Sharing learning from the Citizens In Power Network

Shy people and shouty people

I recently listened to a great interview with Hélène Landemore, writer of Politics Without Politicians: the Case for Citizen Rule. You can catch it on Amol Rajan’s Radical.

Hélène’s book recalls G. K. Chesterton’s early 20th century essay in which he says “It cannot be too often repeated that all real democracy is an attempt (like that of a jolly hostess) to bring the shy people out”.

Perhaps a 21st century version of this quote is that “deliberative democracy is what happens when power stops defaulting to the loudest people in the room.”

Deliberative democracy often takes the form of "mini-publics" (such as citizens' assemblies, juries or panels) in which demographically representative groups of people come together to find common ground and agree a way forwards.

If we are going to make better decisions, we need people from all walks of life to be able to express the power of their lived experience, not just the shouty, most confident ones.

Members of the Citizens In Power Network have been using deliberative democratic approaches over the past couple of years.

Citizen-led decision-making in arts organisations and museums. In local neighbourhoods and across regions. Used for programming decisions, for leadership, governance and even public policy.

I’ve been relooking at the conversations from our most recent residency, mainly because we’re currently prepping for our June residency :)

Residencies are a chance for network members to get together to share learning across, to lift our heads out of delivery, and think about what comes next.

Reading through our previous conversations, it’s clear that our overwhelming preoccupation is to shift our organisations from offering participation to sharing power.

We talk about power dynamics before people enter a decision-making space. About the difference between citizens making recommendations and making decisions. About what happens when citizens are resourced to actually deliver their decisions.  

Re-reading our residency notes, it’s obvious that members are not just delivering deliberative processes, they are beginning to extend deliberative practice. I think there are six particularly interesting developments emerging across the network.

I hope you get something useful out of reading these reflections. If you’re interested in joining the network as an Associate or Expert, do get in touch.

Imaginative Power

In most deliberative processes, citizens are seated around tables to hear evidence, ask questions, discuss trade-offs, and make recommendations. Some network members have been exploring what happens when creativity becomes part of the approach.

Some have begun by inviting citizens to make something together: building in three dimensions, drawing maps, designing signs, or walking side by side.

Others have supported and funded citizens to have a live experience connected to the topic before meeting together for the first time and sharing what they noticed.

Artists have helped citizens to explore systems, power and complex social issues through immersive or interactive gameplay.

These approaches can lower social barriers, reduce the pressure to perform verbally, and help strangers build trust. They can also go beyond presenting evidence and help citizens to actively explore evidence.

Not all issues are easily understood through a PowerPoint presentation so the addition of creative approaches to engage people’s imaginations feels worthwhile.

Inclusive Power

A two-stage civic lottery remains one of the most important foundations of deliberative democracy. It creates legitimacy by bringing people together with very different life experiences. It disrupts the usual patterns of who gets heard.

But there’s an uncomfortable truth which is not everyone has an equal chance of being reached by the first stage lottery, typically held by sending out thousands of letters across an area.

Lots of people do not have a stable address or inhabit temporary accommodation or experience homelessness. Others are refugees or asylum seekers or are fleeing abuse in this country. There are people who do not speak English confidently or do not open official-looking post because they associate it with debt, bureaucracy or institutions they don’t trust.

If those people never see the invite or never feel safe enough to respond, then the process may be random but it is not fully representative. In response, some members have been adding to that first stage of the lottery through a more relational approach.

Alongside postal invitations, some processes now work with community mobilisers, local people who help explain the process, answer questions, and build confidence in potential applicants.

Others partner with trusted organisations already working with communities who are often excluded from formal democratic participation.

These partner organisations do not get to choose participants but they do help people hear about the opportunity, understand what it is, feel safe enough to enter the lottery, and get support people through the process.

Supported Power

Good deliberative practice has always required accessibility, thoughtful facilitation, and practical support for people taking part: payments for participation, support with caring responsibilities, travel, childcare, interpretation, access requirements, digital support, and clear communication.

