Citizen assemblies should involve citizens as experts on their own values

SUMMARY Citizen assemblies (CAs) could enrich policymaking by unveiling public values and preferences for climate polices. Yet, the current paradigm guiding CAs is rationalistic and primarily fact orientated. This might under-exploit the potential of CAs to bring a unique contribution to climate policymaking. I propose a paradigm shift that creates explicit room for citizens’ values in CAs. Using concrete examples, I illustrate how every step of CAs could be transformed to elicit citizens’ values: from citizen selection, to setting the remit, facilitating the discussion, and shaping and institutionalizing policy recommendations


INTRODUCTION
Representative democracy seems ill-equipped to develop climate policies that would be accepted widely in society, as illustrated by public unrest with regard to climate policies in many countries.Some think the policies go too far, as in the French Yellow Vests movement and anti-wind park demonstrations in many countries.At the other end of the spectrum, climate activists protest because climate policies do not go far enough.To reach climate policies that are effective in combating climate change and socially acceptable, it is critical to incorporate both-scientific facts and societal values-in climate policymaking. 1,2While closely intertwined, facts include scientific knowledge about climate change and the effectiveness of various decarbonization measures, while values are general goals and ideals that define what individuals and social groups find important. 3Here, I refer to values in their most abstract sense, namely, as defining what people find important in their lives in general, not tied to a specific topic like climate policy.This is important, because climate policies have impacts for many different dimensions of people's lives, going beyond the effects on nature and the environment.Research shows values determine the key principles that people set for developing and implementing climate policies. 4,5Policy-makers can retrieve facts from experts such as the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, as well as from citizens, for example, by asking about people's own knowledge and experience of their local environments and through citizen science. 6,7Yet, another importantlikely the most important-contribution from citizens lies in their knowledge about their own key values and principles-a unique knowledge that experts and politicians would otherwise not have. 6,8Complex societal issues such as climate change and energy transition contain many more societally relevant attributes than the carbon emission reductions and cost efficiency that typically dominate political debates. 9The question is how to best retrieve this knowledge from citizens and incorporate it in climate policymaking.
A widely advocated way to incorporate public values and principles in climate governance is by moving from top-down decision-making to more participatory processes. 10Compared with many other possible forms of engaging the public in policymaking, 11 citizen assemblies (CAs) in particular have been gaining much popularity in recent years.CAs are participatory processes with three core elements: democratic lottery, deliberation, and policy recommendations (knoca.eu,fide.eu,participedia.net).First, lottery-and quota-based selection gathers a group of participants (99-150 for national CAs, 12 but can be smaller) that are representative of the general population in terms of socio-economic characteristics and sometimes political and climate-related attitudes.This is supposed to overcome self-selection biases that may plague other forms of participatory democracy.Second, CAs are designed to promote public deliberation rather than merely saying yes or no to policies as in referenda for example.Specifically, citizens participating in CAs meet several times (usually a series of weekends 12 ) and are encouraged to reflect on policies more thoroughly than they would normally do in daily life, to justify their own perspective, and to listen to the perspectives of others. 13Third, CAs end with policy recommendations on the issue at hand.The last years have witnessed a proliferation of CAs on climate (e.g., the French Citizens' Convention on Climate [CCC] and the UK Climate Assembly) and related themes (e.g., the Dutch Citizen Assembly on Energy [DCAE] and the EU Citizen Panels on energy efficiency and on food waste).While many examples come from Europe, other parts of the world also experiment with CAs (e.g., Canada, the United States, Brazil, Japan; knoca.eu).
The combination of mirroring the general population and thinking about issues more thoroughly than normally makes CAs a promising strategy to incorporate societal values and principles in climate policymaking.However, there is a blind spot in scientific theorizing and practical application with respect to how citizens' values and principles should be evoked in CAs.Normative literature on public participation speaks of ideal conditions of dialogue, diversity, deliberation, and decision-making power (i.e., the four Ds of public participation 14 ) to reconcile policymaking and public values. 12,15Yet, these are normative and abstract doctrines, in a sense that they say how participatory practices should look like, but not how to get there, in particular how to evoke people's important values and principles. 14In fact, there seems to be a widely shared assumption that, as long as there is heterogeneity of participants who receive balanced information and follow deliberation rules (e.g., listen openly to others and justify their own position with reason), their values and principles will naturally end up in policy recommendations, and one only needs to make sure that these recommendations get enough mandate. 14However, I argue that due to the lack of an explicit focus on values and by focusing only on balanced information, sophisticated reasoning, and justifying own position with reason, we may have a situation where the focus is mainly on facts while the underlying values remain uncovered.This might hinder the potential of CAs to deliver a truly unique contribution to climate policymaking, namely, the insights into people's core values and principles.If CAs are meant to reach more socially responsible and acceptable climate policies, I argue values need to be explicitly incorporated in the design principles for CAs.

