Citizens’ assemblies work best on the questions politicians would rather not own

A citizens' assembly is a group of ordinary people chosen by lot, so that it roughly mirrors the population, who are given time, information and expert witnesses to deliberate on a question and recommend an answer.

We think they are most useful on hard trade-offs where elected officials face a short-term penalty for being honest: how to fund long-term care, how to share the costs of a new road or power line, how to balance competing public values. Chosen by lot and not by campaign, an assembly has no election to win, and that can free it to weigh the trade-offs openly.

The strongest objections are fair ones. Assemblies are advisory unless a government commits to act, they can be steered by who frames the question, and a few hundred people cannot replace broad public debate.

Our answer is to use them as a complement: publish the brief, the evidence and the reasoning, and require government to respond in public to every recommendation.

What would change our mind: evidence that assemblies' recommendations are routinely ignored without explanation, making them cosmetic.