Strengthening climate governance through democratic innovations: lessons from European climate assemblies

Addressing the climate and ecological crisis requires deep and rapid economic and social transformation that will have a significant impact on citizens’ lives. At the same time, democratic institutions are facing a crisis of legitimacy, with levels of trust declining across the EU. In this context, deliberative minipublics (DMPs), such as climate assemblies, have gained traction as a tool to meaningfully engage citizens in climate governance and enhance the acceptability, as well as the quality and justice of climate policy. Yet knowledge of the impact of DMPs remains fragmented. A systematic literature review conducted as part of the RETOOL project (Machani et al., 2025) revealed that whilst the impact of DMPs on climate action has received some attention, the impact of DMPs on broader democratic governance has been understudied. This paper seeks to address this gap in the literature by exploring the impact of DMPs across a range of European countries on both climate action and democratic governance. We conduct a comparative review of these DMPs to understand how factors such as levels of institutionalisation and embeddedness (Unegbu and Dupont, 2025) affect their to potential to strengthen democratic climate governance.