Rationalistic approach to CAs
CAs are rooted in deliberative theory, building on the Habermas' ideals of communicative rationality. 15The assumption is that citizens can reach sensible decisions through processing balanced information and arguing with reason. 13In CAs, this translates into prime focus on information provision and rational, fact-based deliberation.It resonates with the common sentiment among politicians, experts, and professionals that ordinary citizens lack knowledge about issues related to climate change and need information to help them make reasonable choices. 2 Indeed, public communication about energy transition often slips into facts more than values, 2,16 guided by the belief that such complex topics need to be tackled primarily-and exclusively-from a socio-technical perspective.This shapes CAs into a rationalist, expert-led endeavor, with a lot of information provision that is in turn expected to lead to well-informed and fact-based policy recommendations.
The rationalistic approach penetrates each step of the design of CAs, from setting the remit to formulating policy recommendations.For example, the citizens in the French Citizens' CCC were tasked to propose measures to reduce the country's greenhouse gas emissions by at least 40% by 2030 compared with 1990, in a spirit of social justice.This type of task requires deep scientific and technical understanding of the causes and consequences of greenhouse gas emissions and the curbing potential of various technologies and system changes, alluding to the need for a lot of expert input.In the CCC alone, there were more than 130 speakers, an expert support group guiding citizens throughout the process, and a team of jurists to help write policy recommendations in legal terms. 17Information provision and expert participation are, therefore, dominant and oftentimes steering elements of CAs, not only because of the assumed need of background information, but also because of the expected effective and directly implementable policy recommendations. 18,19Aside from the discussion on the effects of expert participation on citizens' autonomy and the legitimacy of CAs, [18][19][20] the issue that I am raising here is that while trying to get the facts right, CAs hardly, or not at all, pay explicit attention to value elicitation.
Idealization of neutral, objectively correct, and balanced information is an illusion in itself.Science and technology studies have long demonstrated that scientific facts are co-created in unison with societal developments (by choosing the questions to answer, the methods, the interpretation of the findings, etc.) and, as such, are never independent of biases, subjectivities, commonalities, discourses, institutions, identities, traditions, and, of course, societal values. 21Similarly, by selecting which questions to answer and which experts to invite, CAs inevitably make choices for certain values.Furthermore, ample literature in social sciences has debunked the information-deficit paradigm.Most people are not ignorant or unaware of the climate crisis-the vast majority knows that climate change is happening and is largely caused by humans, 22 and people no longer think that climate change will only happen in the future and/or will only affect others but not themselves. 235][26] It is, therefore, important for CAs to accept that there is no one truth and that citizens construe their own truths based on their underlying values.In fact, CAs could enormously profit from eliciting and distilling the core societal values that underpin public perceptions and acceptability of climate policies.
Noteworthy, even without explicitly focusing on values, values do come up in CAs, either if citizens talk about them directly, or as the underlying forces behind the discussion and policy recommendations. 18,19For example, citizens might advocate individual actions to combat climate change, such as recycling and carpooling, not because they see these actions as most effective to decrease CO 2 emissions, but because they see them as their moral duty to nature and future generations. 27Policy measures that came out of the French CCC were lacking technical details and a vision on financing them 17 and were estimated to meet the set reduction targets by two-thirds at best and likely considerably less. 18Nevertheless, citizens sent an important signal that nature should be cherished, for instance, by proposing a constitutional recognition of the crime of ecocide. 18Yet, it is oftentimes not an explicit part of the CAs design to explicate the values that underpin policy recommendations.When president Macron immediately rejected some recommendations (e.g., reducing the speed limit on highways), there was no consideration of whether and how the values that underpin those recommendations could be pursued in policymaking, possibly with alternative measures.I propose the CCC could have benefitted by going deeper into the underlying values and the key pre-conditions for citizens to change their behavior-the information that need to remain even if concrete measures are not possible and should guide policy-makers in making alternative choices.For that, values need to become an explicit element in the design principles for CAs.

