Investigating public administrators’ attitudes towards citizens assemblies

The rapid emergence of climate assemblies in various countries including France, Ireland, and Belgium, indicate that these assemblies have become a frequent tool in deliberative democratic approaches to climate policy. Such assemblies are established as a representative setting for the public. They allow citizens to learn about the climate challenge and deliberate on appropriate policy measures, providing recommendations for policymakers. There are therefore many actors involved in preparing, running and following up on citizen climate assemblies. Until now, much of the research has focused on the participants and citizens engaged in the assemblies. This paper takes a different focus and asks: how do the attitudes of the public administrators, or civil servants, involved in the citizen’s assembly influence the scope and possibility for the assembly to have policy impact? The decision to organize a citizen's climate assembly, the power given to the assembly to make decisions, and the implementation of its recommendations are decisively influenced by public administrators’ perceptions of the ability of citizens to make important decisions, or whether they believe such assemblies would undermine their authority or control. Public administrators or civil servants are therefore important drivers of innovation, and they play a key role in shaping public awareness and opinion about climate assemblies and climate issues more generally. As a result, the successful implementation of climate assemblies is highly dependent on the attitude of public administrators. Despite their important role, public administrators remain strikingly under analysed in research on deliberative processes, especially within the context of permanent climate assemblies. This paper addresses this gap by first, examining the attitudes of public administrators, and then investigating the factors affecting these attitudes in the cases of the Permanent Citizens Assembly for Climate in Brussels and Milan. We rely on interviews and survey data gathered in 2023 and 2024 for our analysis. This study builds upon the theoretical framework developed in Liao and Schacter (2017) and Liao and Ma (2019), to include both instrumental and participatory attitudes towards participation and a wider range of possible determinants for administrators’ attitudes. Our paper makes several contributions to literature. First, we provide new empirical data in a specific case of a permanent climate assembly. Second, we contribute to empirical understanding of the public administration of citizen’s assemblies – an underresearched area. Third, we contribute conceptual knowledge by creating a more complete understanding of administrators’ attitudes towards citizen involvement, especially in the context of permanent climate assemblies. By studying administrators’ attitudes, and the factors shaping these perspectives, this study extends our understanding of the conditions under which participatory processes are likely to garner support from administrators. This study therefore also offers practical guidance for policymakers and advocates aiming to establish effective and sustainable participatory initiatives in the context of climate governance.