The Democracy–Decarbonization Dilemma: Can Climate Assemblies Provide an Escape Route?

Meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement on climate change demands rapid and systemic economic transformation. Yet, contemporary democracies seem tragically ill-suited to this task. Proposals to insulate climate policy making from democratic control—for instance, through delegation to expert bodies—seem likely to fuel the rise of authoritarian populists, which is already eroding democratic norms and institutions. Deepening democratic engagement with the process of decarbonization may provide an escape route from this apparent “democracy–decarbonization dilemma.” In this vein, there has recently been much enthusiasm for climate assemblies. Such processes can have profound effects on their participants. But can they influence attitudes to democracy and support for ambitious climate policy among the wider public? We conduct a narrative review of the theoretical and empirical literature on democratic mini-publics (DMPs) to answer this question and critically reflect on our findings. We find that DMPs can influence the wider public’s attitudes toward democratic institutions and public policy to some extent. Yet, DMPs alone—even if well publicized—seem unlikely to be sufficient to stimulate the widespread shifts in knowledge, capacities, attitudes and behavior necessary to escape the democracy–decarbonization dilemma. We propose expanding the use, institutionalization, and orientation of DMPs—so that they become a widely recognized and routinized feature of deliberative systems, interacting with both governments and the wider citizenry—while advancing complementary democratic reform initiatives.