Who Hears the Voices of the People? Public Awareness of Climate Assemblies in Five European Countries

Citizens’ Assemblies have emerged as innovative tools to involve citizens in policymaking, fostering legitimacy and potentially enhancing public support for ambitious actions in certain policy fields. However, their impact depends not only on the quality of their deliberative processes but also on how the broader public perceives these processes. It has been suggested that citizens’ assemblies can act as information proxies to guide public opinion on policy issues because of their representative features. Alternatively, the case is made that citizens’ assemblies can generate deliberation amongst the public on the specific issues they address. Therefore, Understanding the reception of citizens’ assemblies amongst the public is critical to assessing their democratic uptake. This study aims to explore the extent to which the public in a country is aware that a climate citizens’ assembly is held. So far, we only have limited insight into the degree to which this is the case. Most studies in the field examining the public use experimental research designs. The few that do examine actual cases of climate assemblies are limited to a single-case study, hampering the generalizability of the findings. In this paper, we wish to address this lacuna. A first contribution we make is to examine multiple real-life cases comparatively. Using representative survey data from five national-level cases of climate citizens' assemblies (Austria, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Scotland, and the UK), we analyze who is aware of these assemblies. Additionally, we investigate the factors that influence exposure to them under real-world conditions. Using a pooled analysis, we examine differences and similarities in awareness of the climate assembly across socio-demographic and political groups. A second contribution to the field consists of a country-by-country analysis, which offers reflections on potential contextual influences (e.g. the communication strategies adopted by the assemblies, their media coverage, or attitudes to climate change). Ultimately, our findings contribute to a better understanding of the interplay between deliberative processes and the broader public, advancing the debate on public outreach strategies to bridge the gap between citizens’ assemblies and societal buy-in.