Governments around the world are experimenting with giving community members more power to direct policy decisions. From randomly selected deliberative citizen assemblies, to participatory budgeting, to new online tools and more effective public consultation.  This short list of short videos features inspiring examples of innovative approaches and tools for practical people-powered government.

Deliberative Democracy & Sortition (Random Selection, Citizen Lottery)

Why Have a Citizen’s Assembly?

An activist view on the potential for a randomly selected panel of citizens to be a more trusted authority than parliament.

2:20 min.  Created by Extinction Rebellion, UK 

 

How to restore trust in politics

A professional journalistic look into the potential of citizens’ assemblies to build a new relationship between the public and the politicians.

8:09 min. Created by The Economist

 

Deliberative Engagement – What is it?

An introduction to the six key principles of deliberative democracy (with randomly selected citizens) in comparison to “standard” public consultation processes.

3:13 min.  Created by MosaicLab, Australia

 

The French Citizen’s Convention for the Climate

150 randomly selected citizens convened by the French government to give direction on fighting climate change.

1:28 min. France 24 news clip

 

Citizens’ Assembly of Scotland

Over 100 randomly selected citizens meet for over seven weekends to give recommendations on the future of the country to parliament.

3:00 min. Citizens’ Assembly of Scotland

 

Deliberative Polling “America in One Room”

An experiment that demonstrates how deliberative processes can overcome polarized politics.

3:35 min. CNN news clip

 

Climate Assembly UK

The House of Commons convened over 100 random people representing the UK to deliberate for six weekends to give recommendations on reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2050

2:30 min. Involve Foundation

 

Melbourne’s People’s Panel

How the 10 year financial plan for the city was based on effective public engagement and recommendations from a panel of 46 random citizens.

3:14 min. City of Melbourne

 

Reinventing Civic Education with Lotteries

An example of how student government could be run on random selection.

3:05 min. Democracy in Practice

 

E-democracy (Online Public Participation)

Can Taiwan Reboot Democracy?

The true story of how the government has formally adopted online participatory democracy to make new laws.

7:38 min. BBC news segment

 

Participatory Budgeting

An introduction to the real world process in which community members directly decide how to spend part of a public budget.

4:13 min. The Participatory Budgeting Project

 

Tools

Feedback Frames for Group Decision-Making in Meetings

 

CONSUL Software for Public Participation in Madrid

 

ThoughtExchange – Mass Consensus Gathering

 

Ethelo Survey Software for Smart Online Public Consultation

 

See more in our long list of videos on participatory democracy.