democracy Research’, In Proceedings of the 21st Annual 
International Conference on Digital Government Research (dg.o ‘20), Association for Computing 
Machinery; Valsangiacomo, C. (2022), ‘Clarifying and defining the concept of liquid democracy’,  
Swiss Political Science Review, 28(1): 61–80.

357  Blum and Zuber, 2016.

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as representatives, creating a perfectly proportional system. For these reasons, 
liquid democracy is a particularly inclusive system with low barriers to political 
participation. It is also a remarkably flexible decision-making system in which 
patterns of participation and delegation can change quickly, depending on the 
issue at hand. Thanks to policy-area-specific delegation, our liquid ECA would 
resemble  Alexander  Guerrero‘s  single-issue  legislatures:  it  would  consist  of  a 
predetermined number of independent and autonomous sub-assemblies (for 
example, mirroring the standing committees of the EP) so that an EU citizen 
or resident could be actively involved in legislation on fishery while being repre-
sented by different proxies in the area of trade policy, or on matters concerning 
the single market.358

According to Blum and Zuber, liquid democracy is superior to electoral de-
mocracy in realising popular sovereignty or input legitimacy.359 If the lottocratic 
ECA were transformed into a liquid ECA, it could be given genuine legislative 
authority without undermining the principle of democratic sovereignty: each 
member of the political community would either participate in decision-mak-
ing directly or authorise representatives, thereby avoiding blind deference. A 
liquid ECA would thus allow all citizens to actually share in political power, 
overcoming the “vertical inequality” between a group of active decision-makers 
and a passive group of ordinary members that otherwise persists in both elec-
toral and lottocratic systems.360 This would foster a “justified sense” of dem-
ocratic ownership.361 At the same time, a liquid ECA would also offer strong 
procedural and epistemic advantages (respectively, throughput and output le-
gitimacy) over the EP or Nicolaidis’ model for an ECA, thanks to the possibili-
ty of delegating to policy experts, rather than electing generalist representatives 
or deferring to randomly selected individuals, neither of whom may have the 
relevant  expertise.  First,  the  task  of  monitoring  representatives’  behaviour  is 
reduced to specific policy fields, lowering the burden of ensuring meaningful 
accountability  and  limiting  the  possibilities  of  capture  (a  problem  discussed 
by Seubert362). Second, area-specific delegation and low barriers to participa-
tion help identify and activate individuals with the relevant policy-specific ex-

358  Guerrero, Alexander (2024): Lottocracy: Democracy Without Elections. Oxford: Oxford University 

Press.

359  Blum and Zuber, 2016.

360  Abizadeh, 2021.

361  Ahlhaus and Schmidt, 2024.

362  Seubert, 2024.

133

pertise to participate in legislative decision-making, mobilising the wisdom of 
the crowd.363 

Choosing a liquid over a lottocratic ECA almost inevitably requires the ex-
tensive use of digital technologies to work, moving the assembly closer to a sit-
uation where politics is done largely online. This new virtual dimension could 
provide additional advantages. First, policy-specific deliberations in the liquid 
ECA could draw on the power of AI-assisted translation, allowing EU citizens 
and  residents  to  participate  regardless  of  their  language  skills  and  physical 
location  (thereby  addressing  concerns  raised  by  Džankić,364  Bauböck,365 
and Smith and Owen366).  Second, the policy-area-specific nature of delibera-
tion in the liquid sub-assemblies could foster the development of non-territori-
al transnational communities around policy issues, for example, when Spanish 
and Polish migration lawyers discuss the future of the European asylum system. 
Such communities of expertise would complement the territorial and ideolog-
ical logics of representation that currently dominate the EP

A thought experiment

We are aware that while deliberative mini-publics have become more popular 
in recent years and have already been tried from the local to the European level, 
experiments with liquid democracy have so far been limited to decision-mak-
ing  processes  within  political  parties.367  However,  deliberative  mini-publics 
were also once mainly discussed by democratic theorists rather than applied in 
practice.

363  Blum and Zuber, 2016. For experimental empirical support see; Revel, Manon, Daniel Halpern, 

Adam Berinsky, and Ali Jadbabaie (2022): Liquid Democracy in Practice: An Empirical Analysis of 
Its Epistemic Performance, 2022. Conference on Equity and Access in Algorithms, Mechanisms, 
and Optimization, George Mason University, USA. 

364  Džankić, 2024.

365  Bauböck, 2024.

366  Smith and Owen, 2024.

367   Adler,  A.  (2018),  Liquid  Democracy  in  Deutschland:  Zur  Zukunft  digitaler  politischer  Entschei-
dungsfindung  nach  dem  Niedergang  der  Piratenpartei,  Transcript;  Kling,  C  et  al.  (2021),  ‘Voting 
Behaviour and Power in Online Democracy: A Study of LiquidFeedback in Germany’s Pirate Party’, 
Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media, 9(1):208-217.

Should a Citizens' Assembly Complement the European Parliament? 134

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Let  us,  therefore,  conclude  with  a  thought  experiment  to  make  our 
proposal more plausible and tangible.368 Imagine we were to equip each and 
every EU citizen or resident with an account on a pan-European version of a 
liquid feedback software. Once logged in, citizens could see a visual representa-
tion of the structure of the liquid ECA, with its independent, thematic sub-as-
semblies,  and  decide  in  which  policy  areas  they  wish  to  participate  directly 
and in which to delegate. Next, whenever action is required by one of these 
sub-assemblies, all the proxies and citizens who have registered as active partici-
pants for that specific policy area would be notified and invited to participate in 
online deliberations and, eventually, vote on the issue at stake based on liquid 
democratic principles. Anyone who wanted to have a direct say on the matter 
would have had the chance to bring their perspective and interests into the dis-
cussion, anyone who preferred to be represented by someone they trust on that 
policy area would not participate and be represented by proxy instead. Would 
this not open up many more “ways of channelling the life wisdom, knowledge 
spheres and expertise of a broader range of individuals” 369 than deliberations 
among a small group of randomly selected individuals ever could?

368  For a similar approach, see; Landemore, H. (2021), ‘2. Open Democracy and Digital Technologies’, 
In Bernholz, L., Landemore, H and Reich, R (eds.), Digital Technology and Democratic Theory, 
University of Chicago Press.

369  Nicolaidis, 2024.

Rome Was Not Built in 
One Day, Neither Will 
a European Citizens’ 
Assembly

Camille Dobler370 and Antoine Vergne371 

It has been fascinating to read the different contributions of academics, poli-
ticians and practitioners, and to get a glimpse of the potential of marrying the 
two fields of European Studies and Democratic Innovations. It has been four 
years  already  since  the  Conference  on  the  Future  of  Europe  and  we  remain 
puzzled  to  see  how  few  scientific  contributions  from  either  field  of  research 
have yet been published.372 It was, therefore, about time to launch this discus-
sion.

We have the luxury and difficult position to be among the last ones com-
menting on Kalypso Nicolaidis’ essay opening this forum.373 As others, we find 
ourselves  in  a  tricky  position  as  we  are  both  judge  and  party  in  this  debate, 
working on the deployment of the European Citizens’ Panels (ECPs) from the 
Conference on the Future of Europe onwards and participating in the Demo-

370  Missions Publiques.

371 Missions Publiques.

372  CoFE.

373  Nicoladis, 2024.

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cratic Odyssey.374 And while we seek to remain reflexive in our work, we agree 
with many comments already put forward in this discussion, while remaining 
fully convinced that the proposal is timely, solid and exciting.

Nicolaidis’  epistemic  democracy  argument,  to  mention  only  one  point, 
is  not  misplaced.  For  anyone  who  has  ever  witness  such  processes,  there  is 
no  denying  that  European  deliberative  mini-publics  enable  Europe’s  diver-
sity as a democratic resource beyond both national closure and the “Brussels 
bubble”.    By  involving  individuals  with  layered  identities  –  local,  regional, 
national, and transnational – they deliver far better on the demoicratic promise 
than European elections.

Yet, we also know all too well the design hassles and normative challenges 
that Nicolaidis’ proposal has to face. Like Jelena Džankić, we wonder about 
the risk of exclusion of remote rural areas from an itinerant European Citizens’ 
Assembly  (ECA);375  like  Anthony  Zacharzewski,  we  often  have  doubts 
ourselves,  wondering  if  there  is  a  strong-enough  public  demand  for  such  a 
radical proposal.376

In  our  contribution,  we  do  not  want  to  repeat  the  arguments  that  have 
already been made but would like to focus on “dezooming” the discussion along 
three distinctive features of the ECA as proposed by Nicolaidis – translocalism, 
radical inclusion, and porosity – before concluding with a provocation of our 
own.377

Complementing transnationalism with 
translocalism

The idea of a translocal assembly, as suggested by Nicolaidis, operationalises 
demoicratic theory by grounding European-level deliberation directly in local 
contexts, effectively decentralising participation. A translocal assembly would 
not be a permanent institution with a fixed location; instead, it would travel 
across the Union, meeting in various European cities and communities. This 
rotating model would deepen its ties to the localities it engages with and has po-

374  ECP.

375   Džankić, 2024.

376  Zacharzewski, 2024.

377  Nicolaidis, 2024.

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tential to enable a Europe-wide exchange of perspectives while deeply engaging 
with the specific contexts and values of each locality. This approach respects 
and integrates local identities within the larger framework of European deci-
sion-making. We think such an ECA is a powerful model for a more inclusive, 
grounded, and agile form of deliberation at the supranational level.

We  understand  the  ECA  as  only  one  element  within  what  Azucena 
Moran and Melisa Ross call wider “ecosystems of engagement”.378 A forest is 
composed of thousands of trees, hosting billions of living organisms each. The 
same should be the case for deliberation. Some critics in this debate stress that 
deliberative mini-publics can’t reach the larger European maxi publics. This 
is only true if we consider those exercises as isolated. If we imagine instead a 
web of deliberation of which the ECA is a part, then we can think in fractal 
terms. Impact and relevance add up as the Assembly is travelling in Europe. It 
kickstarts  processes  in  every  locality  it  visits.  Partnerships  are  made,  capacity 
building occurs, local communities build resilience. The ECA even becomes 
like a circus: people and institutions prepare it, apply for it, celebrate it: “The 
Assembly is coming!” Like Melisa Ross and Andrea Felicetti, we believe that 
each visited locality could spin up its own process encouraging more decentral-
isation and exponential scaling.379

Intersubjective representation and radical 
inclusion

Much has been written in previous comments on the representativity of the 
sampling for the assembly. We would like to take a more radical approach to 
this:  No  sampling  ever,  no  election  ever,  no  market  ever  is  representative  of 
whatever. All selection mechanisms are intersubjective processes. Whether it 
is 720 (Members of European Parliament) or 800 (randomly selected partici-
pants of the ECPs of the Conference on the Future of Europe), it is presump-
tuous for them to claim being representative of 448 million European inhab-
itants. In both cases, those numbers are the result of political, normative and 

378  Moran, A and Ross, M. (2022), ‘From government-led systems to ecosystems of collective gover-

nance’, ECPR, https://ecpr.eu/Events/Event/PaperDetails/63612. 

379 Ross, M and Felicetti, A. (2024), ‘Connecting to publics: challenges and possibilities for the 

European Citizens’ Assembly’ GLOBALCIT, https://globalcit.eu/representing-european-citi-
zens-why-a-european-citizens-assembly-should-complement-the-european-parliament/14 (hereinaf-
ter ‘Ross and Felicetti, 2024’).

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logistical decisions.

This being said, we applaud the radical inclusion ethos of an ECA, and we 
would also argue that inclusion, if radical, should not stop with citizens. Pre-
cisely because we share Nicolaidis’ objective of a radically inclusive and holistic 
European  democracy,  we  would  challenge  her  to  break  away  from  “toolbox 
mentality”, a trap we ourselves too often fall into. In recent years, the trend of 
citizens’ assemblies and their plethora of design do’s and don’ts have overshad-
owed  other  equally  stimulating  deliberative  mechanisms.  As  Graham  Smith 
and David Owen point out, the composition of an ECA, just like all its design 
features, should neither mimic existing legislative bodies nor, in our views, any 
other local or national citizens’ assembly.380

As we observe a (modest) rise in mixed elected officials-citizens institutions, 
such as mixed deliberative committees, it would be beneficial to see these mixed 
expert/civil society-citizen-decision-maker initiatives expand and become more 
sustainable.381 Why not at the European level, too? Can we imagine an ECA in 
which different categories of actors sit at the same table rather than adding yet 
another table to the EU institutional setting? In that respect, we welcome the 
legacy of the Plenary of the Conference on the Future of Europe for the radical 
inclusion ethos of the ECA, as Nicolaidis does stress the importance of includ-
ing civil society in this discussion. Yet, we would encourage her to exploit this 
legacy more fully and be even more radical in her proposal. This is the next 
frontier: inclusion is also about overcoming Eurocentricity and Anthropocen-
tricity, as Alvaro Oleart382 and Rainer Bauböck argue.383  

Complementing institutionalization with 
“porous” experimentation

A  third  aspect  of  Nicolaidis’  proposal  that  we  find  particularly  intriguing  is 
that  an  ECA  should  be  both  top-down  and  bottom-up.  Contrary  to  ECPs, 
which  are  initiated  based  on  the  needs  of  Commission  Policy  Directorates 

380  Smith and Owen, 2024.

381  ‘Deliberative Committees (Commissions délibératives)’, OPSI, https://oecd-opsi.org/innovations/

deliberative-committees-brussels/. 