Toward a more values-based approach
The theory of basic human values contains 56 values mapped along two dimensions: (1) self-enhancement and self-transcendence values and (2) openness to change and conservatism values. 3Particularly the self-enhancement and self-transcendence value dimension has been shown to be relevant in guiding people's perceptions and behaviors related to the environment, climate change and sustainability. 28,29Four types of values within this dimension are known to play an important role in public acceptability of climate policies: biospheric values (i.e., wanting to protect nature and the environment) and altruistic values (i.e., wanting to protect the well-being of others and the society) as self-transcendence values, and egoistic values (i.e., wanting to safeguard and improve personal resources) and hedonic values (i.e., seeking pleasure and comfort) as selfenhancement values. 30,31Noteworthy, the basic human values differ from other, more cognitive constructs, such as worldviews and knowledge systems, which define how people perceive climate change (e.g., a human-caused vs. natural process 32 ), to what extent they think that people could and should do something to protect nature (e.g., nature is fragile and people need to change their behavior to protect it vs. nature is robust and people can rely on the free market and technology to deal with climate change 33 ), and for which reasons (e.g., anthropocentric-for the well-being of people-vs.ecocentric-for nature's own sake 34 ).In CAs, it is important realize that not everyone has the same knowledge and construal of reality.Some knowledge gaps may need to be filled in and misperceptions may need to be corrected, not excluding that some different views on reality will prevail.At the same time, people's worldviews and knowledge may too be influenced by their values, 28 underlining the importance of values as the basis for discussions in CAs.
Despite the prominent role that values play in policy acceptability, people normally do not talk about their underlying values and are often unaware of which values lie behind other people's decisions. 35For example, while biospheric and altruistic values are fairly strongly endorsed by many people, most people nevertheless think that their fellow citizens care little about these values. 35This has important implications for CAs-people may underestimate how much others care about the environment and the common good, and may instead focus on financial and utilitarian arguments to appear rational and convince others.Talking about facts without unveiling the underlying values can therefore leave important issues unaddressed and can lead to impasses if people interpret that others have opposite values to their own. 36t the same time, deliberation in CAs could play an important role in eliciting public values.1][42] This process helps to identify which values lie behind public acceptability of climate policies.Deliberation can add to this in two ways.First, people can have more information and more time to think, in greater depth, about how climate policies may impact on their core values.Second, through discussions with others, people can gain a better overview of which values other people endorse, how different values are affected by climate policies, as well as where potential value conflicts might lie.This can help to come up with policy recommendations that are more reflective of different values in society.There have been attempts to use deliberation to elicit people's values toward energy systems change, for example. 4,43To use the full potential of deliberation in CAs, I argue it is critical that values gain explicit attention in every step of the CAs design: from citizen selection, to defining the remit and facilitating the deliberation, and eventually to formulating and institutionalizing policy recommendations (Figure 1).
Hereby I draw suggestions for how to facilitate a values-based approach in CAs, inspired by (1) the UK's Climate Assembly (CAUK) in 2020, with 108 participants, lasting for six weekends, and (2) the DCAE in 2023, with 75 participants, lasting for four Saturdays.The CAUK had a two-steps approach, where citizens started with the discussion on their underlying values and principles (first step) before they switched to a more fact-orientated approach for evaluating concrete policies (second step).The DCAE, where I was part of the organizing committee, was designed entirely to put values at the heart of the CA.My aim is not to showcase these specific CAs, but to use them as a prompt for stirring a wider scientific and societal debate about the role of values in CAs.

Include values in the democratic lottery
In CAs, participants are typically drawn based on demographic quotas, such as gender, age, income, and place of residence (knoca.eu;fide.eu).Besides demographic characteristics, CAs would ideally also represent different values in society. 44The CAUK used people's attitudes to climate change and the DCAE used political orientation to select participants.Similarly, individuals' endorsement of different values could be used as a stratification criterion for the democratic lottery.Individuals' values can be measured with established scales 29,45 and selection quotas can be set based on value distributions retrieved from, for instance, the European Social Survey or a country's own national data if available.

