About Us
We are an international network of organizations, associations, and individuals helping decision makers take hard decisions and build public trust.
Mission
We collaboratively develop, implement, and promote ways to improve democracy, from the local to the global level.
Vision
We envision democracies that incorporate everyday people in major public decisions which our present structures struggle to address – through processes that are representative, deliberative, free from manipulation, informed, and influential.
Principles
Representative
We form groups of everyday people using random selection in order to ensure a diversity of views. Selecting participants in this way also limits conflicts of influence and partisan pressures.
Deliberative
We give these groups time, wide-ranging information, and the opportunity to talk through differences. This facilitated process results in a weighing of trade-offs and sound policy suggestions.
Impartial
We express no position on any policy outside of the need for democratic innovation, and we work hard to make our processes as fair and unbiased as possible.
Influential
We negotiate authority with decision makers in advance to increase the likelihood of action. Everyday people are unimpressed by tokenism and their efforts should have an impact on decision making.
Members
- All
- Asia
- Australia
- Europe
- Latin America
- North America
Australia
nDF offers advisory, design & oversight services to elected officials and governments seeking to innovate in how we reach trusted public decisions. nDF operated projects such as the 10 Year Financial Plan for the City of Melbourne ($4bn in budget, with a shortfall issue being central), to a large scale deliberation for the Premier of South Australia on a proposed nuclear waste storage facility.
newdemocracy.com.au
Australia
Helps decision-makers resolve tough problems, no-win situations and stalemates by designing and delivering innovative initiatives involving everyday people from all walks of life. These people are brought together to become informed about the issues, talk with one another, explore differences and common ground, to make recommendations that are implementable and likely to increase public trust
empoweringparticipation.com
Austria
The Büro für Zukunftsfragen (Office for Future-Related Issues) aims to support a cultural transformation process towards more cooperation within society by supporting people and organizations to find solutions for current sociopolitcal issues. Their activities are split into civic engagement, citizen participation, and regional & sustainable development.
vorarlberg.at
Belgium
Since its creation in 2015, Particitiz has conceptualized and implemented deliberative processes in various political institutions, at the municipal, regional, national and European levels. Their approach is based on sortition, collective intelligence and long term processes.
particitiz.org
Belgium
Works with policy makers that are motivated to innovate democratic practices to assist them in developing solutions based on deliberation and sortition. Builds capacity by organising workshops and summer schools on deliberation and sortition. And informs public opinion about these new forms of democracy through diverse communication channels and occasional campaigns.
g1000.org
Bolivia
Works with schools to reinvent civic education so that it is more inclusive and engaging. They do this primarily by replacing traditional student elections with voluntary lotteries, so that every student has an equal opportunity to become a student representative. And they provide student representatives with tools and training to help them develop into engaged citizens and effective leaders.
democracyinpractice.org
Brazil
Works to enable citizen participation for more informed and consequential decisions, oriented for common good. The team's plural background on survey research, public opinion, education, social and political sciences support planning and conducting of mini-publics adapted to diverse conditions as well as integrated with decision making and legislative processes.
facebook.com/deliberabrasil
Canada
Since 2007, MASS has led some of Canada’s most ambitious efforts to engage citizens in tackling tough policy choices while pioneering Civic Lotteries and Citizens’ Reference Panels on behalf of forward-thinking governments. Approximately 1 in 67 Canadian households have received invitations to serve in a deliberative process such as the ongoing Toronto Planning Review Panel.
masslbp.com
Denmark
Works to ensure that society’s development is shaped by informed and forward-looking cooperation between citizens, experts, stakeholders, and decision-makers. They have designed and implemented a range of different engagement and co-creation methods at the local, national, European and global level, including the Consensus Conference and World Wide Views.
tekno.dk
Europe
Demsoc works to create opportunities for people to become involved in the decisions that affect their lives and for them to have the skills to do this effectively. It supports governments, parliaments and any organization that wants to involve citizens in decision making to be transparent, open and welcoming of participation. Demsoc actively support spaces, places and processes to make this happen.
demsoc.org
The ECI Campgian
Europe
The ECI Campaign's key goal is to combine methods of deliberative consultations in the follow-up process of European Citizens' Initiatives. Successful ECIs should be followed by citizens' consultations based on randomly‐selected and demographically‐balanced voters being brought together from across the EU to fairly evaluate an ECI proposal. The organization is developing a pilot project on this subject.
citizens-initiative.eu
France & Germany
A mission driven consultancy aiming at improving the decision making process by designing and implementing new forms of dialogues between citizens, governments and experts. They work at all levels from local to global and focus on having the highest qualitative processes and the strongest impact for over 20 years.
missionspubliques.org
Germany
The Bertelsmann Stiftung (Foundation) is a leading German think tank which develops solutions to contemporary societal challenges. Through its democracy program the Foundation seeks to foster citizens’ participation. It explores how the EU can be more participatory. It analyses existing participation forms, explores how new ones can be established and pilots participatory innovations.