382  Oleart, 2024.

383  Bauböck, 2024.

139

and  as  part  of  their  legislative  proposal  prerogative  and  public  consultation 
toolbox, the ECA mandates would not be decided by EU institutions only but 
also “evolve organically from bottom-up initiatives”, in strong porosity with 
both the policy and civil society worlds.384

We  understand  the  ECA  as  an  agenda-setting  body.  This  is  an  interest-
ing and stimulating prospect, as the ECA would find its natural role in com-
plementing  other  instruments  for  citizen  participation  available  at  EU  level. 
However,  such  an  ECA  is  likely  to  bring  into  sharp  focus  the  challenges  of 
gaining  influence  at  the  institutional  level,  especially  in  shaping  European 
negotiations  and  policies,  as  demonstrated  by  the  rather  sobering  experienc-
es with the European Citizens Initiative,385 and the long legitimacy struggles 
of the European Economic and Social Committee386 and the Committee of the 
Regions.387 Hence the higher the porosity, the stronger the need of “docking” 
the ECA, which, as conceptualised by GLOCAN, describes “the process of in-
terfacing in a compatible way with existing institutional structures”.388

While it is easier to imagine how a translocal ECA would dock to ongoing 
civil society initiatives and local institutions – Nicolaidis lists for example the 
European Capital of Democracy Initiative, and local citizens’ assemblies – it is 
harder to see how such an ECA would fit within already complex inter-institu-
tional relations at EU level. Harder, perhaps, but solutions are not out of sight. 
Nicolaidis’ proposal might be bold in normative terms but does not seem to us 
to be practically unrealistic.

Many contributors to this discussion are supportive of the idea of an ECA 
yet remain cautious regarding its docking within existing institutional struc-
tures, arguing that we first need a stronger European public sphere and level of 
public support for, and understanding of the deliberative ethos and citizens’ 
assembly  process.  This  is  the  chicken  and  egg  problem:  what  should  come 
first? The ECA and then support and understanding among the maxi-public, 
or support and understanding first, and only then the ECA? We find ourselves 
leaning  towards  the  former  option.  Our  own  learnings  from  advocating  for 

384  EUCA, 2023.

385  ECI-EU.

386  ‘The European Economic and Social Committee’, European Union, https://www.eesc.europa.eu/

en. 

387  ‘European Committee of Regions’, European Union, https://cor.europa.eu/en. 

388  Global Assembly, 2023.

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more citizen deliberation at transnational level,389 first with the World Wide 
Views on Climate and Energy390 and later We the Internet,391 is that proving 
by showing is most effective, an approach that was also favoured by the 2021 
Global Assembly.392 We do not consider docking an ECA to have either an end 
or a beginning; it is a process that needs first piloting, improving and institu-
tionalising, aiming precisely at rooting new habits in our political cultures.

Falling forward, from citizens’ juries to an 
ECA?

We would like to conclude with a provocation of our own: there is no better 
moment  nor  better  place,  at  least  for  now,  to  experiment  with  a  permanent 
translocal assembly than in the EU.

Let’s zoom out: the institutionalisation of the European Citizens’ Panels is 
a case in point. Would we be at such a stage if there had not been the Confer-
ence on the Future of Europe and before it the French Climate Convention, 
the Irish Citizens’ Assemblies, Deliberative Polls, and long before, back in the 
1970s, the Citizens’ Juries and Planning Cells? We do not believe so. The pace 
is  already  de  facto  accelerating  in  a  “falling  forward”  fashion;  only  five  years 
ago, nobody could have imagined how European Citizens’ Panels would work 
in practice.

Now,  let’s  discuss  numbers.  The  budget  of  the  European  Parliament  is 
roughly €4 billion per year without the costs of elections to bring it together. 
A typical general election in France amounts to €300 million. A single Euro-
fighter jet without maintenance costs is evaluated at €124 million. It is esti-
mated that €900 billion goes into road building and maintenance each year 
globally. €135 billion are spent yearly by governments of the EU to maintain 
their police forces. There are around 9 billion trips made by train every year in 
Europe. European citizens spend an average of 1.5 hours a day on social media. 
That amounts to roughly 70 thousand years of attention every day.

389  ‘How can global citizens’ assemblies make an impact on global governance?’, GloCAN – Youtube, 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ45Wfif2Uk&ab_channel=GloCAN. 

390  ‘World Wide Views’, World Wide Views, https://wwviews.org/. 

391  ‘We, the Internet’, We the Internet, https://wetheinternet.org/.  

392  ‘About us’, Global Assembly, https://globalassembly.org/about-2. 

141

The list could go on forever, but our point is clear: an ECA is not expensive, 
it is not technically impossible, and it does not take too much time. The chal-
lenges lie elsewhere:  in conformism, our choices and the limits we set. This 
hinders not only our collective imagination, but also our capacity to act and 
build  the  infrastructure  European  democracy  needs.  Instead  of  imagining  a 
future where an ECA would have failed to have an impact, we should imagine 
a future in which participating in an ECA is as natural as jumping in a train. 
The Eiffel Tower was not built to last and was notoriously hated at first. Now, 
it is being visited by over 2.5 million tourists per year.  

Zooming back in: European integration has always suffered, in the absence 
of a European demos and a European public sphere, from a democratic deficit, 
and will inevitably continue to do so. It is, therefore, all too easy to call an ECA 
a luxury unlikely to have any impact. It does not seem fair to expect ECPs alone 
to reconnect European citizens with EU politics. This was never their primary 
objective. Similarly, it would not be fair to expect an ECA alone to foster the 
emergence of a European public sphere. Together, however, within an ecosys-
tem of engagement, the odds already look more promising. As European po-
litical integration deepens, we are eventually faced with a normative necessity 
to try. But more than that, it is a privilege for the EU to be able to seriously 
envision the prospect of an ECA, at a time where many global thinkers and 
promoters of change across the globe lack the financial and political support 
to  do  this  work.  Hence,  we  find  ourselves  in  alignment  with  Nicolaidis’  call 
for a more holistic and braver European democracy. We are all the more op-
timistic as the power of performative politics and academic activism has long 
shaped the political integration of this continent. There is little to lose and lots 
to win from piloting, failing, starting again, improving, and institutionalising a 
European Citizens’ Assembly.

Should a Citizens' Assembly Complement the European Parliament? Democratisation Through 
Europeanisation: The 
Case for a Permanent EU 
Citizens’ Assembly

Alberto Alemanno*  

If European democratic theory has traditionally been a theoretical rather than 
a practical endeavour among scholars working in isolation, this forum breaks 
with  these  traditions.  It  brings  together  academics  and  practitioners  around 
not just an idea but a tangible transnational democratic experiment: the intro-
duction of a permanent and itinerant citizens’ assembly composed of randomly 
selected EU citizens and residents.

As  such,  this  proposal  cannot  be  judged  solely  against  standard  scholar-
ly  considerations,  as  most  contributions  do.  Instead,  as  suggested  by  Sin-
tomer’s call for ‘careful reflexive analysis’, it must be assessed according to the 
realities of citizens’ democratic life in the EU and against growing democratic 
expectations vis-à-vis the Union at a time of accelerating transformations.393

This is precisely what this contribution intends to do. Rather than discuss-
ing issues related to institutional design – I have had the opportunity to present 
two models, one for the European Parliament394 and the other for the Bertels-

393 * HEC – École des Hautes Etudes Commerciales de Paris.
 Sintomer, 2024.

394  Alemanno, A. (2022), ‘Towards a Permanent Citizens’ Participatory Mechanism in the EU’, Euro-

pean Parliament Committee on Constitutional Affairs (AFCO), Forthcoming.

143

mann  Foundation,395  both  connecting  the  proposed  assembly  with  existing 
participatory channels – it situates such a proposal within the wider EU dem-
ocratic  realities.396  It  then  provides  a  key  complementary  argument  that  has 
been missing in its support so far: the unique ability of a permanent citizens’ 
assembly to ‘Europeanise’ the politics of the EU in the current political and 
constitutional juncture.

The realities of EU democratic life

After  seventy  years  of  unprecedented  socioeconomic  integration,  the  EU 
continues to evolve through processes that largely neglect people’s participa-
tion.397 It is still virtually impossible for an EU citizen or resident – let alone 
those living in candidate countries or other regions under EU influence – to 
express a desire to change the direction of the Union and hold its institutions to 
account.398 In these circumstances, citizens are deprived not only of influence 
at the EU level but also of any knowledge and understanding of EU politics 
that would allow for popular scrutiny and effective democratic control. This 
deficit is by no means new.

The EU has always struggled with standard (representative) democracy due 
to a combination of history399 and institutional design.400 What has changed, 
however, is the growing reluctance to accept  fatalism about  the  EU’s  demo-
cratic  deficit,401  a  catch-all  term  that  has  not  only  captured  the  attention  of 
academics but also the imagination of the broader public and recently that of 
the ubiquitous Elon Musk,402 and which has also driven the debate into a dead 
end.  If  the  European  public  has  initially  accepted  integration,  despite  being 

395  IECA, 2022.

396  Alemanno and Nicolaidis, 2022.

397  Patberg, M. (2020), Constituent Power in the European Union, Oxford University Press.

398  Abizadeh, A. (2008), ‘Democratic Theory and Border Coercion: No Right to Unilaterally Control 

Your Own Borders’, Political Theory, 36(1): 37-6.

399  Müller, J. (2013), Contesting Democracy: Political Ideas in Twentieth-Century Europe, Yale Universi-

ty Press.

400  Berman, S. (2019), Democracy and Dictatorship in Europe: From the Ancien Régime to the Present 

Day, Oxford University Press.

401  Nicolaidis and Liebert, 2023.

402  Musk, E, ‘Tweet’, https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1855390756560896184. 

Should a Citizens' Assembly Complement the European Parliament? 144

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ill-informed  and  uninterested  in  such  developments,403  that  was  a  tempo-
rary and potentially self-correcting status. The neo-functionalist logic under-
pinning EU integration predicted that “economic problem-solving was to be 
merely the first step towards broader and more intensive forms of union”.404 
As EU issues would have penetrated the national political debate, the politici-
sation of the EU and the resulting controversiality of its decision-making were 
supposed to increase European citizens’ attention toward enhanced informa-
tion and concern for the EU project. This logic was projected to lead to both 
“further integration”405 of the Union and its ‘democratisation’ over time.406

Fast  forward  to  today.  The  politicisation  of  the  Union  has  undoubtedly 
occurred,407 as did its further integration. However, contrary to initial predic-
tions, these processes themselves have not triggered — or translated into — a 
parallel one of democratisation, which has in turn meant that its legitimating 
potential for EU action has not been realised.408 Why did democratisation not 
develop further, and what could a citizens’ assembly do about it?

Europeanisation: The missing 
link between politicisation and 
democratisation

I  argue  that  politicisation  did  not  produce  the  expected  results  because  this 
process was exclusively allowed to play out within—and not across—the EU 
Member States’ national boundaries. EU issues got trapped within the nation 

403  Hutter, S and Grande, E. (2014), ‘Politicizing Europe in the national electoral arena’, J Common 

Mark Stud, 52(5): 1002-1018

404  Lindberg, L and Scheingold, S. (1970), Europe’s Would-be Polity: Patterns of Change in the Europe-

an Community, Prentice-Hall.

405  Haas, E. (1958), Uniting of Europe: Political, Social, and Economic Forces, 1950-1957, University of 

Notre Dame Press.

406  Schmitter, P. C. (1969), ‘Three Neo-Functional Hypotheses about International Integration’, 

International Organization, 23(1): 161–166; Bartolini, S and Hix, S. (2006), Politics: The Right or 
the Wrong Sort of Medicine for the EU?, Notre Europe.

407  Kriesi, H. (2016), ‘The Politicization of European Integration’, JCMS: Journal of Common Market 

Studies, 54(1): 32–47.

408  Alemanno, A. (2024), ‘The Hijacking of Europe: How National Leaders Have Stolen the EU Proj-
ect and How to Reclaim It’, Cultural Politics Seminar: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (In Person), 
Harvard Weatherhead (hereinafter ‘Alemanno, 2024’). 

145

state.  If  politicisation  pushed  Europe  into  national  politics  (top-down)  and 
national politics into EU decision-making (bottom-up), those two phenom-
ena never synchronised. This artificial distinction between the national politi-
cal arena and the EU political arena has been preventing EU integration from 
accommodating and experimenting with new dynamics of change capable of 
generating new forms of political organisation and procedures and potentially 
transforming its underlying political order. That is what I referred to as Eu-
ropeanisation,  a  political  development  that  could  have  made  Europe  a  more 
distinct,  intelligible  and  autonomous  political  space.409  Such  a  space  would 
allow disputes over EU decision-making processes to divide and unite people 
across borders rather than being fought artificially along existing jurisdiction-
al boundaries. This new political locus, characterised by continuous transna-
tional interactions between actors, could help promote practices of “mutual 
attention, communication, perception of needs, and response in decision-mak-
ing”.410

When one approaches the establishment of an EU-wide citizens’ assembly 
from this perspective, this proposal acquires a new meaning. It may address, 
possibly overcome, most of the criticisms that have been moved against such an 
idea. Being potentially able to Europeanise, albeit at a small scale, the EU politi-
cal conversation, a citizens’ assembly could nurture the emergence of a genuine 
and distinct EU political space, and that regardless of the scale reached411 the 
exact  division  of  power  between  the  EU  Parliament  and  the  EU  Citizens’ 
Assembly412 and without necessarily devaluating parliamentary processes.413 As 
such, the establishment of a citizens’ assembly could partly make up for today’s 
structural shortcoming of EU democracy, including the absence of a pan-EU 
electoral competition inhabited by truly European Political Parties (as opposed 
to  today’s  loose  federations  of  ideologically  heterogeneous  national  political 
parties) as well as a pan-EU public sphere.

