Designing a Meta-Deliberative System: The Case of the Geneva Citizens' Assembly for Democracy

In the face of democratic crises, innovations promise renewal through a variety of designed venues for participation. However, the field often suffers from "solutionism"-treating citizens' assemblies as ends in themselves rather than tools for systemic change. I argue that to avoid being siloed, these assemblies must function as "meta-deliberative" sites that trigger a reflexive problematization of the broader democratic framework. This paper analyzes the Geneva Citizens' Assembly for Democracy-an ongoing state-initiated process, whose mandate is the reform of the cantonal democratic system, co-designed and coordinated by the author. Its originality lies in a dual-track representational architecture that moves beyond descriptive "mini-public" orthodoxy toward a relational model of substantive representation. By coupling a statistically representative "General Group" with five "Connected Groups" composed of disenfranchised actors-including youth, non-nationals, and persons with disabilities-the design replaces the passive "mirror" of representation with a proactive "counter-public" logic. This architecture ensures that the representation of marginalized perspectives is not left to the chance of the draw, but is structurally institutionalized. Adopting an action research framework, I analyze the design and implementation phases to evaluate how this split-body model procedurally negotiates the tensions between majoritarian popular legitimacy and marginalized epistemic justice. I argue that by institutionalizing the interaction between these distinct social positions, the Geneva model functions as a "micro-systemic" intervention that replicates-and then seeks to resolve-the representational deficits of the broader polity. The case demonstrates that centering the expertise of lived exclusion is a prerequisite for meta-deliberative success, transforming the citizens' assembly from a static tool into a catalyst for systemic reform.