IN THE COMING week, thousands of households across Austria will receive an invitation to participate in a citizens’ assembly with a unique goal: to determine how to spend the €25 million fortune of a 31-year-old heiress, Marlene Engelhorn, who believes that the system that allowed her to inherit such a vast sum of money (tax free) is deeply flawed.
Austria, like many countries across the world, suffers from a wealth gap: a small percentage of the population controls a disproportionate amount of wealth and attendant power.
Engelhorn is not alone in calling out this unfairness; in the US, where wealth inequality has been rising for decades, a small number of the super-rich are actually pushing for higher taxes to support public services.
The Austrian experiment is somewhat unique, however, in seeking to engage ordinary
citizens in directly determining how a substantial fortune should be distributed.
Growing wealth gaps are dangerous for democracy, and the news cycle in the past few years has been inundated with warnings about the fate of even well-established democracies around the world.
From headline-grabbing events like the storming of the US Capitol in 2021, to the gradual, looming threat of authoritarianism in European countries like Hungary and Poland, to the recent worrying uptick of far-right activity in Ireland, threats to democracy from both state and non-state actors seem to be abounding.
2024 promises to be a pivotal year for democracy globally: a record 60 countries will hold elections.
While the unprecedented numbers of citizens around the world voting this year may seem to be evidence of a democratic boom, some of these elections will be far from free and fair and may result in strengthening authoritarian leaders.
Elections even in traditionally robust democracies are also at risk from disinformation, outside interference, wealth inequality and, perhaps most damaging, a general disillusionment of ordinary citizens with the entire democratic process.
At this time of crisis, we need to start thinking about creative solutions to help revitalise and renew democracy.
The Austrian experiment, while instigated by a private citizen, is a fascinating example of the potential of citizens’ assemblies to play a role.
Citizens’ assemblies come in many different forms and have been trialled in a range of countries around the world. They usually consist of a representative sample of ordinary citizens, who come together to consider a particular topic and make recommendations to elected representatives on how to proceed. They engage in a structured process of learning and deliberation, hearing from experts, advocacy groups and those with direct experience of the matter under consideration, with the goal of weighing up the options available and providing a reasoned path forward.
Ireland has taken a trailblazing role internationally in incorporating citizens’ assemblies into our democratic process. Since the original Convention on the Constitution in 2012, we have had a succession of citizens’ assemblies which have tackled matters as diverse as abortion, climate change, gender equality, biodiversity, drug use and models of local government for Dublin.
Our citizens’ assemblies have demonstrated that ordinary citizens are well capable of grappling with complex constitutional and policy matters and making well-reasoned and sensible proposals for reform. They remain, however, a “top-down” process; the discretion lies with the government as to whether to establish a citizens’ assembly, what topics to assign and whether to actually implement any subsequent recommendations.
Citizens’ assemblies have arisen in part from a growing feeling of disconnection between ordinary people and their representativeness – the roots of Ireland’s journey to incorporating citizens’ assemblies into our constitutional reform process can be found in the sense of anger and distrust of our institutions following the 2008 financial crisis.
Some scholars of democracy have argued for a much more powerful role for citizen bodies; the Yale professor Hélene Landemore, for instance, proposes the concept of “open democracy” in response to the failings of electoral democracy, in which lottery-based citizen institutions would be empowered in law and policy-making.
Even in the context of the representative democracy with which we are familiar, however, citizens’ assemblies have the potential to go further in meaningfully involving the public in making important collective decisions. Some countries, for instance, have experimented with democratic innovations that seek to give citizens a much more empowered role.
Originating in Brazil, “participatory budgeting” – a process allowing ordinary citizens to have a direct say in their public budget – has been used in a variety of contexts worldwide, highlighting the potential for more proactive citizen involvement in local government.
While citizens’ assemblies have generally been used in Ireland to date to deliberate on constitutional and wider policy issues, local issues often have a more direct impact on a given community.
It is worth bearing in mind that Ireland will have local and EU elections this year, which typically see very low turnout relative to general elections. The use of local citizens’ assemblies may attract greater engagement in local government.
Other countries have passed laws requiring citizens’ assemblies in certain circumstances; Mongolia, for instance, passed a law in 2017 mandating the holding of a Deliberative Poll (a type of citizens’ assembly) prior to amending the constitution.
In 2019, the Osbelgian parliament (the German speaking part of Belgium) established a permanent Citizens’ Council, in which citizens have the power to set the agenda for reforms. These experiences all demonstrate the potential for citizens to do more than only make recommendations on topics assigned to them by government.
Democracy around the world today faces many challenges, but also presents us with the opportunities to be creative and think about how to do things differently – more meaningful involvement of ordinary citizens is a first step.
Seána Glennon is an Irish and English qualified solicitor, Chief Outreach Officer at University College Dublin’s Centre for Constitutional Studies and a Fellow of the University of Ottawa Public Law Centre.
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