Grappling with “Good Enough”: Selection and Recruitment of Citizens for a Global Citizens’ Assembly
By Reema Patel and Claire Mellier, Iswe Foundation
Iswe Foundation and partners launched the first iteration of a new permanent global citizens’ assembly at the UN Summit of the Future in September 2024.
This article summarizes the first in a series of ‘Deliberating in the Open about the Global Citizens’ Assembly’ workshops, convened by the Iswe Foundation. Hosted by Iswe in partnership with Participedia, the ‘Global Citizens’ Assembly Citizen Selection and Recruitment Workshop’, held on April 23rd, 2025, brought together over 100 speakers and participants to consider Global Citizens’ Assemblies (GCA) recruitment methods, and explore ways to strengthen this practice. The workshop resulted in the following key insights intended to inform the next Global Citizens’ Assembly.
1. Grappling with “Good Enough”
The central tension explored in this workshop revolved around the concept of “good enough” in the context of recruitment methodologies and sortition. While sortition (the practice of randomly selecting participants to form a representative sample using civic lottery for democratic decision-making) is hailed as a way to foster more direct and inclusive forms of democracy, a critical question arose in the context of our conversations:
Is it "good enough"?
The workshop, and the broad and diverse range of perspectives included, called for us to examine the stakes of political legitimacy, inclusion, representation, and trust in democratic processes, and the extent to which choices about selection processes affect these considerations.
At the heart of the debate lies the struggle for legitimacy—on what basis can a randomly selected group be deemed a politically legitimate body for decision-making? Can citizens, politicians, the media, and other stakeholders trust the process of recruitment if they perceive it as incomplete, purposive or selected on grounds other than random selection?
What approach builds more trust with which audiences? These legitimacy questions highlight the need to prepare for the scenario when the GCA gains traction and power, and its recommendations disrupt or confront the narratives of those who oppose the very existence of such a citizens’ led governance body.
The tension between representation and inclusion also plays a significant role: can sortition of a Global Citizens’ Assembly of 100-200 people (a mini public of the world) truly represent the diversity of society, and does it have potential to include all voices, especially those historically marginalised, such as Indigenous, rural and climate-risk-affected populations? In this context, ensuring legitimacy in mini-publics – and democratic innovations broadly – demands more than striving for statistical representation or deployment of universal technocratic models. It requires responsive, context-driven, reflexive, people-centred and justice-oriented design.
The traditional arguments for sortition, as advanced by thinkers like Farzan Ghassim, Tom Lord, and Brett Henig, highlight its potential to overcome entrenched political elitist dialogue and discussion, offering a way to bring ordinary citizens into the decision-making fold. Sortition has traditionally been argued to be one of the most effective mechanisms to select assembly participants according to the principles of randomness, representation and equality. Groups selected by lot are therefore seen as a more authentic reflection of the people, devoid of party politics, vested interests and campaign biases, thus fostering deeper public trust in democratic outcomes. Learnings from grounded theory methodology interviews with participants of the 2021 Global Assembly, led by Lucas Veloso, highlighted that sortition had a strong impact on individual political self-esteem: Interviewees who felt unqualified to discuss the climate crisis viewed sortition as legitimising their participation, regardless of prior knowledge or status. They also felt that there was an impact on the perception of the value of democratic methods: In contexts marked by political corruption, participants viewed sortition positively, reinforcing trust in the GA and democratic methods by signalling that “anyone could be there.”
2. Common Critiques of Sortition and Representative Sampling Methodologies
Despite its potential, sortition faces critiques from numerous scholars and practitioners. Prominent voices such as Curato, Dryzek, Moran, Niemeyer, Peixoto, Ross, Spada and Veloso have raised important concerns about the efficacy of sortition in practice. A number of critiques were surfaced in the workshop:
The representational limitations of sortition. Critics argue that random selection can lead to demographic gaps, particularly with low participation from marginalised communities. This raises the question: Can sortition truly be inclusive if certain groups, due to various barriers, fail to engage fully?
The self-selection bias of sortition. Sortition is susceptible to self-selection bias because participation is typically voluntary in citizens’ assemblies, not compulsory, like it is the case with jury duties. This means individuals who are invited to participate in a deliberative process can choose whether or not to participate, which is seen by some to lead to a biased sample.
