What Comes First, Global Democracy or its Technologies? The Case of Assemblis and the 2026 Global Citizens Assembly

Global deliberation is one of the frontiers of deliberative democracy. From proposals to completed processes, we have seen ambitious initiatives such as the Global Assembly on the Climate and Ecological Crisis, the Metaverse Community Forum, We the Internet, the World Wide Views project, and the Global Citizens’ Assembly on Genome Editing. However, despite the boldness and importance of these processes, it is increasingly unclear whether there is a strong global ‘demos’ or citizen-centred democratic infrastructure capable of sustaining them. Like any other democratic practice, global deliberation is materially and technologically enacted. For whom are technologies of global deliberation designed? This paper reflects on the co-construction of global deliberation technologies and global deliberation communities of practice by examining the case of Assemblis, designed to support community participation in the 2026 Global Citizens Assembly. Assemblis, as a piece of technological infrastructure, is intended to deepen and intertwine the often disparate global movement of deliberative democracy. Through this, we explore what its first few years of operation have elucidated about the concept of “global democracy”. We examine first the context in which Assemblis was created and how its intended purpose interacted with larger political and deliberative landscapes. We discuss Assemblis as a physical technology – the features it has, the process of making those features, and the various ways it is used by users – and as a social one – how its applications are informed by its users, how it unearths wider democratic practices and cultures, and what those practices look like in communities and regions across the world. Finally, we explore how this case speaks to the co-construction between tools and emerging democratic orders that are not found ‘ready-made’, but are manufactured as they develop.