Climate Change, Citizen Assemblies, and Constituent Power

• In Event: Citizens' Assemblies, Media, and Civil Society

Abstract

Deliberative assemblies composed of randomly selected lay citizens offer some hope for addressing long-term political problems, particularly in cultural contexts of heightened suspicion of elite agency in general and of expert knowledge in particular. Climate change is the longest-term problem currently on the global political agenda, yet it is increasingly characterized in terms of ‘crisis’ and ‘emergency’. The emergency frame in particular implies a need for abrupt, short-term measures. Historically, emergencies often serve as pretexts for executive expansion or even autocratization. But a particular kind of citizen assembly, a ‘constitutional jury’, offers a starting-point for institutional design which may be able to satisfy the long-term policy-making requirements of climate change while avoiding the anti-democratic dangers of emergency power. Constitutional juries can become part of a new theory of ‘constituent power’ which reimagines traditional models of separation of powers within democratic constitutions. The reason is that a long-term crisis like climate change, unlike a short-term emergency, calls for the expansion of the constituent power, not the executive power. The mechanics of this shift involve reallocating some aspects of legislative and judicial activity away from elite agencies and toward citizen assemblies.

Author

• Jason Maloy, University of Louisiana, Lafayette