Citizens’ Assembly on Democracy in the UK

The Citizens’ Assembly on Democracy in the UK will bring together 75 members of the public from across the United Kingdom over six online weekends between September and December 2021. Assembly members will be selected at random so that they resemble the UK voting-age population in terms of age, gender, ethnicity, social class, region and political attitudes. The Assembly will explore what kind of democratic system people want in the UK. In particular, it will investigate what roles people think should be played by the government, parliament, the courts, and the general public, and also what expectations people have for how participants in UK democracy should behave.

Over the six weekends, Assembly members will have a chance to hear from and question a wide range of expert speakers and discuss their thoughts with fellow members. Members will then formulate recommendations to the Citizens’ Assembly’s core question: How should the UK’s democratic system? We hope that the Assembly and its recommendations will inform debates about democracy among policy-makers in governments and parliaments in all parts of the UK.

The Citizens’ Assembly on Democracy in the UK is being run jointly by a team of researchers at the Constitution Unit at University College London (UCL) and by Involve, the UK’s leading public participation charity. Member recruitment is being run by the Sortition Foundation. It forms a central part of the Democracy in the UK after Brexit project.

For more information about this Citizens’ Assembly and the wider project, please contact either the project’s Principal Investigator, Dr. Alan Renwick (a.renwick@ucl.ac.uk), or the project’s Research Assistant, James Cleaver (j.cleaver@ucl.ac.uk).