Citizens’ Assemblies of the City Council of Budapest and their impact on climate policy

The paper analyses how the local level democratic innovation of the City Council of Budapest worked and what impact it had on the participants’ attitudes. In September 2020 the first Hungarian Citizens’ Assembly on climate policy was organized by the new Mayor of Budapest (Oross-Mátyás-Gherghina, 2021). The success of the event was not evident, as citizens’ assemblies, citizens’ juries and other participatory democratic mechanisms have not been used in Hungarian governance. The past decade of illiberal politics led to reduced citizen activism and shrinking venues for policy participation (Majtényi et al, 2019; Hajnal and Boda, 2021). Moreover, environmental politics has been dismantled (Hungary is the only EU member state without a Ministry of Environment), public attitudes are materialistic, green values are weak (Mikecz, 2018). However, the Citizens’ Assembly was a success in terms of organization, outputs and the evaluation of the participants. The Assembly upheld radical green policy proposals with overwhelming majority – far beyond the findings of opinion polls. Also, green attitudes of the participants increased significantly (Oross, 2022). The analysis will seek to answer to the question to what extent are climate assembly had an impact on climate debate, policy and action? The impact of the events on climate debate will be analysed in the light of media appearances, the impact on policy will evaluate the recommendations of the assemblies from a comparative perspective while the impact on action will be discussed though survey data collected among participants of the Citizens’ Assembly in order to measure their attitudinal change. Results of the paper will bring new evidence on Citizen Assemblies in political systems that are less climate change concerned.