Sustainability and Politics: Explaining the Emergence of the 2020 Budapest Climate Assembly

Oross, Dániel; Mátyás, Eszter; Gherghina, Sergiu

doi:10.3390/su13116100

Cited by 6 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…We believe these challenges can be overcome through effective assembly design and facilitation. Lessons should also be learnt from other cases [5,9,11,21,22,38,[58][59][60].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This is, of course, just one case study, and due to the absence of research in this area our study is exploratory and therefore more empirical evidence on this vital topic is clearly required. Given the number of climate assemblies occurring across Europe at present [5,9,11,21,22,38,[58][59][60], many of which are implementing topic groups within the assembly, comparative analysis would therefore be welcome.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Howarth et al [19] similarly argue that climate assemblies are a useful tool that can help to 'build a social mandate' for addressing the climate crisis. Research has also considered the external factors of climate assemblies such as the impact they have on government policy [11] and the reasons why they are instigated [22]. However, a key gap in the existing research is how far the scope of the climate assembly agenda may influence these internal and external dynamics.…”

Section: Citizens' Assemblies and Their Agendasmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Scope of Climate Assemblies: Lessons from the Climate Assembly UK

2021

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In recent times we have seen a spate of climate assemblies across Europe as the climate emergency gains increasing prominence in the political agenda and as the citizens’ assembly approach to public engagement gains popularity. However, there has been little empirical research on how the scope of citizens’ assemblies affects the internal logic of the assembly process and its impacts on external policy actors. This is a significant oversight given the power of agenda setting. It is also of particular importance for climate assemblies given the exceptional scale and complexity of climate change, as well as the need for co-ordination across all policy areas and types of governance to address it. In this paper, we start to address this gap through an in-depth case analysis of the Climate Assembly UK. We adopt a mixed methods approach, combining surveys of the assembly members and witnesses, interviews with the assembly members, organisers, MPs, parliamentary staff, and government civil servants, and non-participant observation of the process. We find that attempts to adapt the assembly’s scope to the scale of the climate change issue compromised assembly member learning, the co-ordination of the resulting recommendations, assembly member endorsement of the recommendations, and the extent of their impact on parliament and government. We argue that more democratization in setting the agenda could help combat these issues.

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“…We believe these challenges can be overcome through effective assembly design and facilitation. Lessons should also be learnt from other cases [5,9,11,21,22,38,[58][59][60].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Citizens' Assemblies and Their Agendasmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Scope of Climate Assemblies: Lessons from the Climate Assembly UK

2021

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“…and time should be set aside to connect or validate their preliminary findings with those outside the mini-public itself, i.e., to involve the maxi-public after the mini-public has come to their initial, preliminary findings. Climate assemblies may also be seen as a new channel to communicate sustainable policies to the broader population to garner public support [39].…”

Section: Ideal 3: Deliberative Quality Practice 3: One-sided Problem ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

When Digital Mass Participation Meets Citizen Deliberation: Combining Mini- and Maxi-Publics in Climate Policy-Making

Itten

Mouter

2022

Sustainability

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The upcoming vogue of climate assemblies and other forms of mini-publics are to give citizens a central role in climate policy-making and to break the political impasse. Yet climate mini-publics face challenges in political environments too, such as co-option, favoring expert opinions, and losing touch with the broader public. To remedy such pitfalls, recent papers have argued to combine synchronous deliberations of small groups of citizens with online participation procedures for the larger public. In this article, we report the results of a three-step combination model, where first a mini-public in the region of Súdwest-Fryslân (NL) was given a “carte blanche” to draft the content and the parameters of several related policy alternatives. Second, their proposals were fed into a digital participation tool to consult the wider public. Third, a citizens forum translated the outcomes of the maxi-public into policy recommendations, which were unanimously approved by the municipal council. In this paper, we report our findings of combining mini- and maxi-publics and how the actors involved evaluated the strengths and weaknesses of the combination of these two participatory approaches.

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“…Such assemblies often present innovative and progressive recommendations. One example is Budapest's Citizens' Assembly, which was set up in 2020 while several cities in other countries, such as France, Germany and the UK, have applied similar methods (Oross, Mátyás and Gherghina 2021;Landemore 2020).…”

Section: Citizens' Assemblies Formulating Climate Policymentioning

confidence: 99%

Democracy and the Challenge of Climate Change

Lindvall¹

2021

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Climate change actions in democracies face perceived challenges such as short-term bias in decision-making, policy capture or inconsistency, weak accountability mechanisms and the permeability of the policy-making process to interests adverse to fighting climate change through the role of money in politics. Apart from its intrinsic value to citizens, democracy also brings critical advantages in formulating effective climate policy, such as representative parliaments which can hold governments to account, widespread civic participation, independent media and a free flow of information, the active engagement by civil society organizations in policymaking and the capacity for institutional learning in the face of complex issues with long-term and global social and political implications. International IDEA’s work on change and democracy aims to support democratic institutions to successfully confront the climate crisis by leveraging their advantages and overcoming the challenges to formulating effective and democratically owned climate policy agendas.

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Sustainability and Politics: Explaining the Emergence of the 2020 Budapest Climate Assembly

Cited by 6 publications

References 23 publications

The Scope of Climate Assemblies: Lessons from the Climate Assembly UK

The Scope of Climate Assemblies: Lessons from the Climate Assembly UK

When Digital Mass Participation Meets Citizen Deliberation: Combining Mini- and Maxi-Publics in Climate Policy-Making

Democracy and the Challenge of Climate Change

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