Nordic Deliberation Learning Call: Beyond Polarisation and Polls

This is an external event hosted by members of the KNOCA community of practice. It is hosted by SoCentral (Norway), Sitra (Finland), We Do Democracy (Denmark), and Digidem Lab (Sweden).

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Across the Nordic countries, Citizens’ Assemblies are increasingly used to strengthen democratic participation and legitimacy. Today, political decisions are often made under pressure from special interests, polarised debates, declining trust between citizen and politicians and short-term opinion polling, weakening the links among citizens and between citizens and their representatives.

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With the decline of citizens participation, we lose something vital: spaces where broad and diverse groups of citizens can deliberate on what they collectively find fair and desirable. Citizens Assemblies re-introduce these spaces and places citizens to the center of decision-making processes. In this Nordic Deliberation Learning Call, we step back and ask a foundational question: How can well-designed deliberative processes strengthen trust and democratic ties, improve the quality of decisions, and renew democratic legitimacy?  

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Join this event for a morning of introduction to the OECD principles for deliberative processes and shared exploration of the transformative potential of Citizens’ Assemblies in the Nordic landscape. The session is open to all and especially relevant for you, if you are an academic, a public servant, or a democracy professional seeking a clear, grounded introduction to Citizens’ Assemblies as a democratic innovation: when to use them, how they work, and what makes them robust.

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Program:

08.30 - Welcome and introduction to the Nordic Deliberation Partnership

08.40 - How to create a good and robust citizen assembly by Claudia Chwaliz, CEO of DemocracyNext and previously leading OECD's work on innovative citizen participation

08.50 - OECD principles in practice: examples from the nordic deliberative landscape

You will hear how three concrete cases in Norway, Denmark and Sweden have followed and designed by the OECD principles.

09.30 - Closing & thank you for today!

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You can read more about the event here.