Deliberative Democracy and Ecological Transition: The French Citizens' Convention for Climate

Democracies are struggling to respond to the climate crisis. One promising approach to the ecological transition is based on innovations involving panels of citizens drawn at random. Many countries have experimented with this form of deliberative democracy at national and local levels. These citizens’ assemblies formulate public policy proposals.

The French Citizens' Convention for Climate is the largest in terms of size, duration and mandate. Thanks to a multi-disciplinary field survey involving around twenty researchers, this book provides an understanding of the complexity of this experience from several angles: procedures and processes; the identity and roles of its members; relationships with expertise and representatives; evaluation and comparison with other cases.

Deliberative Democracy and Ecological Transition plays an important role in reflecting on an original practice of democratic innovation and its potential for fair governance of climate policies.

Dimitri Courant is a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University, USA. He holds a double doctorate in political science from the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, and the University of Paris 8, France. He was a postdoctoral Fung Global Fellow at Princeton University, USA.

Bernard Reber is a philosopher, specializing in ethics and politics, Director of Research at the CNRS and a member of the Political Research Center at Sciences Po Paris, Cevipof, France. For over two decades, he has analyzed and helped to set up a number of deliberative experiments.