409  Ibid.

410  Bremberg, N and Norman, L. (2023), ‘Conclusion / The Dilemmatic Perspective on European 

Democracy’ In N. Bremberg & L. Norman (eds.), Dilemmas of European Democracy: New Perspec-
tives on Democratic Politics in the European Union, Edinburgh University Press.

411  Džankić, 2024, citing Bua, 2017.

412  Lafont and Urbinati, 2024.

413  Seubert, 2024.

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A Citizens’ Assembly to Europeanise EU 
politics

While several reform ideas aimed at democratising EU integration and its deci-
sion-making have been put forward over time – from the legal recognition of 
the democratic principle in the EU political order to enshrinement of citizens’ 
right to participate in the Union’s democratic life, not all of them carry a Euro-
peanisation potential. This quality should be measured against their ability to 
resume the cumulative dynamic of integration at the political level, where it has 
historically never had a chance to play out.414

This potential can, in turn, be inferred from the ability of reform ideas to: 
(i) generate cross-border political interactions about EU issues between both 
citizens  and  their  representatives;  (ii)  bring  knowledge  and  insights  among 
citizens  and  their  representatives  that  would  otherwise  not  arise  in  national 
settings;  (iii)  connect  the  two  electoral  channels  available  to  citizens,  that  of 
national  elections  selecting  who  represents  a  Member  State  in  the  Council 
(domestic route), and European Parliament elections (EU route), and unveil 
how these two arenas are inhabited by the same political actors wearing dif-
ferent hats; and, eventually, (iv) generate some transnational democratic legiti-
mation, ranging from agenda-setting to a feedback loop on ongoing legislative 
proposals.

That’s exactly the sort of dynamic that a permanent transnational delib-
erative  mechanism,  such  as  the  proposed  citizens’  assembly,  could  prompt. 
Rather than promoting yet another ready-made model of EU democracy – be 
it parliamentarian, presidential or other –, an EU-wide citizens’ assembly could 
re-launch a process capable of generating such a model. It aims to ultimately 
create  the  conditions  for  EU  institutions  to  go  beyond  symbolic  references 
to democratic principles and allow both citizens and their representatives to 
experience – for the first time – an EU-wide political space. This democratic 
emancipation  of  the  Union  from  the  nation-state  could  provide  a  unique 
opportunity  to  acknowledge  the  limitations  of  a  system  and  structures  
creatd without and regardless of people – not to mention future generations415and 

414  Alemanno, 2024.

415  Alemanno, A. (2023), ‘Protecting the Future People’s Future: How to Operationalize Present Peo-
ple’s Unfulfilled Promises to Future Generations’, European Journal of Risk Regulation, Forthcom-
ing.

147

non-human entities416–, and ultimately to bring the democratic question to the 
forefront. A permanent EU-wide citizens’ assembly could free the EU from the 
model of the nation state as the exclusive source of inspiration for the democ-
ratisation of the Union, thereby – perhaps for the first time – creating space for 
the EU’s democratic self-expression.

From such a perspective, Europeanisation could be seen as a prerequisite 
for  any  genuine  attempt  at  democratising  the  ever-evolving  Union.  A  per-
manent EU-wide citizens’ assembly could free the EU from the model of the 
nation state as the exclusive source of inspiration for the democratisation of the 
Union, thereby – perhaps for the first time – creating space for the EU’s demo-
cratic self-expression. It responds to the recent call to move away from the tra-
ditional nation state-based model, in which the EU either becomes more state-
like or will not democratise, to a broader process aimed at “rescaling of power, 
function and authority”.417 According to the latter perspective, democratising 
the EU through a citizens’ assembly “involves much more than restoring the 
classic model of polity in which demos, sovereignty, representation, and func-
tional capacity coexist within the same territorial boundaries, whether of the 
European Union, its Member States or new secessionist polities”.418 This per-
spective responds to the concern of a possible zero-sum game between partici-
pation and representation, and more specifically between the citizens’ assembly 
and the EU Parliament.419

Europeanisation  may  simultaneously  prompt  several  different  types  of 
processes of change that, instead of coming from the nation state, remain to 
be imagined. The lack of Europeanisation of EU politics is probably one of 
the most important and hitherto overlooked reasons for the EU’s democratic 
malaise. It not only denies citizens the right to participate in the democratic life 
of the Union but also deprives it of legitimacy when it needs it most.

For many, transforming a Union of demographically and economically het-
erogeneous states into an emerging political space may seem unrealistic. Yet, 
while the lack of genuine democratic capacity has accompanied EU integration 
from the very beginning, this problem is only set to deepen. Amid the conti-
nent’s epochal transformations, the EU is expected to gain—not lose—power, 

416  Nicolaidis, 2024; Sintomer, 2024.

417  Keating, M. (2022), ‘Between two unions: UK devolution, European integration and Brexit’, Terri-

tory, Politics, Governance, 10(5): 629-645.

418  Ibid.

419  Lafont and Urbinati, 2024.

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thus increasing its influence over citizens without offering them a correspond-
ing expansion of democratic capacity and opportunities. As the relationship 
between the influence of the EU on Member States and the ability of citizens 
to hold policymakers accountable is set to grow increasingly asymmetrical, the 
costs of non-democratisation may undermine its viability and survival.

This begs, however, the question of why national leaders who have thus 
far resisted calls for any significant institutional reform would eventually give 
in. Ultimately, the proposed ‘democratisation-through-Europeanisation’ rep-
resents a dual threat to the national political class: to lose power both at home 
and in the EU. As Jan Zielonka presciently predicted a few years ago, “unless 
there are some powerful external shocks forcing dramatic changes, a spectacle 
of false pretentions can continue for a long time”.420 It is no exaggeration to 
argue that those shocks are now in full swing. Amid the continent’s epochal 
transformations, the EU is expected to gain—not lose—power, thus increasing 
its influence over its citizens without offering them a corresponding expansion 
of democratic opportunities. Meanwhile, according to recent polls, over 70% 
of Europeans expect more regular and meaningful engagement with EU-level 
governance.421  While  this  does  not  suggest  growing  support  for  the  Union, 
which remains static,422 it does indicate a growing awareness of the extent to 
which decision-making at supranational – rather than national – level affects 
people’s life chances.423 In these newly created circumstances, both the case for 
the democratisation of the EU and its timing might be unusually ripe. A po-
litical window of opportunity is opening, imposed by unfolding events within 
and outside the Union, from the war in Ukraine and the prospect of a new 
invasion – this time of EU territory – to the inevitable eastward expansion of 
the EU.

A permanent deliberative mechanism seems very well suited to re-launch 
the cumulative dynamics of integration by Europeanising both the EU elec-
toral  competition  and  party  system.  This  could  ultimately  blur  the  artificial 
boundaries between the national and EU political arenas that currently hold 
the EU back, thus contributing to the emergence of a distinct EU-wide politi-
cal order at a time when the Union and its citizens need it the most.

420  Zielonka, J. (2014), Is the EU Doomed?, Wiley.

421  CoFE.

422 ‘Standard Eurobarometer 100 - Autumn 2023’, Eurobarometer, https://europa.eu/eurobarometer/

surveys/detail/3053. 

423  Alemanno, A. (2021), ‘Unboxing the Conference on the Future of Europe and its Democratic 

Raison-d’Être’, European Law Journal, Forthcoming.

Mind the Gaps: Scaling 
up Digital Spaces to 
Increase Translocal 
Porousness in an ECA

Andrea Gaiba424*  

Building  on  the  specific  inter-institutional  design  of  a  permanent  European 
Citizens’ Assembly (ECA) proposed by Kalypso Nicolaidis,425 this symposium 
has highlighted the need for balancing between (i) a permanent, transnational 
citizens’ assembly, (ii) traditional structures of electoral democracy; and (iii) in-
creasingly polarised public spheres. 

Many  contributions  ask,  one  way  or  another,  the  question:  How  does 
Nicolaidis’  proposal  cope  with  the  original  sin  faced  by  all  assemblies?  That 
is, how can deliberative assemblies connect with a broad public (also beyond 
Europe) while being accountable at multiple levels of governance? 

I  propose  a  pragmatic  approach  towards  widening  engagement  that  in-
creases the porousness of a citizens’ assembly towards local communities, the 
other EU institutions, and the wider European public spheres.

424 * European University Institute. 

425  Nicolaidis, 2024.

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As Ross and Felicetti argue,426 part of the problem of how to connect with the 
broader public sphere lies in the ability to mobilise the European demoi across 
borders. One of the techniques suggested focuses on the interactions between 
the ECA and local communities (see (Dobler and Vergne on “The Assembly is 
coming!”)427 and the hope that this exchange mobilises narratives about subsidi-
arity, identities and citizenship that affirm this translocal shift. The Assembly 
itself ought to be a celebration of translocal democracy, and I endorse Nico-
laidis’ ‘pedagogy of sortition’ as one of the ways in which we can consolidate 
participatory cultures across borders.428

But is this enough? Many in the symposium have discussed how the level 
of  attention  to  assemblies  will  not  grow  unless  they  are  empowered.  Grass-
roots actors and local communities should also be provided with spaces where 
they can equally say, “We are coming to the Assembly!”. In other words, spaces 
where they can reclaim their agency in contributing to the ECA.

This raises a fundamental question about the assembly’s ‘porousness’, i.e., 
the ability of the ECA to connect with public discourses through a multi-stake-
holder  approach.429  Thinking  about  renewing  a  given  participatory  culture 
also requires reimagining how this would look, particularly in the eye of actors 
that might have pre-established attitudes vis-à-vis political power, such as civil 
society organisations. They, too, must be empowered within the ECA to make 
participation meaningful for them.

Are  EU  institutions  interested  in  adopting  such  a  multi-stakeholder 
approach? Alvaro Oleart suggests this is not the case.430 If the ECA ought to 
break with what he calls the ‘disintermediated logic’ of previous deliberative 
attempts, it must do away with existing institutional understandings of media-
tion or, rather, the lack thereof.

This is a practical question of radically rethinking the design of an ECA so 
that it does not reflect pre-existing structures of power uncritically. The avoid-

426  Ross and Felicetti, 2024.

427  Dobler, C and Antoine Vergne, A. (2024), ‘Rome was not built in one day, neither will a European 
Citizens’ Assembly’, GLOBALCIT, https://globalcit.eu/representing-european-citizens-why-a-eu-
ropean-citizens-assembly-should-complement-the-european-parliament/17 (hereinafter ‘Dobler 
and Vergne, 2024’).

428  Nicolaidis, 2024.

429  Dobler and Vergne, 2024.

430  Oleart, 2024.

151

ance of intermediate organisations, based on a Rousseauean ideal of delibera-
tive purity, should be overcome in four main areas: (i) agenda-setting, (ii) sorti-
tion, (iii) experts’ inputs in deliberation, and (iv) follow-up.

Porousness in agenda-setting

Building on Nicolaidis’ observations, the Democratic Odyssey project proposes 
two complementary and yet very different scenarios for the agenda-setting of a 
permanent ECA.431 Agenda-setting could be either enabled by an ECI process 
representing the broader push from civil society actors who mobilise on particu-
lar political issues or by a permanent body of rotating citizens, taking the Ost-
belgien model as inspiration.432 Based on these two options, I identify an op-
portunity  for  better  connecting  them  in  the  scenario  where  an  ECI  directly 
initiates an ECA. To be clear, this does not dismiss the second model, where the 
ECA sets up a parliamentary process towards an ECI. The assumption is that 
an ECI-led process would generally present an ECA with very specific propos-
als, also for reasons of campaigning effectiveness. I propose to add a feedback 
loop from the previous assembly’s cohort so as to make sure that all the exper-
tise accumulated through a year of deliberations is not lost and provides specific 
counsel as to how this topic could be best handled in an assembly space. Formal 
feedback from this earlier cohort on the breadth and goals of the ECI would 
set the stage for the ECA-led legislative crowdsourcing on the ‘how’. This is a 
way of avoiding the specificity of a single proposal from an ECI providing an 
escape route to the EP, i.e., accepting an ECI as an emergency measure and a 
proxy for systemic change. It is about ECIs becoming entry points to broader 
questions of structural renewal, with deliberative outputs of the ECA integrat-
ing the requests of an ECI with the broader-ranging potential of agenda-setting 
that an assembly body might have (an “ECI+” ECA). Combining both may be 
a good way to test and maximise their respective strengths.

431  Nicolaidis, 2024.

432  ‘The Ostbelgien Model: a long-term Citizens’ Council combined with short-term Citizens’ Assem-

blies’, OIPD, https://oidp.net/en/practice.php?id=1237. 