Ask for key values and principles in the remit
Instead of tasking citizens to come up with concrete decarbonization measures, for which they may not have the right expertise, their values could be retrieved by asking to set the key criteria for climate policies.In the CAUK, as the first step in the first weekend, assembly members had to come up with values and principles that they think should guide the UK's path to net zero.They developed 25 values and principles; Table 1 lists nine values and principles voted with highest priority at least by one-third of the assembly.In the remainder of the CAUK, the citizens used these values and principles to evaluate and vote on specific pre-defined carbon reduction measures. 46As such, the values and principles that CAs delineate could serve as criteria for policymaking, as commented by a UK government clerk: ''I think it's very useful to get a clear steer that the public as a whole thinks fairness is important in this transition'' 46 (p.84).In the DCAE, the central question to participants was which key pre-conditions they would set for the Dutch energy system in 2050.Different from most-if not all-other CAs, the entire DCAE was dedicated to defining policy pre-conditions, without at all asking citizens for concrete decarbonization measures.Provide value-relevant information Deliberative theory builds on a rationalist approach, assuming that if people get the right information and argue with reason, they will make good decisions. 13,48However, people do not consider all possible facts in their decisions, but instead are guided by the values and principles that they find most important. 49CAs could play a central role in helping citizens better understand how climate policies may foster or impede their core values.For that, instead of providing dry facts and figures, it is important to show to citizens which aspects of climate policies can have implications for their core values and how, a process known as value instantiation. 50Indeed, a meta-analysis showed that public acceptability of climate policies was much more influenced by perceived distributive fairness (e.g., how subsidies and taxes are distributed across groups in society) than by people's knowledge about climate change (Bergquist et al., 2022).Facts will be more useful for the discussion when they serve as "value indicators,'' 34 for example, emission reductions and effects on biodiversity can be relevant indicators for people's biospheric values, equality of income distribution-for altruistic values, possible changes in energy prices-for egoistic values, and effects of climate policies on people's daily routines and behaviors-for hedonic values.In the DCAE, participants could choose themselves which experts they wanted to hear.They invited different speakers, including technical experts (e.g., on electricity grid expansion), as well as psychologists (e.g., on what motivates people to act sustainably), and nongovernmental organizations (e.g., on equal distribution of costs and benefits in energy cooperatives).Asking citizens themselves what information they wish to have and expanding the sort of expertise available in CAs can help to provide value-relevant information in CAs.

Facilitate the discussion on values and value trade-offs
It is not a given that people will discuss their important values and principles in CAs, as values are abstract concepts and most people have not yet instantiated their core values in the context of climate policies.In the DCAE, participants were presented with the four value categories: biospheric, altruistic, egoistic, and hedonic values, and discussed which values and principles across these categories are important for climate policies.To facilitate the discussion, the four value categories were relabeled to avoid scientific jargon and make the values more accessible.Biospheric values became ''green'' values; altruistic, ''solidarity'' values; egoistic, ''self'' values; and hedonic, ''pleasure'' values. 51econd, trained moderators asked questions to elicit participants' values, such as ''Why is this an important question for you?'', ''Which values are at stake?'', and ''Which values should be protected?''Whenever the discussion was slipping into facts (e.g., expansive debate on technical details), moderators used such questions to bring attention to the underlying values.Third, some keywords from the discussion were mapped across the four value categories, to show to the participants which important values and principles they have already identified (Figure 2).Various other methods could be used to facilitate a value-based discussion, from positive future scenario building (e.g., youtopialab.com)to gamification (e.g., viewsthegame.com);they need yet to be tested and evaluated in CAs.
At the end of the DCAE, the participants expressed that while they appreciated the values-based approach, they could have been challenged more to tackle value conflicts.Notably, different values are at stake in climate policies and there is no single best and unequivocal solution. 52Whereas public participation is sometimes seen primarily as a way to overcome value conflicts and reach consensus, bringing values conflicts to the surface could in fact be the largest added value of CAs. 52,53Two outcomes are possible here: adversaries may discover that they hold similar values (e.g., valuing the environment), but favor different ways to strive for them (e.g., conserving nature vs.A rationalistic and a value-based approach in the process of a CA expanding renewables), and/or adversaries may disagree on which values to priorities (e.g., environmental vs. egoistic).In both cases, it is important to flag which values are at stake, how those values are impacted by climate policies, and where the main conflicts lie.Citizens may propose collective solutions, such as providing compensations for values that are affected more negatively than other values, and/or they may reach agreements about which value trade-offs are acceptable.Yet, I propose that conflict resolution is not a goal in itself in CAs, as it might give a false impression that compromises can be reached relatively quickly and easily.It is in fact valuable input from CAs to communicate to policy-makers how many different values are at stake, and which core values need to be considered and thoroughly navigated when developing climate policies.

