The Extended Citizens’ Assembly Model for Collaborative Governance:

Abstract

Based on data from two Citizens’ Assemblies and a year-long participatory action-research process, this article describes on-going attempts to shift the political culture towards collaborative governance in Gipuzkoa (Basque Country), Spain. Quantitative and qualitative evaluation data from a Citizens’ Assembly in 2022 suggest that such representative-deliberative processes might be transformative under some circumstances, increasing action confidence, building capacity and co-creating a shared vision of the future. Could it be that the increase in confidence is a side-result of the co-creation of a shared vision? The growing literature on the impact of standard Citizens' Assembly models is used to explore and refine this hypothesis. Research has uncovered some barriers to such an impact, such as outcome-contingency and difficulties to scale because limited resources. To tackle those problems, and help institutionalize existing Citizens’ Assemblies, a prototype for an Extended Citizens’ Assembly is presented. This model contributes to collaborative governance by facilitating online-onsite deliberation in a frugal way and further extending those transformative and visionary capacities that Citizens’ Assemblies and other experiments in democratic inquiry help to cultivate in cities and regions.