Creating and Analysing a Citizens' Parliament: Exploring the Public's Deliberative Capacity

This project will develop and analyse one of the world s most ambitious exercises in citizen deliberation to date. At the centre is a Citizens Parliament, composed of one person randomly selected from each of the 150 federal electoral divisions in Australia. The Citizens Parliament will deliberate questions concerning governmental reform. The project will analyse citizen engagement with politics, the degree to which typical citizens can deliberate complex political issues, and how citizen preferences, capacities, and judgments change in deliberation. Contributions will be made to democratic theory, to the design of institutions for authentic citizen deliberation, and to the social science of citizen participation.