Explain the underlying values and principles in policy recommendations
From the values-based approach, policy recommendations serve as channels for CAs to transmit the core societal values and principles.It follows that if a concrete policy recommendation is rejected by policymakers, alternatives need to be considered that could do justice to the values and principles underpinning that recommendation.In practice, this means shifting from solely the ''what'' question, namely concrete decarbonization measures, to the ''why'' question, namely, what are the underlying values and how to accommodate them.The DCAE, for instance, delivered 25 policy advices, of which 19 received the majority vote, each containing the problem identified by the CA (e.g., ''Exclusion of certain individuals and groups from the en-ergy transition, because of the lack of money, knowledge, and ability, or because they do not speak the language''), the future they want (e.g., ''That no one in the Netherlands is left behind in the energy transition, that we do it together and that the separation in society does not become bigger''), and how to get there (e.g., ''On local level, the government as soon as possible provides resources (money, support) for the less fortunate so that they can achieve the same results in the energy transition as the more fortunate'').
One might argue that the values and principles prioritized by citizens, such as the fairness and responsibility principles, are obvious and trivial, but this is a misperception.The Netherlands' Scientific Council for the Government Policy has concluded that until now the Dutch policymaking on climate has been driven exclusively by efficiency motives (i.e., maximizing carbon reductions at minimal financial costs), without considering fairness principles. 54Next, research shows that policy recommendations that come from CAs are more ambitious in reducing consumerism than national climate policies, as the latter are typically underpinned by the principles of economic growth. 55As such, values and principles brought up by citizens in CAs can be a paradigm shift for traditional policymaking; it is important that these values and principles are explicated in policy recommendations, to not be brushed away based merely on technical details of concrete decarbonization measures.

Institutionalize values
A major risk of the values-based approach is that bringing general values and principles into policy recommendations might provide room for politicians to interpret those recommendations in a way that best suits their preferences.For example, demanding fair policies might allow for cherry-picking from the many fairness principles (e.g., polluter pays, everyone contributes equally 54 ), depending on which principle is the most lucrative in a given situation.An important added value of CAs could be to provide policy-makers with insights into what the public themselves consider a fair climate policy.The Netherlands' Scientific Council for the Government Policy has published a useful report listing all possible fairness principles, but without taking a stance which principles to apply when. 54CAs could enrich such reports by providing citizens' perspective on which fairness principles to apply when, in particular which values and whose values to prioritize when and how.In parallel, institutional transformations are needed to ensure continuous quality check of policies according to the values and principles put forward by CAs.One example might be a committee consisting of both citizen representatives and experts, the latter including not only climate scientists but also experts in psychology, ethics, and moral analysis.Some attempts have already been made to establish permanent climate CAs (e.g., in Milan, Brussels) that would support policymaking continuously rather than being a one-off project.
An important characteristic of the values-based approach is that it prevents the assumption that citizens should complete the entire process by themselves: from defining the guiding values and principles to developing concrete policies that are both politically feasible and effective in combating climate change.According to the values-based approach, the purpose of CAs is not to replace the current democratic system, but to enrich it with citizens' unique insights.That is, citizens can The number of votes show priorities, not levels of support (i.e., the number of times the principle was voted as the highest priority from the total of 25 principles).A lack of votes does not mean that CA members disagreed with the principle, just that it was less prioritized.Adapted from the CAUK report. 47elineate important values and principles that can be used as guidelines by policymakers, through a socially responsible decision-making process that continues after a specific CA has finished.[58]

Conclusion
CAs could potentially enrich climate policymaking by bringing to the forefront key societal values and principles and generating ideas how to reconcile policies with these values and principles.This could lead to climate and energy policies that can count on more public support than is currently the case.However, to realize the full potential of CAs, a transformation is needed in theory and in practice from a rationalist, fact-orientated approach toward a more values-based approach.Specifically, CAs need to be approached and designed in a way that helps to elicit citizens' values and to ensure through institutional changes that values are taken up in policymaking.As participants of the DCAE have put it in one of their policy recommendations: ''We find it important to more often have a dialogue between citizens-about their values, experts-about good solutions, and politicians.'' 51

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.A rationalistic and a value-based approach in the process of a CA

Figure 2 .
Figure 2. Values and principles mentioned by citizens in the DCAEAdapted from the DCAE report.51

Table 1 .
Values and principles that, according to the CA of the UK (CAUK), should underpin the UK's pathway to net zero