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Porousness in sortition

Regarding the porousness of sortition, Rainer Bauböck suggests widening the 
deliberative demos beyond the legislative demos (citizens) by giving non-citizens 
and non-residents of Europe access to the ECA.433 This is something the Dem-
ocratic Odyssey project has prominently tested through its first moment, the 
pilot  implementation  by  bringing  in  non-citizens  who  are  residents  in  the 
locality the assembly travels to. Bauböck goes one step further by proposing 
that we decrease the purity of sortition to give voice to the communities most 
impacted by the policies discussed in the assembly, even if these reside outside 
Europe.434 He raises a salient concern, which mirrors a similar point I have raised 
about agenda-setting above: Who is best suited to set the selection criteria for 
an ECA, in view of the fact that these should be understood to change depend-
ing on the topic discussed? Could current ECA members be consulted on sor-
tition criteria for the next period of the ECA?

Porousness in composition

A  second  proposal  further  enriches  sortition  as  weighted  random  selection 
by  raising  a  question  about  the  overall  composition.  The  ECA  should  also 
be a space where we do not simply imagine descriptive representation of the 
European demoi but also of the traditional structures and actors of power, as 
well as the panoply of stakeholders that create counter-hegemonic discourses. 
An ECA configured this way could unlock its potential to become a space for 
agonistic politics and give a deeper meaning to the concept of a ‘mini-public’. If 
we assume optimal follow-up, an ECA is best placed to consolidate its salience 
in European politics by providing public spaces where all stakeholders can and 
should make their suggestions for policy change more transparently.

In particular, I argue against purist approaches that the ECA should only 
hear neutral experts. I believe it should not only welcome expertise from law-
makers, academia, civil society, and trade unions, among others, but also offer 
a  space  for  politicians,  lobby  groups  and  regulatory  bodies  to  intervene  in  a 
longer process. This would involve reimagining the deliberative process itself 
and  throwing  it  open  for  multi-stakeholder  contributions  where  traditional 

433  Bauböck, 2024.

434  Ibid.

153

political actors providing inputs to an ECA do not only have to convince law-
makers of the quality of a given policy proposal, but also members of an ECA.

This  would  require  more  transparent  processes  that  use  the  exploratory 
crowdsourcing of facilitation techniques to recover the agonistic spirit of de-
mocracy but simultaneously help narrow it down to its core ideological varieties 
and evidence-based disagreements. August and Westphal remind us that this is 
only possible if the heuristics of de-escalation and reconciliation are deployed.435 
In other words, a space where the initial “us vs them” (of different localities 
and demoi coming together) can be transformed into a more cooperative space 
of mutual recognition and co-creation. Nevertheless, as for agenda-setting and 
sortition criteria, a central question remains. Should members of an ECA also 
be empowered to make proposals as to who should sit at the table of experts? 
Should they be empowered to propose names through preferential voting or 
even be given the ability to nominate a third of the experts that will be called 
upon in the assembly? This would allow for interesting experiments of gamify-
ing agonistics within the assembly space.

Porousness in follow-up

A third normative proposal for the ECA speaks to rethinking the spectrum of 
follow-up that assemblies are normally concerned with. Is it sufficient, satisfac-
tory or indeed optimal to only consider institutional and policy recommenda-
tions as the exclusive deliberative output of an ECA?

When set up by policy-makers as consultation devices, assemblies do not 
fulfil their transformative potential in bringing about radical change. How do 
we design an ECA in a way that gives it adequate breadth for the much wider 
scope of inquiry that Alvaro Oleart prescribes436 in view of global challenges? 
The case study of the Conference on the Future of Europe (CoFoE) tells us 
very  clearly  that  beyond  the  official  claims  of  completion  and  appropriate 
follow-up, we have lost the initial momentum behind specific proposals, such 
as that for amending the EU Treaties.437 Most recently, the Commissioner-des-

435  August, V and Westphal, M. (2024), ‘Theorizing democratic conflicts beyond agonism’, Theor Soc, 

53: 1119–1149.

436  Oleart, 2024.

437  Alemanno, A et al. (2023), ‘Implementing the CoFoE: has the time come for Treaty change?’, 
European University Institute: State of the Union, https://cadmus.eui.eu/handle/1814/75650. 

Should a Citizens' Assembly Complement the European Parliament? 154

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ignate Maroš Šefčovič, in his EP confirmation hearing, pointed the finger at the 
European Council for lack of follow-up to CoFoE while claiming that most 
recommendations  have  been  translated  into  policy  proposals.438  As  Sandra 
Seubert warns us, it is crucial that the ECA does not become an instrument 
of  legitimisation  for  even  more  untransparent  and  elite  mechanisms  of 
policymaking  through  favouring  technocratic  and  top-down  consultation 
between bureaucratic bodies and randomly selected citizens.439

For instance, the Global Assembly’s “People’s Declaration for the Sustaina-
ble Future of Planet Earth” features an explicit call for corporations to become 
agents of change.440 Wilson and Mellier identify such calls as part of a broader 
theory of democratic change, where the scope of an assembly is to ‘defibrillate 
democracy’.441 Through imagining a wide-ranging follow-up, with a spectrum 
of recommendations that go beyond traditional institutional and policy recom-
mendations, an ECA could open up to public-private partnerships, new diplo-
macy actions and new social movements emerging from the process (assuming 
porousness in composition). I argue such a multi-dimensional output is crucial 
in  devising  an  interface  with  the  European  Parliament  that  restitutes  wider 
agency and mandate to the ECA as an independent branch.

Technological challenges and 
opportunities of scaling porousness

We move here to the ‘how’ question, particularly in view of the role that new 
technologies could play in enabling porousness. Nicolaidis proposes that this 
final step of the deliberative process could happen either through the European 
Parliament or an EU-wide referendum.442 I would endorse direct democracy as 
the most intuitive progression from the legitimacy of a European mini-public 

438  ‘Hearing of Commissioner-designate Maroš Šefčovič’, European Parliament News, https://www.
europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20241029IPR25029/hearing-of-commissioner-desig-
nate-maros-sefcovic. 

439  Seubert, 2024.

440  Global Assembly, 2023.

441  Wilson, R and Mellier, C. (2023), Getting Real About Citizens’ Assemblies: A New Theory of 
Change for Citizens’ Assemblies, European Democracy Hub (hereinafter ‘Wilson and Mellier, 
2023).

442  Nicolaidis, 2024.

155

to that of transnational demoi, building on Cheneval and el-Wakil’s proposal 
for citizen-initiated, bottom-up and binding referenda.443 A strong multi-level 
participatory culture, as well as political endorsement at supranational, trans-
local and national levels, would be extremely important for reaching a number 
of voters that legitimises the output of the ECA through a Europe-wide ref-
erendum.

As  previously  mentioned,  Bauböck444  builds  on 

reminder 
by Oleart445 that we should decolonise the way we think about the composition 
of an ECA by including representatives of the Global South, among others. 
This is part and parcel of the methodology for the composition of the Demo-
cratic Odyssey project,446 which acknowledges that the best way for a critique 
of colonial practices to be scaled out is through virtual spaces.

the 

I introduce here, as a fourth proposal, the idea of a digital platform as the 
enabler of this scaling out function through structures of transcalar polycen-
tricity, which builds on Nicolaidis’s conceptual framework for planetary pol-
itics.447  On  this  platform,  different  localities  become  interconnected  hori-
zontally  and  simultaneously  generate  convergence  of  discourses  above  and 
beyond the nation-state. My proposal builds on the experience of the CoFoE’s 
platform and yet emerges as a critique, among others, of its top-down approach 
to AI-powered aggregation of debates and funnelling to the assembly cohort. A 
tech-enhanced ECA could bolster the accuracy and frequency of public partic-
ipation and monitoring, fostering political debates beyond the assembly itself 
and  consolidating  process  legitimacy,  also  preparing  the  public  discourse  for 
direct democracy practices at the end of the process.

Simultaneously,  technology  can  also  assist  in  this  latter  stage  of  the 
assembly. On the one hand, a neglected theme in this symposium, as suggest-

443  Cheneval, F and el-Wakil, A. (2018), ‘The Institutional Design of Referendums: Bottom-Up and 

Binding’, Swiss Polit Sci Rev, 24(1): 294-304.

444  Bauböck, 2024.

445  Oleart, 2024.

446  ‘Who’s who?’, Democratic Odyssey, https://democraticodyssey.eui.eu/assembly/who-is-who. 

447  Nicolaidis, 2024.

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ed  by  Chiara  Valsangiacomo  and  Christina  Isabel  Zuber,448  is  the  potential 
for  liquid  democracy  to  translate  transnational  participation  in  practice  and 
across the heterogeneous demoi of Europe. On the other hand, Valsangiaco-
mo and Zuber’s thought experiment proposes a model where a wider pool of 
European demoi – that can importantly be extended to the whole population 
of Europe – take part in a liquid ECA, within a process that accepts fragmenta-
tion and variable geometries of topics, of interest and engagement, of different 
intensities in follow-up across different topics. Doing fully away with sortition 
and the need for in situ assemblies calls into question whether this should be 
called a Citizens’ Assembly at all. The fragmentation in sub-assemblies that are 
not selected through sortition but through interest in a given topic risks un-
dermining the idea that a deliberative process holds agenda-setting powers on 
what the next ECA must deliberate on. Additionally, a liquid ECA as described 
would broaden the scale of participation, but not necessarily that of mutual 
recognition across different demoi, as it forecloses trans-European meetings on 
site as a central part of the ECA.

Therefore, my fifth proposal suggests a more modest use of liquid democ-
racy as a more nuanced form of direct democracy post-deliberation. Liquid de-
mocracy could be adopted for the final step of an ECA process when a popular 
vote is called on a set of ECA recommendations. It would rest on the shoulders 
of a deliberative output that is as legitimate as the principles of civic lottery can 
ensure but is also as ambitious in mobilising the public as technology allows.

Here,  the  granularity  of  liquid  democracy  lends  itself  to  more  nuanced 
final outputs. Building on the more ambitious spectrum of recommendations 
I  have  suggested  above,  liquid  democracy  processes  powered  through  digital 
platforms could (i) further refine and vote on ECA members’ requests covering 
a  specific  recommendation,  (ii)  flesh  out  recommendations  to  civil  society 
actors, businesses and other stakeholders over time and separately from policy 
recommendations; (iii) signal other political issues and priorities to be picked 
up in future ECA moments that are raised by, yet not fully addressed through 
the ECA process.

Of course, doing so at the translocal level would require the deployment 
of significant digital resources to enable e-voting, which remains contested in 

448  Valsangiacomo, C and Zuber, C.I. (2024), ‘Why a European Citizens’ Assembly Should Replace 

Sortition with Liquid Democracy’, GLOBALCIT, https://globalcit.eu/representing-european-citi-
zens-why-a-european-citizens-assembly-should-complement-the-european-parliament/16 (hereinaf-
ter ‘Valsangiacomo and Zuber, 2024’).

157

scholarly work.449 Pernicious actors are bound to populate the space as soon 
as  e-deliberation  and  e-voting  become  integral  parts  of  the  decision-making 
process of an institutionalised and permanent ECA. However, this should not 
make us shy away from such a momentous and probably inevitable challenge

449  Park, S et al. (2021), ‘Going from bad to worse: from Internet voting to blockchain voting’, Journal 

of Cybersecurity, 7(1).

Should a Citizens' Assembly Complement the European Parliament? Rejoinder: A Permanent 
Citizens’ Assembly is 
not a Magic Wand for 
Europe. But…

Kalypso Nicolaidis450*  

“We have reached a time at which we can finally get rid of the 
conviction common to Plato and Marx that there must be large 
theoretical ways of finding out how to end injustice, as opposed 
to small experimental ways” 

Rorty, 1998

I am extremely grateful to the 23 authors who engaged with the topic I offered 
for the GLOBALCIT Forum, and most importantly, also engaged with each 
other. I am lucky to have the last word here, an unfair feature, I admit, of the 
format. But I have no doubt that this is not the last word, since this symposi-
um is meant to continue and extend a long-standing debate over the conditions 
and modes of renewal of our democracies.

To  simplify,  the  commentaries,  many  of  which  my  co-editor  Rainer 
Bauböck and I have already engaged with bilaterally, range from ‘deep sceptics’, 
who put forth cogent arguments outlining the flaws of the proposal to ‘condi-

450 * European University Institute. 

159

tional sceptics’ who have doubts about the proposal but would consider sup-
porting it, conditional on a number of demanding amendments that are hard 
to implement, to ‘conditional supporters’, who offer additional arguments in 
favour of the proposal but also refinements to it and, in doing so, have already 
done much of the work necessary for responding to critical commentators. My 
sense is that if they there is one theme in common to all contributions, it is 
that whatever its merits, an ECA will not be a magic wand, a point illustrat-
ed by Camille Dobler and Antoine Vergne’s remark that Rome was not built 
in a day,451 Anthony Zacharzewski’s advice not to run before we can crawl,452 
or Sandra Seubert’s warning about illusionary promises.453

It is worth repeating that the case at hand concerns only a specific subset 
of  the  debate,  which  considerably  narrows  down  the  remit  of  the  proposal. 
For  one,  citizens’  assemblies  are  just  one  element  in  a  panoply  of  democrat-
ic  innovations  in  our  time  of  planetary  politics,  or  what  I  have  discussed  in 
a recent publication as “the third democratic transformation”.454 Second, we 
are dealing here with assemblies of the transnational rather than local or even 
national kind, i.e., a category with its special features which remains incredibly 
rare.