bertelsmann-stiftung.de
Germany
Facilitates dialogue between ordinary citizens and decision makers in fields like mobility, energy or housing. Using innovative and longstanding methods, Nexus helps to integrate the voice of citizens in local, national, and international policymaking. Since 1999, the nexus Institute is one of the leading institutes for design and implementation of participative processes in Germany.
nexusinstitut.de
Germany
Composed of 14 regional associations, Mehr Demokratie is the driving force for citizens' initiated referenda in Germany. It was founded in 1988 and stands up for a better electoral law and an intelligently interwoven parliamentarism, direct democracy and civic participation. It advocates that every vote counts equally and everybody has the right to participate in the democratic process.
mehr-demokratie.de
Ireland
Brings together in one site the Irish experience of using citizens’ assemblies to facilitate widespread constitutional and political reform. Provides information on the 3 Irish processes that have occurred to date: We the Citizens (2011), The Convention on the Constitution (2012-14), and the Irish Citizens' Assembly (2016-18).
citizenassembly.ie
Japan
A gathering of citizens, practitioners, and scholars for deliberative mini-publics. Based on the idea that the participation of randomly selected citizens can make a difference in the governmental policymaking process, the JMPRF was established to integrate achievements in theoretical studies and the practice of deliberative mini-publics and disseminate them in Japanese society.
jrfminipublics.wixsite.com
Netherlands
Works on the local, regional and national level. 'Whole system in the room': inhabitants, civil servants, politicians and employers are all invited to join in for dialogue. Up to 1.000 participants, preferably chosen by lot, decide what is important and work from there to propose concrete solutions. After 3 months work they decide which proposal is sent to council or parliament.
g1000.nu
Portugal
Regularly organizes citizens assemblies on current topics and actively disseminates their results among politicians, the media and the general public. The goal is to inform and shape public debate in a constructive way, making the pondered, informed voice of the public heard.
forumdoscidadaos.pt
Spain
Collective Intelligence for Participatory Democracy Lab (ParticipaLab) is a working hub to develop collaborative projects around hybrid democratic participation. A space to design new participation technologies that focus on deliberative and direct democracy and combine digital and face-to-face processes. This project has been working closely with the Participation Area of the Madrid City Government.
medialab-prado.es
Switzerland
Takes every opportunity to inspire democracy stakeholders with innovative concepts involving deliberation and sortition. Their goal is to launch a constitutional initiative that aims at filling one chamber of the swiss parliament with ordinary citizen choosen by lot. They support related initiatives toward a future democracy where powers are shared among all citizen, without elitism nor populism.
genomi.ch
United Kingdom
Citizens' Juries put the public into public policy-making. A cross-section of the public are recruited (e.g. 18 people), provided with independently-validated information from expert witnesses, and deliberate together to find answers to the policy questions they have been posed.
citizensjuries.org
United Kingdom
Founded in 2003 to “to create a new focus for thinking and action on the links between new forms of public participation and existing democratic institutions”. They have been promoting and practising participatory and deliberative democracy ever since. Involve work toward building new democratic innovations, institutions and norms that put people at the heart of decision-making.
involve.org.uk
United Kingdom
Supported by 29,000 Fellows, The RSA shares powerful ideas, carries out cutting-edge research and builds networks, helping to create fulfilling lives and flourishing societies. In recent years, large parts of this work has focused on deliberative processes and the RSA is currently developing a campaign for deliberative democracy to promote political reform in the UK.
thersa.org
United Kingdom
A not-for-profit organisation whose mission is to promote and institute sortition in empowered assemblies. They envision a world free from partisan politicking, where a representative random sample of everyday people make decisions in an informed, deliberative and fair environment; they want to fundamentally transform the way democracy is done.
sortitionfoundation.org
United States
A leader in convening citizen-focused technology forums throughout the US, the CSPO is an intellectual network aimed at enhancing the contribution of science & technology to society’s pursuit of equality, freedom, and quality of life. The CSPO creates knowledge and methods, cultivates discourse and fosters policies to help decision makers grapple with the immense power of emerging science & technology.
cspo.org
United States
Works to elevate the voice of citizens in their democracy and improve public discourse for the benefit of all voters. Our flagship program, the Citizens' Initiative Review (CIR), involves the public in evaluating ballot measures and referenda so voters have easy access to clear, useful, and trustworthy information at election time.
healthydemocracy.org
United States
The Jefferson Center is a nonpartisan, nonprofit civic engagement organization. Their primary tool for deliberation and education is the Citizens Jury, which was invented by their founder Ned Crosby in 1971. They partner with citizens, communities, and institutions to design and implement informed, innovative, and democratic solutions to today’s toughest challenges.
jefferson-center.org
United States
Provides open-source program documentation and guidance for running and designing reforms based upon the pioneering work of the PJG’s Director, Tyrone Reitman, designing and institutionalizing the Citizens’ Initiative Review (CIR) from 2006-2016. As the leading example of how to incorporate Citizens Juries into government in the US, the CIR is the foundation for the PJG’s work.
policyjurygroup.org
