Toward Citizen-Legislators: Evidence from Two French Citizens’ Assemblies

• In Event: Innovating for Democracy: New Technologies, New Roles

Abstract

In this paper, we draw on the ground-breaking French Citizens’ Convention for Climate (CCC) to provide an empirically based assessment of the feasibility of placing citizens in the position of legislators. The French Climate Convention tasked 150 randomly-selected citizens with the task of generating readily implementable policy and law proposals with the assistance of a legal committee, making it a scenario comparable to that of a citizens’ legislature. The French case study suggests that under the right conditions and with the proper institutional and expert support large groups of ordinary citizens are capable of performing the function of legislators, opening novel horizons for political reform.

Authors

• Helene E. Landemore, Yale University

• Theophile Penigaud, Yale MacMillan Center