And  thirdly,  within  this  subset,  no  permanent  transnational  assembly 
actually exists anywhere at this moment, although, as I argued, such perma-
nence offers a number of advantages which ground my defence of the proposal: 
continuity, independence, learning, embeddedness, publicness and social im-
agination. It is for this reason, I surmise, that a small coalition of actors in the 
European  Commission  and  European  Parliament  hope  to  create  a  perma-
nent youth assembly on biodiversity, for which a pilot assembly is now under 
way focused on the topic of pollinators.455  For the same reason, the Council 
of Europe’s Committee on Political Affairs and Democracy and its rapporteur, 

451  Dobler and Vergne, 2024.

452  Zacharzewski, 2024.

453  Seubert, 2024.

454  Nicolaidis, 2024a.

455   For  the  sake  of  transparency,  I  declare  here  that  I  was  part  of  the  design  committee  in 
charge of the pilot project under the purview of the Joint Research Centre on behalf of the 
European Parliament in 2023-2024.

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George Papandreou, have penned a report456 and a resolution supporting the 
same idea.457  And it is for this reason that the Democratic Odyssey has sought 
to ground its campaign for a permanent Peoples’ Assembly for Europe on a 
travelling  pilot  assembly,  which  has  now  met  for  the  first  time  in  Athens  in 
September 2024 and from which I will continue to draw empirical insights.

It matters to this debate that I don’t defend assemblies in general but a per-
manent transnational assembly in Europe (and beyond, but that will be another 
debate). In doing so, I will come back to my original question: under what con-
ditions  can  a  hypothetical  European  Citizens’  Assembly’s  (ECA)  relation  to 
the European Parliament (EP) be synergetic rather than one of either subordi-
nation or substitution? Here, I will employ a kind of jujitsu method of argu-
mentation, namely that both the negative and positive symposium commen-
taries on the proposal offer a range of conditions under which a permanent 
ECA could overcome the “false alternative between consultative powers (sub-
ordinate model) or the sovereign powers of parliaments (lottocratic model)”, 
in Cristina Lafont and Nadia Urbinati’s apt formulation.458 The core of my 
rejoinder, therefore, will be to consider ways of improving the proposal and 
suggest issues for further discussion and research.

I  will  engage  below  with  the  range  of  arguments,  using  the  three  main 
criteria  proposed  in  the  second  section  of  my  kick-off  essay  to  structure  my 
response. As the reader may recall, these are what can be considered as three 
standard  dimensions  of  democratic  legitimacy,  namely  popular  sovereignty, 
participatory governance, and, more broadly, civic culture, which offered the 
grounds for debate and contestation on which the comments have built.

Popular sovereignty: Can the Assembly 
really claim to instantiate the people?!

Many  of  the  authors  address  the  “who”  of  the  Assembly  and,  as  such,  the 
extent to which it can best instantiate the amorphous idea of “popular sover-
eignty” alongside the European Parliament – in other words, the question of 
input legitimacy. I find these arguments powerful but suggest that our bench-

456  Papandreou, G. (2024), Strengthening democracy through participatory and deliberative processes,  

Committee on Political Affairs and Democracy. 

457  IECA, 2022.

458  Lafont and Urbinati, 2024.

161

mark ought to be not the opinion of the scholar but the perception of public 
opinion across member-states. Let’s consider a number of arguments in turn.

First,  I  would  adopt  without  hesitation  the  brilliant  amendment  to  the 
proposal by Graham Smith and David Owen that “the ECA should be really 
big” while meeting mostly in sub-configurations.459 Indeed, we have had exten-
sive discussions on the issue of size in the context of the Democratic Odyssey 
assembly. Why not go higher, to 5,000 or even 10,000 for 6 months with one-
third rotation? To be sure, the assembly could then not easily meet in plenary 
except online, but why not meet in a football stadium or a concert hall? That 
would certainly differentiate it from the institutional feel of the EP.  In this way, 
a big number would certainly appeal to the social imaginary of democratic to-
getherness in a very different way than the EP, even if most of the time the ECA 
would meet in small committees. And, as Dobler and Vergne demonstrate at the 
end of their contribution, the costs associated with the European Parliament 
will continue to dwarf that of an assembly of any size.460  

Second  and  nevertheless,  even  reaching  such  a  size  might  not  alleviate 
the fundamental critique in several comments that citizens in a polity of 500 
million would have such a tiny chance of being selected that it makes risible the 
idea of equal chance (Zacharzewski’s one in ten thousand lifetimes).461 Rainer 
Bauböck expresses it most forcefully: “Different from the equal right to vote, 
equality  of  probability  will  hardly  strengthen  a  sense  of  equal  and  common 
ownership  of  political  institutions  among  citizens  if  chances  to  be  called  to 
serve are infinitesimally small for each individual”.462 

But  can’t  we  find  ways  to  disentangle  the  statistical  fact  of  (tiny)  “equal 
chance” from its political import? If we are dealing with the sense of ownership 
by citizens, part of the answer surely lies in what I have called “the pedagogy of 
sortition”. 

Here,  we  must  start  by  giving  a  chance  to  chance.  There  is  equalising 
power in chance, even if it is symbolic. To the critique “equal but tiny”, we can 
reply: “tiny but equal”. Most people, especially young people in Europe today, 
believe that they have zero chance of being elected or even being a candidate for 

459  Smith and Owen, 2024.

460  Dobler and Vergne, 2024.

461  Zacharzewski, 2024.

462  Bauböck, 2024.

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election – at the national level, let alone at the European level. Hence, even on 
purely factual grounds, they may see the lottery as a more transparent equal-
iser  than  elections.  To  be  sure,  voting,  not  candidacy,  is  a  power  distributed 
equally and inclusively and conveys a sense of ownership linked to an active 
form of participation for which there is no equivalent in sortition. Moreover, 
candidates in elections are self-selected and picked by parties, not by citizens. 
Thus citizens who do not want to become MPs never ask themselves what their 
chances are to be picked. But the hypothesis here is that the very existence of an 
ECA linked to EU institutions would make citizens come to see the quality of 
delegation to fellow citizens as a different thing all together, both more ephem-
eral and closer to home than EP elections.

In short, the chance to be “picked” in the EP and the ECA may be compa-
rable and actually compared in the eyes of citizens even if tiny in both institu-
tions. This is why the sense of representation afforded by a permanent assembly 
needs to be considered in tandem with that of the EP, the existence of each 
compensating  for  the  limitations  of  the  other.  This  is  in  keeping  with  what 
Antoine Vergne refers to as the intersubjective character of sortition,463 which 
I discussed in the context of the Who is Who of the Democratic Odyssey.464

But we cannot stop at chance. The pedagogy of sortition needs to address 
the challenge of scale head-on. We are not in ancient Athens. The probability 
game at  0.001% rests on a more collective idea of representativeness: the statis-
tical representativeness of the assembly as a whole, which brings to the fore Seu-
bert’s question as to which ascriptions are used to measure representativeness. 
How do we better convey such a statistical and, thus, abstract story?465

In this perspective, many authors support the idea that complementarity 
calls for a different ground for legitimacy between the EP and an ECA. One 
such difference is that in this story, the perception of “equality” can fruitfully 
be augmented with the “inclusion opportunity” offered by an ECA or a “more 
than equal” chance for people hitherto left out of our politics, including that of 
the EP. Bauböck466 frames this concept differently but to the same effect, namely 
that  of  an  ECA  better  in  tune  with  the  affected  interests  principle,  the  very 

463  Vergne, A. (2023), ‘Towards an intersubjective concept of Sortition’, https://mirror.xyz/antoinev-

ergne.eth/EyBtmfIWdYsYxG-1U9gWnqk6TwtmMpEI_rcEL-R9RaI.

464  ‘Who’s who?’, Democratic Odyssey, https://democraticodyssey.eui.eu/assembly/who-is-who.

465  Seubert, 2024.

466  Bauböck, 2024.

163

intuitive idea “to offer a stronger representation of the interests of those who 
are not presently citizens of the Union but are deeply affected by its policies”, 
meaning  in  particular  equal  opportunity  to  be  selected  for  all  those  in  the 
EU territory regardless of their citizenship (also Alvaro Oleart,467and Andrea 
Gaiba468). In short, “nothing about us without us”, the slogan of the European 
trade unions.

But this argument leaves us with at least two problems:

First,  can  MEPs  recognise  the  fact  that  they  would  need  the  experimental 
nature of an ECA to push forward this inclusiveness frontier? But how far do 
we want to extend this exigency of greater inclusion of the affected to cover in 
time also future humans and non-humans, which seems impossible to do in 
the EP? As Yves Sintomer says: “Future generations and non-humans neither 
vote, nor authorise, defer to, or control the rulers”.469 Do we make up for this 
vast defect through membership in the Assembly or through its conduct, as I 
will argue in the second part of this rejoinder?

Second, should the question of who is affected stop at our territory? What 
about people living in candidate countries or even in countries on which EU 
standards apply in the social and environmental grounds through trade agree-
ments with the EU.470 Should the ECA, therefore, also include delegates from 
countries outside the EU affected by its policies, as Bauböck proposes?471 Oleart 
takes the ambition of overcoming anthropocentricity and Eurocentricity a step 
further, arguing that the ECA can allow us to think globally and in solidarity, 
provided  it  is  itself  inclusive.472  I  tend  to  agree  that  the  move  from  transna-
tionalism within Europe to a global scale is only a matter of degree, given the 
porous nature of the EU. At least unless the EU becomes a state structurally 
and a nation in terms of identity, this will continue to be the case. But would 
such a mission not risk breaking the Assembly’s back when embarked on in the 

467  Oleart, 2024.

468  Gaiba, A. (2024), ‘Mind the Gaps: Scaling up Digital Spaces to Increase Translocal Porousness in 
an ECA’, GLOBALCIT, https://globalcit.eu/representing-european-citizens-why-a-european-citi-
zens-assembly-should-complement-the-european-parliament/19 (hereinafter ‘Gaiba, 2024’).

469  Sintomer, 2024.

470  Nicolaidis, K. (2021), Differentiation, dominance and democratic congruence: A relational view, EU 

Differentiation, Dominance and Democracy.

471  Bauböck, 2024.

472  Oleart, 2024

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first moments of its life?

While  only  a  handful  of  authors  (Richard  Bellamy,473  Alberto  Aleman-
no,474 and Andrea Gaiba475) explicitly support a demoi-cratic understanding of 
the EU polity, it is notable that no contributor approaches the question as if we 
had to deal with one European demos.  Instead, we must endorse more explicit-
ly the ideal of pluralism, i.e. the presence of a very wide range of ideas, political 
cultures and languages that need to better co-exist, hence the need for a greater 
emphasis on attitudinal and other criteria for random selection to include more 
non-Brussels bubble people, and among these not only euro-sceptics who are 
already strongly present in the EP. Can we become more creative in this regard?

I sympathise with Oleart’s suggestion that one way to ensure the involve-
ment of actors usually left out of mainstream politics is to give a more promi-
nent place to civil society actors and social movements in the Assembly, perhaps 
even through membership itself rather than presence in its meetings.476 This is 
what we have tried to do in the Democratic Odyssey with a membership quota 
for members (not representatives) of local and transnational NGOs randomly 
selected  from  sign-ups.  Critics  object  that  such  membership  of  people  with 
greater skills of argumentation can skew the debates of the Assembly or its rep-
resentativeness.  Moreover,  activists  might  be  over-represented  among  those 
who  say  yes.  Conversely,  activists  are  a  very  small  proportion  of  society  and 
might not make it at this first stage without some attempt at over-inclusive-
ness. Let us not forget that two-stage random selection is grounded on a sec-
ond-stage selection process (stratification) based on some specific criteria. Why, 
for example, socio-economic status and not the number of languages spoken? 
My own belief is that the “life experience” of an activist should eventually be 
captured through the direct random selection process itself – as one criterion 
alongside, say, “level of education” (this is a kind of education, after all).

I have no doubt that this point will remain controversial. Brett Hennig also 
points to the potential counterproductive impact that the involvement of civil 
society activists might have even when they are in a position of informing the 
assembly rather than deciding in it.477

473  Bellamy, 2024.

474  Alemanno, 2024.

475  Gaiba, 2024.

476  Ibid.

477  Hennig, 2024.

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But, of course, the draw itself is not the end of the story. Beyond the (tiny) 
equal opportunity to be selected, Bellamy cogently notes that the inclusiveness 
challenge  is  even  greater  when  it  comes  to  the  opportunity  to  accept  an 
invitation to participate.478 Those who can afford to take time off from work 
will come. Others will not. But is this problem insurmountable? Can compen-
sation and support, as well as eventually civic pride, not be sufficient to at least 
in part overcome this challenge?

With the Democratic Odyssey, we have come up with one approach to this 
problem  by  partially  composing  the  assembly  so  that  it  reflects  its  travelling 
nature. Yes, it will have a core of “transnationals” that will have to use planes or 
trains to participate. But it will also pick up members in the cities that it visits, 
nationals as well as expats/migrants for whom participation will therefore be 
less onerous. This approach (and as a spillover, the “buddy system”) has already 
worked in Athens (September 2024) and will be sustained in spring 2025 in 
Florence, Vienna and Warsaw.479 Membership is then sustained through hybrid 
participation and ambassadors.

