Composition of a citizens’ assembly

Oversight panel
Expert/Stakeholder panel
Advisory board
Facilitation team
their own opinion.
Citizens
Citizens are the heart of deliberative democracy. Citizens’ assemblies must represent all social groups directly affected by the decisions taken in them. In this case, the Swiss population. The members are therefore drawn by lot to represent a representative panel of citizens from this population. Today, a large part of the population is still too often excluded from
political decisions.
For example, several authors have shown that – based solely on the age factor (one of the few sociological variables, along with education level and social class (or income), that influence voting inequalities) – young people (18-25 years old) vote less than other age groups (although they participate in a different way), while the 65-74 year olds
vote the most (Maye, 2019;
Boughaba, 2014).
Therefore, organizers of citizens’ assemblies need to pay attention to the range of factors that would deprive certain groups of people from participating in the democratic process or discourage them from participating in collective discussions in citizens’ assemblies.