Examining the potential for citizen’s assemblies to overcome turbulence in climate governance in the EU

Citizens’ assemblies and other forms of deliberative democracy are gaining traction in governing the response to climate change. Ireland, France and the UK have each convened a citizens’ assembly to address the topic of climate change in recent years, and a range of processes have been implemented at city/local level, such as in the UK, Hungary, and Poland. The European Commission’s December 2019 European Green Deal communication stated that the proposed European Climate Pact would “build on the Commission’s on-going series of citizens’ dialogues and citizens’ assemblies across the EU, and the role of social dialogue committees” (European Commission 2019). These processes exhibit significant national variation in terms of their establishment, design, scope, operation, outcomes, and impact. Beyond these examples, a wider range of processes involving citizen deliberation and participation have increasingly been used to address climate change and related topics. This paper seeks to develop an analytical framework to make sense of this diversity and draw out features of salience for climate change governance. The framework draws attention to the importance of questions of (i) power and agency, (ii) knowledge and expertise, and (iii) access and equity. The paper uses this framework to identify trade-offs and tensions in process design and to suggest how these characteristics might shape the contributions of such processes to the governance of climate and energy in the EU in turbulent times.