But  no  response  is  a  magic  wand.  In  particular,  I  did  not  engage  in  the 
proposal with the roots and implication of social cleavages in our societies, an 
issue evermore present in the shadow of the US presidential elections and the 
entrenchment of Trumpism. Hennig is, therefore, right to point out that while 
an assembly travelling from city to city sounds attractively cosmopolitan, it risks 
leading to a skewed overrepresentation of urban over rural areas,480 while Jelena 
Džankić  cautions  us  that  if  rural  areas  were  to  be  included  in  the  itinerary, 
there might not be the infrastructure in place.481 How can a commitment to 
inclusiveness better take in all relevant groups at the periphery of Europe?

The most radical critique on the composition of the assembly and the sorti-
tion process comes from contributors who propose replacing random selection 
with liquid democracy and creating what Chiara Valsangiacomo and Christi-
na Isabel Zuber call a “liquid ECA”.482 “[A]long the lines of Alexander Guer-
rero‘s single-issue legislatures, it would consist of a predetermined number of 
independent and autonomous sub-assemblies each made up of different dele-

478  Bellamy, 2024.

479  Valsangiacomo and Zuber, 2024.

480  Hennig, 2024.

481  Džankić, 2024.

482  Valsangiacomo and Zuber, 2024; See also, Džankić, 2024.

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gates, allowing citizens to delegate their vote differently on different issues”. I 
wonder, however, why they present this approach as an alternative to our ECA 
proposal. Liquid democracy is a proposal to “replace” traditional electoral de-
mocracy. But the more specific ‘liquid ECA” presented here is under-specified 
and the authors do not explain how electronic voting on issues can connect with 
deliberation and decrease polarisation. As  Gaiba argues, a liquid ECA “would 
broaden the scale of participation, but not necessarily that of mutual recognition 
across  different  demoi,  as  it  forecloses  trans-European  meetings  on-site  as  a 
central part of the ECA”.483  We do know, in particular, from discussing with 
the Decidim meta-community that participation is greatly enhanced by actual 
agonistic  deliberation  and  that  people  engage  much  more  thoroughly  when 
in-person and online participation interact. This goal can only be achieved at 
a large scale through a plethora of decentred in-person interactions. These, in 
turn, can be inspired by the fact that they meet around a hub that would be 
our rotating ECA. Why not imagine an enlarged ECA that integrates liquid 
democracy? Liquids need containers, after all. The onsite meetings of the ECA 
would be the hook for the decentred networked social imaginaries on which 
more  direct  forms  of  electronic  participation  could  be  built.  The  rotating 
members of the ECA could energise a liquid participatory network by shaping 
the issues under consideration that would then be channelled to the network. 
This debating and compromise function is all the more important in that the 
issues in question are transnational and, therefore, subject to vastly different 
yardsticks. Clearly, such a combination requires further conversation.

In the end, we are still left with the question asked by Lafont and Urbinati: 
“Why  would  citizens  believe  that  it  is  democratic  to  let  a  few  individuals 
exercise unilateral power over them so long as everyone has an equal chance to 
do so?”484 There is no easy answer, but at least we can say that it does not lie 
only with “who” are these few people but rather what they do and how.

483  Gaiba, 2024.

484  Lafont and Urbinati, 2024.

167

Democratic Governance: How should the 
ECA work?

This brings us to the second category of conditions, those related to through-
put legitimacy and the argument from integrity. Under which conditions will 
people have trust in the integrity and authority of the assembly? How will they 
complement each other?485 If the ECA held co-decision-making power, how 
would we proceed in moments of disagreement?486 Is it the case, as many com-
mentators  argue  that  close  collaboration  will  be  easier  with  a  clear  division 
of labour between the EP and the ECA?  Some of these hard questions can 
only be addressed organically and experimentally. In the next iteration of this 
debate, we will need to engage with the productive tensions between the com-
mentators. Here are some of the questions (among others) that I see arising.

Decisiveness  vs  decisions:  Powers  is  where  we  need  to  start.  Against  a 
prevailing sense that citizens’ assemblies will only be taken seriously once they 
have  decision-making  powers,  on  the  whole,  the  commentaries  here  make  a 
strong case against giving such powers to an ECA. At least not if chosen by 
lottery (whereas Valsangiacomo and Zuber’s liquid democracy could support 
such authority arising from delegation to other citizens).487 On my part, I did 
assume  in  the  proposal  that  the  ECA  should  not  have  sole  decision-making 
power in an EU landscape where no single institution holds sole decision-mak-
ing power, as also stated by Sintomer.488 But my argument was truncated to 
the  extent  that  at  least  two  of  these  institutions  (the  EP  and  Council)  hold 
joint  decision-making  power,  and  the  Commission  makes  decisions  all  the 
time – and even alone – on the EU’s legislative and regulatory agenda. To be 
sure, a decision on a legislative agenda is, of course, not the same as deciding on 
legislation. The former is, to some extent, binding on legislators, the latter on 
citizens subjected to laws. Therefore, the question of who should have author-
ity in decision-making is relevant to both but more democratically pregnant in 
the latter context.

485  Ibid.

486  Valsangiacomo and Zuber, 2024.

487  Ibid.

488  Sintomer, 2024.

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If  each  of  the  other  institutions  shares  in  the  decision-making  power,  at 
least as a veto actor, why not also the ECA? Following Lafont and Urbinati, 
some commentators seem to assume a trade-off between such powers and the 
EP/ECA complementarity.489 If democracy needs more institutionalised and 
publicly  visible  deliberations  about  the  common  European  good  –delibera-
tions which showcase more inclusive participation as discussed above – there 
may be a trade-off between the quality of this deliberative forum and its par-
taking in decision-making. And there is certainly a trade-off between the EP’s 
embrace  of  an  ECA  and  its  ringfencing  of  its  own  painstakingly  acquired 
powers.  Bauböck  explicitly  grounds  this  complementarity  in  a  distinction 
between two demoi: a legislative and a deliberative one.490 But does the EP not 
also draw a great deal of its legitimacy from its role as an advocacy and debating 
forum in the EU? And would it not enhance its own powers if it could play a 
“hands-tied” strategy vis-a-vis an ECA that would provide compulsory agenda 
points  and  monitoring  edicts,  and  to  some  extent,  policy  recommendations 
(even if not translated into law)? Would it not make sense for the two bodies, 
EP and ECA, to hold a joint power to induce the Council to act? As a visible 
part  of  the  EU  landscape,  holding  to  account  –  the  very  essence  of  peoples’ 
sovereignty – could be framed as the assembly’s primary function. Its reports 
would be prominently advertised with an obligation of response on the part 
of  the  Council  and  the  Commission  that  could  become  more  authoritative 
than that of the Ombudsman alone. And such an obligation could be literal-
ly embodied by adopting Dobler and Vergne’s proposal of mixed deliberative 
committees through the convening power of an ECA.491

Multi-functionality  of  the  formal  kind:  Do  we  need  to  choose?  I  agree 
with Smith and Owen that the assembly should be multi-functional and that 
such multi-functionality can be structurally translated into a plethora of sub-
committees.492 Multi-functionality is based on the changing demands for any 
governance structure, however ‘soft,’ and the idea that functions are synergetic. 
Upon reading the contributions, three formal functions (as opposed to norma-
tive or political functions to which I will return) continue to make sense. Under 
the right conditions, some committees can engage in concrete policy recom-

489  Lafont and Urbinati, 2024.

490  Bauböck, 2024.

491  Dobler and Vergne, 2024.

492  Smith and Owen, 2024.

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mendations, institutionalising the role currently devolved to the Commission’s 
European Citizens’ Panels (ECPs), as called for by Daniel Freund.493 With such 
root existence in an ECA that is permanent yet routinely renewed, these panels 
will  become  more  prominent,  democratic  and  easier  to  organise.  I  remain 
convinced that probably the most important function of the ECA might very 
well be the power to set the agenda – the crucial power to insert agenda items 
not only in the EP agenda but also in the Council, as Joao Labareda argues.494 
This is also where an EP-ECA alliance could be crucial, as it would strengthen 
the pressure on member states to act on issues raised by the joint body or alter-
natively oblige them to justify their lack of action, including due to blocking 
actions but specific states. Such an agenda-setting function chimes with Bel-
lamy’s focus on “constitutional issues of principle rather than the highly tech-
nical regulatory economic policy issues”.495  However, it is a third “monitoring” 
function that has received the least attention and yet has the clearest potential 
to renew democracy in Europe.

“Counter-capture”  institution:  how  do  we  honour  the  radicality  of 
sunlight?  Interestingly, the justification of citizens’ assemblies based on their 
“impartiality” is widespread – when combining lottery and rotation – and yet 
we still need to articulate what this may mean in terms of functions. Svenja 
Ahlhaus and Eva Schmidt speak of counter-capture, a core theme of Samuel 
Bagg’s  powerful  advocacy  of  sortition  as  anti-corruption,  which  has  just 
been published as a book.496 But doesn’t the challenge of “capture” provide a 
powerful case for an experiential translation of normative claims in an era when 
citizens still widely remember Qatargate and similar EP corruption scandals? 
And, more broadly, when they distrust institutions of electoral delegation pre-
cisely because of perceived capture (or whatever equivalent term is used in the 
public discourse)? If it were to help alleviate these perceptions, wouldn’t an EP/
ECA alliance benefit both institutions, especially if it involves publicly visible 
confrontations with conflicts of interest? Would the EP buy it? An ECA is apt 
to pursue the common good because, simply put, citizens join the Assembly 
on  a  rotational  basis,  meaning  they  do  not  have  a  political  career  nor  party 
interests  to  defend,  especially  in  a  transnational  context  that  is  even  further 

493  Freund, 2024.

494  Labareda, J. (2024), Beyond nationalism: Acting and thinking for the common good in the European 

Union, Manchester University Press (hereinafter ‘Labareda, 2024’).

495  Bellamy, 2024.

496  Ahlhaus & Schmidt, 2024.

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from their lives. They do not have enough time to be captured by special in-
terests, lobbies, and factions and are more immune to corrupting influences 
than career officials or politicians. They can balance the power of lobbies and 
interest groups, a hope now instantiated with the creation of a youth assembly 
for pollinators by the EP, an assembly that we hope may counter-balance those 
that are hollowing out measures to protect the natural world. I would add that 
if the ECA could help the uncaptured viewpoints of large sways of the popu-
lation to make it onto the EU agenda, this rationale will come into its own in 
its monitoring functions, as articulated in the recent report on the radicality 
of sunlight. With the ECA’s claim to be a “transparency guardian” alongside 
the Ombudsman office, citizens could learn to push the ECA – or some of its 
sub-assemblies as proposed by Smith and Owen497 – more in the direction of 
citizen oversight juries. In this spirit, we could imagine the ECA acting as a kind 
of democratic backup to the independent Ombudsman office, strengthening 
both its credentials and the public visibility of its crucial functions.

A broad remit: Can the complementarity of the ECA to the EP also come in 
the shape of topics, for instance, with an ECA agenda focused on the EP agenda 
for thematic focus as well as institutional backing?498 Daniel Freund’s point is 
well  taken  that  learning  from  previous  deliberative  processes,  agenda  setting 
will need clear objectives, such as questions of principle in Ireland’s assembly 
on  abortion  or  in  France’s  on  social  climate  protection,  rather  than  broad 
complex ones as in the Conference of the future of Europe (CoFoE).499 Yet if 
the Assembly meets over time in a decentralised manner, its agenda can indeed 
be as broad as Europe’s political agenda. I would add that we can sustain the 
idea of a multi-issue body while at the same time “offer an alternative imagi-
nary to those who advocate for a permanent European Climate Assembly, or 
national sortition legislatures for that matter, who tend (implicitly or explic-
itly) to think in terms of a single body where members work together across 
multiple issues”500, as the assembly meets not only in different committees but 
also in different spaces and places, hooking to topics chosen locally.  

497  Smith and Owen, 2024.

498  Džankić, 2024.

499  Freund, 2024.

500  Smith and Owen, 2024.

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In this landscape, the critical functions Smith and Owen underline501 are, 
well,  critical,  in  line  with  the  goal  of  anti-stuckness  promoted  by  Ahlhaus 
and Schmidt.502 I agree with Ahlhaus, Schmidt and other commentators that 
environmental issues are a key topical candidate, but I also believe that most 
issues  would  benefit  from  democratising  foresight.503  As  Labareda  argues,  a 
permanent assembly not only allows to incorporate the multiple perspectives 
of  so-called  ordinary  citizens  and  identify  paths  to  reconcile  some  of  their 
disagreements,  but  it  could  also  “challenge  policy  dogmas  that  are  hard  to 
contest  and  abandon,  even  when  their  shortcomings  are  apparent”.504    He 
points  to  areas  of  high  transnational  interdependencies  like  energy  supply, 
migration or international security, but an assembly is precisely also the place 
where  more  hidden  interdependencies  and  potentials  for  turning  zero-sum 
games across borders into positive-sum games can best be developed.