Across the network, members have also been exploring the idea of care as democratic design. What does the room feel like? What makes the food offer more personal? Is there beauty, warmth and softness, in the way people are welcomed? Are quiet spaces available? Are safeguarding officers, welfare support or mental health professionals available if difficult conversations trigger personal experiences or emotional stress?

Some members have brought in external wellbeing partners to support participants across the journey. Deliberation can ask a lot of people, so trust, emotional safety, hospitality and dignity are part of what makes meaningful participation possible.

Embedded Power

Many assemblies and juries follow a familiar pattern with an institution or government body commissioning a process, citizens deliberating, a report being published and the commissioner deciding what to implement.

Some members are designing a different approach from the outset with citizens intentionally involved through oversight and implementation panels. Others are embedding citizens into permanent leadership and governance structures.

What feels exciting about this is the idea of citizen-led decision-making as part of everyday civic infrastructure. Just as part of the way things get done in our communities.

Imagine if this was scaled. One of the most recent and exciting developments is the creation of a set of organisational principles so that charities could choose to legally operate with a representative group of citizens in the heart of their organisational model.  

Convening Power

Many assemblies are initiated by authorities of one kind or another. Network members are part of a growing wave of organisations which are taking the lead.

Organisations are identifying civic opportunities, working with communities to shape initial questions, and doing the patient work of bringing different actors into the room before the deliberation begins.

That might mean months of conversations with community leaders, local activists, charities, schools, councillors, businesses, artists, funders or public officials, all before the first citizen receives an invitation.

One of the most interesting developments here is what happens after the deliberation, with citizens and community partners now taking the outcomes of assemblies directly back into the wider civic ecology through a series of roadshows.

So rather than simply publishing a report and hoping the right people read it, citizens physically meet the organisations, funders, policymakers and public bodies who have the power to deliver the outcomes.

They share what they heard. They explain how the decisions were reached. They invite challenge, reflection and commitment. And they ask “What part will you play in helping to deliver this plan?” This turns implementation into a public and civic conversation and builds buy-in and accountability.

Resourced Power

Some members are exploring what happens when citizens are trusted with money, commissioning power, or the chance to test their ideas in the real world.

In some processes, this means citizens are shaping a brief and then deciding which artists, organisations or ideas receive investment. In others, it means citizens designing live events, pilot projects or community interventions so they can see how an idea actually lands with the public.

In longer-term processes, it can mean implementation budgets being built into the deliberation from the outset, so citizens are not simply asked what should happen but are supported to test what happens when their recommendations meet reality.

This is helping the pattern of the process to shift from listen-discuss-recommend to listen-discuss-test-reflect-adapt. Ideas stop being theoretical as citizens begin to see what works, what doesn’t, what needs reshaping, and what deserves further investment.

And because some of these processes are now cyclical or embedded over multiple years, that learning doesn’t disappear at the end of the jury or assembly. It feeds directly into the next round of decision-making.

That feels significant because at that point, citizens are no longer simply participating in democracy, it feels like they are practising it.

Next Steps

Perhaps the next challenge for deliberative democracy is not simply how to run better assemblies, but how to build organisations and institutions that are genuinely willing to share power.

Many of the civic institutions we celebrate today were invented in the 19th and early 20th centuries by people trying to respond to enormous social change. Libraries, museums, charities, cooperatives, and civic associations were all, in their own way, democratic inventions.

Chesterton’s idea of democracy as “an attempt to bring the shy people out” came from that same era.

Now, more than a century later, when we are experiencing a dizzying technological transformation, perhaps the question is less about whether deliberative democracy actually works, and more about the kinds of institutions we are willing to build around it.

If the 19th century helped invent civic institutions for a quickly changing industrial society, then the challenge for us in the 21st century is to create institutions led by citizens. This feels urgent in a world being transformed by Artificial Intelligence, democratic distrust, and climate change.

The positive is that this work has already begun. And the Citizens In Power Network is just one small network of many across the UK and the world who are passionate about implementing citizen-led change.

When we meet for our June residency, one of the items on our agenda is how we share the learning of network members and associates beyond the network. If you have would be interested to hear about these plans or get involved, then please do get in touch.

David Jubb, co-director, Citizens In Power