This piece on citizen's assemblies is fascinating: https://newint.org/features/2021/02/08/defibrillating-democracy
Citizen's assemblies are described as groups of ~100 people put together to be representative of the diversity of a particular place (city, country, etc.), which are brought together to discuss a difficult or contentious issue.
In some cases, the results of citizens' assemblies have been used as direct recommendations to policymakers.
Particularly intriguing: "they tend to generate policies far more ambitious than those politicians come up with alone. For instance, the 2020 French climate assembly voted to make ‘ecocide’ crime a law, ban the rent of energy-inefficient housing and ensure all buildings meet strict new environmental standards."
Part of me wants to just accept this: these citizens' assemblies sound like real democracy, with potential to finally make progress on issues where we've been stuck for ages.
It's compelling to suggest that the reason why mainstream policymakers would resist these recommendations is that they represent entrenched financial interests and not the goals of ordinary people.
In truth, I don't doubt that there's some of that in play, but I also find that I'm cautious: are we so ready to write off the value of expertise? What kinds of specialized knowledge about practical constraints on physical reality get lost when you throw together a bunch of people with no specialized knowledge and ask them how we should proceed?
@lwriemen
I might be making incorrect assumptions based on my own ideals, but I had imagined that the citizen assemblies were aiming for something more like consensus and less like majority rule. Not that consensus is proof against various forms of tyranny either, but it definitely wouldn't be one-person-one-vote. @tfardet might have more information on how the assemblies are run.