Consensus  vs  Mappings:  If  the  assembly  is  to  go  beyond  a  technocratic 
approach  to  policy  recommendation,  there  must  be  a  greater  emphasis  on 
political  dilemmas,  tensions,  and  contradiction.505  As  Bauböck  argues,  this 
may be the best strategy against disinformation and polarisation.506 If we want 
to avoid “unpolitical democracy” in an ECA, as argued by Seubert507 or Oleart, 
the space it provides needs to offer discussions on the winners and losers of a 
proposed  policy  being  debated  within  and  across  countries.508  Perhaps  para-
doxically, mapping citizens’ opinions on how to address the cleavages which 
the assembly can embody through its stratified composition can help protect 
politics from the tribal or affective polarisation we witness these days. If citizens 
are to “respect each other as equals and are willing to listen to each other, to 
compromise and to prioritise the common good” in a multistakeholder “coop-
erative space of mutual recognition and co-creation,” they cannot do so without 
truly getting to know each other’s grievances, thus honouring the agonistic di-

501  Ibid.

502  Ahlhaus & Schmidt, 2024.

503  Ibid.

504  Labareda, 2024.

505  ‘Deep Democracy’, Perspectivity, https://perspectivity.org/work/deep-democracy/; ‘Homepage’, 

House of Deep Democracy, https://houseofdeepdemocracy.nl/. 

506  Bauböck, 2024.

507  Seubert, 2024.

508  Oleart, 2024.

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mension  of  politics.  But  assuaging  Oleart’s  warning  against  depoliticisation 
calls for a different kind of agonistics.509 In part by debating over the operation-
alisation of this amorphous thing, “the common good,” and outlining the po-
litical dilemmas that are at stake in pursuing it. Can the assembly help pursue 
depolarisation without depolitisation? Can it articulate disagreements in ways 
that overcome affective polarisation? Oleart is right to argue for the ECA to 
serve as a place where structural inequalities are recognised rather than papered 
over.510  This  is  all  the  more  important  that  EU  politics  do  not  benefit  from 
an institutionalised, let alone “loyal” opposition.  Whether the transnational 
character of the ECA offers the opportunity to stress a “strong decolonial un-
derstanding of the underlying material structures”  511 or simply reflect other 
frames for oppositional politics, it would fill an important hole in EU politics.

The question of accountability. Like Owen and Smith, many commentators 
question the legitimacy of a handful of citizens taking decisions “as they see 
fit”.512 If the selected members are seen to help keep the political elite accounta-
ble by monitoring EU institutions, they ask, who will keep the members them-
selves accountable? One kind of valid answer is provided by Sintomer’s warning 
against idealising electoral democracy and its pseudo-accountability (“the real 
relations between the citizenry and the various rulers is less accountability than 
deference – at best when it is not indifference, distrust or anger”).513  Moreover, 
if none of the present EU institutions can make unilateral decisions and work 
without the scrutiny of the other institutions, why would the ECA not also be 
part of that larger system of feedback and control?514 Can we not draw some 
solace  from  the  astonishing  alignment  between  citizens’  views  and  assembly 
outcomes  as  a  kind  of  ex-post  accountability  (see,  e.g.  the  Irish  referenda  in 
the  wake  of  the  2016-17  citizens’  assembly)?  Ultimately,  is  the  answer  not 
grounded in the permanent nature of the assembly and its continued endorse-
ment by public opinion?

509  Ibid.

510  Ibid.

511  Ibid.

512  Lafont and Urbinati, 2024; Bellamy, 2024; Freund, 2024.

513  Sintomer, 2024.

514  Ibid.

173

Civic Culture: Can the ECA really reach 
the demos?

This brings us to what is probably the biggest challenge for an ECA, which 
has  to  do  with  the  shape  of  our  democracies  in  general,  and  arguments 
from epistemic democracy or output legitimacy. Can an alliance between 
the  EP  and  ECA  make  a  significant  difference  to  the  broader  public’s  dem-
ocratic engagement with European affairs? To be sure, there is much scepti-
cism on this count, which Lafont and Urbinati articulate beyond this forum 
in  their  recent  book.515  We  converge  in  our  wariness  about  citizen-washing 
that  ultimately  can  be  seen  as  an  institutionalised  form  of  brain-washing: 
both  sides  collude  in  pretending  that  citizens  can  make  a  difference.  This  is 
what Gaiba refers to as assemblies’ “original sin.”516

Sure, no magic wand it will be. But many commentators seem to take seri-
ously the potential democratic impact of an ECA, the conditions under which 
an  ECA  would  constitute  more  than  a  well-oiled  mega  focus-group.  For  all 
the progress they may represent – and we must never overlook their pioneer-
ing character – the ECPs organised by the Commission did not empower the 
many,  but  only  the  few.  There  is  no  doubt  that  we  need  to  learn  from  and 
improve on their achievements and shortcomings regarding visibility and en-
gagement.517 In fact, I think the sceptics overlook the transformative potential 
of their own critique. As a critical theorist committed to immanent critique, I 
suggest below some signposts for this alternative route:

Democratic  Ownership:  normative  or  empirical?  The  question  of  power 
raised above in terms of the functioning of the assembly becomes all the more 
complex as we address the question raised by Ahlhaus and Schmidt: How can 
the ECA “deserve” the citizens’ sense of democratic ownership?518 The question 
reminds me of our general debates on legitimacy, a central point in our Federal 
Vision book (Howse and Nicolaidis, 2002), where we did fall back, after much 
normative agonising, on empirical benchmarks. Ahlhaus and Schmidt argue 

515  Lafont, C and Urbinati, N. (2024), The Lottocratic Mentality: Defending Democracy against 

Lottocracy, Oxford Academic.

516  Gaiba, 2024.

517  Bellamy, 2024.

518  Ahlhaus & Schmidt, 2024.

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that “justified” ownership calls for pursuing certain goals that can be in tension 
with each other: countering opacity, capture, and stuckness.519 I refer to these 
as political functions that are closely aligned with the classic rationale for CAs 
(e.g. inclusive representation, democratic equality, impartiality and epistemic 
diversity, as summarised here).520 It is not clear to me, however, why these nor-
mative considerations would not ultimately translate into a collective experi-
ential diagnosis: This is the beauty of the idea of a visible permanent assembly 
and the iterative nature of citizens’ engagement it would generate; it is also the 
beauty of virtual, “liquid” democracy in the era of the web. Nor is it clear to 
me that these are contradictory functions. Above all, we need to consider ar-
guments in support of citizens’ assemblies but in the special context of trans-
nationality, which tends to make them even more potent, as we argued in the 
Democratic  Odyssey  blueprint.  As  per  Sintomer,  the  deployment  of  quali-
ties like impartiality or epistemic diversity are arguably even more precious in 
the  EU context.521

Institutional  decoupling  and  mediating  role:  In  fact,  even  Lafont  and 
Urbinati, sceptical as they are, articulate a vision for an ECA that, I would is 
close to what many CSOs supporting Democratic Odyssey’s campaign for a 
permanent  ECA  envision:  a  mediating  role  between  EU  institutions  and  the 
publics, an intermediary ECA that is not “directly coupled with formal polit-
ical  institutions”.522  An  idea  welcomed  by  Seubert  523as  well  as  Ahlhaus  and 
Schmidt,524  whereby  the  lack  of  decision-making  powers,  in  fact,  enables 
the capacity of such an assembly to play such a role. Indeed, this is also our 
assumption in the design of the Democratic Odyssey process, where we have 
only sought soft endorsement on the part of politicians, betting on a broader 
public appeal to give weight to the final recommendations. This is also the trade-
off we have assumed when designing the EP’s youth assembly on pollinators: 
the normative power and potential to affect Europe’s civic culture and to lower 

519  Ibid.

520  We would need to investigate further the relationship between formal functions related to the 

policy cycle (agenda-setting, policy, monitoring) and political functions related to the impact on 
the polity (counter opacity, capture, stuckness) or as per Smith and Owen, regulatory, generative, 
critical functions.

521  Sintomer, 2024.

522  Lafont and Urbinati, 2024.

523  Seubert, 2024.

524  Ahlhaus & Schmidt, 2024.

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barriers to political participation simply by communicating with the public in 
a language that they understand.

To  operationalise  this  vision,  Hennig  suggests  using  mass  participatory 
“deliberate and vote” tools such as vTaiwan.525  In the same spirit, Lafont and 
Urbinati,526  as  well  as  Smith  and  Owen,  envisage  “simultaneous  assemblies” 
that would review and improve the initiatives submitted by civil society groups 
after  gathering  some  low  threshold  of  signatures”  through  informed  and 
inclusive  deliberation…submit  them  to  the  relevant  public  authorities  (e.g. 
the  EP,  national  parliaments,  local  authorities)  for  (mandatory)  discussion 
and decision-making or, in the appropriate cases, to general referenda (in the 
relevant jurisdictions).527 I believe that indeed such a process ought to be central, 
but disagree that there is no value-added to a single core assembly acting as a 
hub or a focal point for review, aggregation, visibility etc. Here are points that 
I think merit further discussion:

Horizontality  and  the  demoicratic  disconnect:  I  argued  in  the  proposal 
that  one  of  the  core  reasons  to  bring  together  polycentric  assembly  process-
es is simply as a first step to overcome “demoi-cratic disconnect”  in Bellamy’s 
felicitous  phrase,  or  to  address  the  “transnational  disconnect”  as  the  raison 
d’etre of this ECA, as argued persuasively by Melisa Ross and Andrea Felicet-
ti’s.528 Alemanno writes that the ECA can help “Europeanise domestic politics, 
opening up EU issues trapped within the nation state,” using “the unique ability 
of a permanent citizens’ assembly to ‘Europeanise’ the politics of the EU in 
the current political and constitutional juncture.”529 The horizontal challenge 
of  connecting  our  demoi  or  what  Zacharzewski  refers  to  as  our  overlapping 
‘citizenships’ amounts to horizontal, not just vertical, accountability.530 Here, 
horizontal mediation between peoples becomes the animating force for vertical 
mediation between institutions and peoples – with peoples not taken in their 
isolated national or local silos but as peoples who have already undergone some 
exercise in crafting a Rawlsian overlapping consensus nationally. The Assembly 
would be there to manage visibly, performatively, a related kind of accountability, 

525  Hennig, 2024.

526  Lafont and Urbinati, 2024.

527  Smith and Owen, 2024.

528  Ross and Felicetti, 2024.

529  Alemanno, 2024.

530  Zacharzewski, 2024.

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which would shape and frame the mediation between the peoples of Europe. 
One objection is that the ECA members will be in a transnational setting, but 
the broader public will not. It will take connections “outside the selected few” 
for the ECA to help connect “peoples” across borders, not just their represent-
atives. In my view, this could happen through the multiple channels created 
and enabled by the ECA if transnational conflict were made more explicit and 
addressed as such.

   Embeddedness  and  multiple  docking:    Perhaps  in  slight  tension  with  its 
EU-publics  mediating  role,  many  authors  view  the  ECA’s  embeddedness  in 
the EU governance system as a condition for the possibility for this virtuous 
dynamic. Considering Ahlhaus and Schmidt’s diagnosis of the opacity of the 
EU system, it is unlikely that citizens would acquire a sense of ownership in 
bits and pieces.531 If the overall system is so complex and opaque as to not be 
grasped, no Assembly alone would make up for it. The assembly needs to fit 
in  like  a  piece  of  an  institutional  puzzle.  Taking  in  Seubert’s  conditions  for 
CAs  systemic  efficacy,  there  is  a  need  for  other  reforms  to  happen  as  well  – 
she cites the transnational ethos of EU-wide election lists for the EP.532 As a 
result,  commentators  should  not  see  a  permanent  ECA  as  any  other.  It  will 
be docking in several different physical places and, thus, political spaces. Sure, 
the EP itself juggles between Brussels and Strasbourg at a significant cost. So, 
the ECA’s docking challenge is perhaps an amplified and positive version of the 
EP’s experience.533 Dobler and Vergne argue that the need for “docking” of the 
ECA534 can draw from the characterisation adopted by the Global Assembly 
on the Climate and Ecological Crisis (GLOCAN) as “the process of interfac-
ing in a compatible way with existing institutional structures.”535 These may be 
EU structures or other structures and levels of governance, here again calling 
for horizontal accountability between countries or regions, as well as vertical 
accountability all the way down to the citizen.

531  Ahlhaus & Schmidt, 2024.

532  Seubert, 2024.

533  Ross and Felicetti, 2024.

534  Dobler and Vergne, 2024.

535  Global Assembly, 2023.

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Local  porousness  and  translocalism:  Building  on  Ross  and  Felicetti,536  we 
ought  to,  in  fact,  i)  connect  the  vertical  plurality  of  lived  experience  across 
European  communities  to  European  institutions  to  ii)  create  bridges  across 
those communities and across other ongoing mechanisms of participation.537 In 
effect, we need to develop what I see as a grounded theory of transnationalism, 
that is, a theory of translocalism applied to democratic innovation. Aleman-
no’s  argument  suggests  that  the  flipside  of  Europeanisation  of  domestic 
politics  has  to  democratise  domestic  politics  through    Europeanisation: 
Bringing Europe to town, as we say in the Democratic Odyssey.538 This is what 
we mean by “planting democratic seeds” all over the EU, as echoed by Dobler 
and Vergne, who see a translocal ECA like a travelling circus, an imagined “web 
of deliberation of which the ECA is a part” as “each visited locality could spin 
up  its  own  process  encouraging  more  decentralisation  and  exponential  scal-
ing”.539    They  highlight  the  importance  of  energising  local  democracy  with 
each travelling assembly, working with local politicians on the next steps using 
assembly members and alumni as co-entrepreneurs and pioneers in this regard. 
The  hope  is  that  the  democratic  respect540  demonstrated  by  the  Assembly’s 
existence and performance would prove contagious and contribute to fostering 
a sense of civic ownership and a more democratic civic culture locally across 
the EU through  “a Europe-wide, permanent deliberation infrastructure… if it 
can advance the connection with and among publics and meaningfully engage 
locally anchored actors and demands”.541 Who needs a unified European public 
sphere when we can have a more resilient polycentric one.

Mediation through distrust: I am wary, however, not to see this exercise as 
simply about “building trust” between peoples and politicians. If the “radical-
ity  of  sunlight”  is  to  protect  the  complementary  approach  from  falling  into 
the  subordination  scenario,  as  Lafont  and  Urbinati  warn  can  happen  in  the 
absence  of  final  authority,  it  cannot  rest  only  on  trust-building.542  Democ-

536  Ross and Felicetti, 2024.

537  Veloso and Luís, 2023.

538  Alemanno, 2024.

539  Dobler and Vergne, 2024.

540  Bongardt, A and Torres, F (eds.). (2023), The Political Economy of Europe’s Future and Identity 

Integration in crisis mode, European University Institute. 

541  Ross and Felicetti, 2024.

542  Lafont and Urbinati, 2024.

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racy,  as  Machiavelli  would  say,  is  about  authorising  and  channelling  distrust 
and dissent. Here, the mediating role would not be as a bridge but as a per-
ceived  guardrail  against  the  polity  falling  into  nepotism  and  corruption,  in 
short,  capture.  This  is  also  an  implication  from  Lucile  Schmid’s  point  that 
the Assembly process should not be coopted into a legal process, because EU 
institutions have a competitive mindset.543 The ECA needs to invent ways to 
connect to the disenchanted citizenry, protesters or other disaffected groups, 
who would be able, over time, to trust this institution to act on their healthy 
distrust of mainstream institutions. If efficient meritocratic public administra-
tions have been weakened, they may enter into a Gramscian alliance to enact 
such a strategy.544

Decoupling vs bringing politics back in: A connected issue has to do with 
whether and how such a partial decoupling of the Assembly from the central 
institutional logic of the EU can create a greater space for “bringing politics 
back  in.”  Many  authors  argue  that  bottom-up  change  must  accompany  the 
top-down sort if EU official institutions are to partly give up control of this 
democratic process. Oleart’s highlight of the EU’s unique ‘citizens turn’ tries 
to use sortition to combine representativeness and citizen engagement to weigh 
the balance between risk and opportunity.545  Technocratic  approaches bring 
a  greater  focus  on  consensus  than  on  compromise  alongside  the  risk  of  un-
dermining  an  agonistic  democratic  logic.  Yet,  according  to  Lucile  Schmid, 
observer of the French Assembly on Climate, many members became attract-
ed  by  political  responsibilities  afterwards  in  part  for  the  lack  of  politics  in 
the  Assembly  itself.546  As  Wilson  and  Mellier  argue,  we  are  living  through  a 
crisis of self- and collective efficacy: people feel trapped, and there is nothing 
they can do in the face of transborder challenges.547 If citizens’ assemblies can 
radically  increase  peoples’  efficacy,  they  need  to  perceive  themselves  as  active 

543  Schmid, L. (2024), ‘Enlarged Complementarity: How an ECA Should Relate to Other Institutions 
and Actors’, GLOBALCIT, https://globalcit.eu/representing-european-citizens-why-a-europe-
an-citizens-assembly-should-complement-the-european-parliament/15 (hereinafter Schmid, 2024’).

544  Sintomer, 2024.

545  Oleart, 2024.

546   Schmid, 2024

547  Wilson and Mellier, 2023.

179

agents of change and given the “scaffolding” required to act as such.548 This 
means  framing  assembly  members  as  political  actors,  including  by  training 
them to speak and supporting them to be advocates for the assembly, not just 
in the political areas, but also towards the broader public and private actors. 
Accordingly, new sources of power and cooperation could come from an ECA 
if it “could open up to public-private partnerships, new diplomacy actions and 
new social movements emerging from the process”.549

Digital  civic  engagement:  Clearly,  alongside  other  analysts,  we  need  to 
spend more time questioning the relationship between on-site ECA meetings 
and digital civic engagement. Džankić550 and others rightly advocate the use of 
new digital technologies to lower the financial costs and ecological footprint as 
well as broader participation in the spirit of ‘liquid democracy’ – a particularly 
inclusive system with low barriers to political participation. But as discussed 
above, it is not clear how too much reliance on liquid democracy would serve 
engagement horizontally across borders.551 Gaiba defends the “idea of a digital 
platform  as  the  enabler  of  this  scaling  out  function  through  structures  of 
transcalar  polycentricity,  which  builds  on  Nicolaidis’  conceptual  framework 
for planetary politics” while “the granularity of liquid democracy … lends itself 
to more nuanced final outputs.”552 Accordingly, this would entail adopting a 
liquid democracy approach for the final step of an ECA process when a popular 
vote  is  called  on  a  set  of  ECA  recommendations.  We  need  to  build  on  such 
cross-pollination between liquid democracy and an ECA.

Global  Porousness:  Beyond  the  EU  scene,  it  is  also  worth  thinking  about 
the ECA from a global perspective, and here I stress that this includes not only 
discussions about solidarity beyond the nation-state (Oleart,553 Ross and Feli-
cetti554) but also about conflict across borders. If “the unique ability of a per-
manent citizens’ assembly to ‘Europeanise’ the politics of the EU in the current 

548  ‘Understanding psychological drivers of civic engagement’, Busara Center, https://busara-micro-
site.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/case-studies/A6.+Understanding+psychological+drivers+of+civ-
ic+engagement.pdf. 

549  Gaiba, 2024.

550  Džankić, 2024.

551  Blum and Zuber, 2016.

552  Gaiba, 2024.

553  Oleart, 2024.

554  Ross and Felicetti, 2024.

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political and constitutional juncture” can be used to generate cross-border in-
teractions and transnational legitimacy555 this transnational character is porous 
– practising transnationality within opens up for the experience and capacity 
to do so with Europe’s neighbours and beyond. It would be good to explore 
further such porousness through what I call “reversing the democratic gaze.”556

Participatory complementarities: Finally, a lot of these questions and debates 
take us back to what I call “participatory complementarities”, i.e. the need for 
the deliberative assembly to be connected with all forms of citizens’ participa-
tion in public life. This starts with the relationship between the ECA and direct 
democracy. Gaiba suggests that agenda setting could be enabled by “combining 
the assembly with an ECI process”,557 which “may be a good way to test and 
maximise their respective strengths”, according to Ross and Felicetti.558 These 
authors  argue  that  the  connection  to  direct  democracy  is  “crucial  because  it 
implies  that  the  ECA  should  ultimately  be  grounded  in  public  spheres,  not 
just attached to institutions”. Drawing on Simon Niemeyer’s “Scaling up De-
liberation to Mass Publics”,559 they promote this other kind of horizontality, 
by creating bridges across these communities and across other ongoing mecha-
nisms of participation.560 Can the EP champion European Citizens’ Initiatives 
(ECIs)? Can it monitor the afterlife of ECIs? Should it offer its own ECIs to 
European residents? And ultimately how do these different types of comple-
mentarities – participatory, representative and territorial, interact?

555  Alemanno, 2024.

556  Nicolaidis and Youngs, 2023.

557  Gaiba, 2024.

558  Ross and Felicetti, 2024.

559  Niemeyer, 2014.

560  Veloso and Luís, 2023.

181

Conclusion: How to get there?

I  have  not  expanded  here  much  on  the  case  in  favour  of  creating  a  perma-
nent  ECA.  Several  of  the  commentators,  including  Sintomer,561  Aleman-
no,562  Gaiba563,  Ross  and  Felicetti564  or  Dobler  and  Vergne,565  have  done  so 
better than I could. Instead, I hope that this rejoinder has clarified the initial 
proposal by taking in and further debating as many of the points articulated in 
this forum as I could take on board. Clearly, this is a small part of the overall 
puzzle. We still need to offer a theory of change that is not only normatively ap-
pealing but politically plausible.

In spite of the cogent arguments of the sceptics in this forum, I still believe 
that this is an idea whose time has come. And that the EU is its perfect testing 
ground, as Sintomer566 and Alemanno567 articulate.

As Dobler and Vergne568 explain pithily, such an ECA “is not expensive, 
not technically impossible, and it does not take too much time.” But bang for 
the buck does not mean big bang. Any campaign for an ECA needs to start 
with the fact that an ECA on its own is not able to address all or even most, 
problems with the current state of democracy. Democratic eco-systems need 
to be built and spread, and other reforms need to happen for the assembly to 
work, reforms that might encourage a cross-border democratic ethos, such as 
the  aforementioned  EU-wide  election  lists  emphasised  by  Seubert.569  Con-
tinued  institutional  initiatives  such  as  the  Commission’s  panels  and  youth 
councils, as well as the EP’s Agora, will also prepare the ground, above all by 
convincing European civil servants and politicians that this is a worthy game.

561  Sintomer, 2024.

562  Alemanno, 2024.

563  Gaiba, 2024.

564  Ross and Felicetti, 2024.

565  Dobler and Vergne, 2024.

566  Sintomer, 2024.

567  Alemanno, 2024.

568  Dobler and Vergne, 2024.

569  Seubert, 2024.

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Indeed,  we  need 

to  be  wary  also  about  counter-productive 
moves. Freund points to the risk of backlash.570 Without political backing and 
institutional support to allow for mechanisms for implementation, he warns, 
this proposal might backfire and lead to further detachment rather than en-
gagement.  To  stave  off  this  prospect,  alliances  will  need  to  be  built  among 
actors  who  believe  in  the  sharing  of  power,  civil  servants  and  civil  society 
groups.  politicians  and  parties,  as  well  as  EU  institutions  like  the  Ombuds-
man office, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Commit-
tee of the Regions. First and foremost, a campaign advocating for complemen-
tarity between an ECA and the EP needs MEPs!

Timing  is  paramount.  Zacharzewski  cautions  that  it  might  be  too  early 
to  speak  of  an  ECA  campaign  when  there  is  still  much  to  be  discussed 
about  participatory  and  deliberative  processes.  Let’s  first  build  the  necessary 
frameworks and infrastructure for the ECA to become successful, he argues.571 
We  need  multi-lingual  networks  of  facilitators  and  independent  guarantors, 
groups of independent experts and experts by experience to share their stories, 
and  a  set  of  connected  digital  environments  to  ensure  that  the  ECA  can  be 
actively transparent as it is happening. Realistically, he surmises that the media 
is more likely to report on failures and accusations of undemocratic practic-
es  than  success.  Hence  the  need  to  be  cautious  and  incremental:  “On  polit-
ical  grounds,  therefore,  I  would  argue  that  an  ECA  should  be  consultative, 
and that its organisers need to devise better approaches for publicising it than 
relying on media coverage.”

But  cautiousness  should  not  stifle  our  imagination.  Hennig’s  discussion 
of the pros and cons of a pilot assembly as implemented by the Democratic 
Odyssey offers precious advice.572 He persuasively crystallises the challenge as 
prefigurative politics – i.e., modes of politics and social relationships that strive 
to reflect the future society being sought by building a new society within the 
shell of the old. But here again, caution seems to gain the upper hand. If the 
campaign  character  of  the  assembly  (in  this  case,  that  of  a  pilot  like  Demo-
cratic Odyssey or the EP’s youth assembly) might not allow it to have a politi-
cal impact, this could lead to the demoralisation of members who put in their 
time.

570  Freund, 2024.

571  Zacharzewski, 2024.

572  Hennig, 2024.

183

Where does this all leave us? As Richard Rorty has suggested, our journey 
may  need  to  follow  an  incremental  logic.  Yet,  at  the  same  time,  it  calls  for  a 
radical shift in mindset for the state to shed the reassuring cloth of ‘consulta-
tion’ for the glorious garments of ‘democracy’. These are different worlds, dif-
ferent logics.  We are thus left with the ECA dilemma: we may burn our wings 
with too much hubris, but without pioneering ambition, nothing will happen.

In closing, I suggest that we cannot divorce this democratic conversation 
from geopolitics.  A permanent ECA needs to speak to our times. Our next 
frontier has to do with the role of transnational and national citizens assem-
blies in much more demanding contexts than those we find in our consolidat-
ed democracies, so as to practice “democracy-under-the radar” in authoritarian 
settings, or democratic transition after ethnic conflicts. It may be that, as Ross 
and Felicetti stress, “the European Union and European practitioners may be 
in an unparalleled and privileged position to effectively advance such a demo-
cratic experiment,” but the story does not stop here.573 We will need to reverse 
our gaze and pay heed to the plethora of lessons emanating from elsewhere.574 
Ultimately, a permanent ECA can take many shapes or forms, and its design can 
be much improved by the kind of debate we are having in this GLOBALCIT 
forum. But only its actual existence will allow us to test our scholarly delibera-
tions through trial and error and imperfect approximation, in keeping with the 
very essence of democratic experiments throughout the ages.

573  Ross and Felicetti, 2024.

574 Refer to fn 173 - eg op cit fn 173 Nicolaidis, K. and Youngs, R. (2023), Reversing the Gaze: Can the 
EU Import Democracy from Others?, JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, 61(6): 1605–1621 
(hereinafter ‘Nicolaidis and Youngs, 2023’).

Should a Citizens' Assembly Complement the European Parliament? ISBN:978-92-9466-662-8
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