The deliberative adequacy of sortition. Critics like Dryzek and Niemeyer suggest that a randomly selected group may lack the necessary capacity or expertise to engage deeply with complex policy issues, and that other forms of diversity beyond random selection are required to enable true deliberation. This concern implies that sortition, while more democratic, may fall short in terms of discursive and deliberative quality, potentially limited by way of constraint for the group’s ability to provide well-reasoned, thoughtful contributions. A number of these critiques can be addressed, however, through careful consideration of the design and implementation of the GCA - as Courant, for instance, argued that representation beyond the selected citizens also matters through inclusion in how knowledge is framed. Another approach, sometimes known as “enclave deliberation,” supports disadvantaged groups to make sense of their situations in a more homogeneous and power-balanced setting. Creating dedicated spaces for deliberation can help these groups develop a shared understanding and articulation of their collective challenges and interests. In practice, by acknowledging the limits of sortition, the process can therefore be designed to create civic forums specifically for structurally disempowered groups to run alongside more broadly representative forums.
Communitarianism. Some scholars, such as Curato and Veloso, worry that sortition’s approach may undermine the cohesion of communities, especially in cases where individuals are selected without acknowledging the strong local or communal ties they have with members of their communities. This critique questions whether random selection can truly reflect the social fabric necessary for meaningful democratic engagement. From this perspective, assembly members are not seen as “atomised individuals who only speak about their own experiences and personal views but as emissaries of the wider community and brokers of communication about their hyper-local realities to the global public”. This foregrounds a “collectivist view of citizen participation as a communitarian exercise instead of a liberal view that centres the individual autonomy of each participant”.
Equity, justice and inclusion: Others raised concerns about the issues with respect to representation and inclusion of community members who, by their very nature, might be marginalised and excluded from the process. Examples of such populations included stateless individuals, refugees and asylum seekers, young people and children, and Indigenous peoples, for whom participation may necessarily be limited or constrained.
Scalability and context insensitivity of sortition-based methods. In their view, one-size-fits-all and more technocratic approaches to recruitment and deliberation may fail to adapt to local needs or specific issues, making them less effective in diverse settings. This critique emphasises the importance of tailoring the process to local contexts.
These critiques highlight the key tensions that must be navigated, and that are surfaced in this summary of the workshop discussions: the balance between legitimacy and political self-efficacy, the tensions between representation and inclusion, and the ongoing debates around equity, justice, fairness, and communitarian versus individual political equality.
3. “Good Enough”: Practical vs. Perfect
To address these critiques, it’s crucial to explore what “good enough” means in practice. Drawing from the work of thinkers mentioned earlier, some perspectives in the workshop, particularly those that were surfaced by practitioners and policymakers, argued that “good enough” is not about perfection but rather pragmatic validity. In this sense, a representative and randomly selected group may not meet every ideal of democratic participation or even of representation, but it may still offer a valid, if imperfect, representation of society. It offers a way to improve upon the current status quo, or unquestioned benchmark - a highly unrepresentative and elitist group of decision makers and interests currently shaping policy. From this point of view, improvement, rather than perfectionism, ought to be the appropriate standard.
4. Potential Methodological Adaptations to Address Critiques
In response to the critiques outlined above, some thinkers have proposed a four-step adaptive methodology that aims to address the core concerns raised by critics of sortition, whilst building from the foundations of sortition. This methodology, as outlined by a range of thinkers such as Hillary, Calderon et al, combines the strengths of random selection with the need for inclusive and context-sensitive processes.
Inclusive Design of the GCA: The first step involves engaging with communities, stakeholders, and experts to frame the knowledge landscape. This process helps ensure that the issues at hand are relevant to the people involved and that the perspectives brought to the table reflect the diversity of broader society.
Purposive Boosts: In this step, strategic outreach or oversampling is used to address underrepresentation or structural exclusion. For example, reaching out specifically to groups that may be underrepresented in the initial random selection process, such as marginalised communities -- for instance including young people, Indigenous communities, and perspectives experiencing high levels of climate risk, helps ensure that their voices are heard.
Tailored process: This requires considering what adjustments to the deliberation process might be required in order to engage specific marginalized groups, for instance through the use of enclave deliberations in community assemblies.
Iterative Review for the GCA recruitment: Finally, an iterative evaluation process allows for ongoing assessment and feedback loops. After recruitment, it’s essential to evaluate whether the group assembled truly represents the diversity and perspectives required to make informed decisions. This review process is critical in determining whether the “good enough” standard has been met and provides the opportunity to refine the approach for future initiatives.
These four steps directly respond to the critiques of representational limitations, deliberative capacity, and scalability by introducing methods to ensure that sortition can be a more inclusive and effective process. However, the credibility of such decisions is determined by the accountability, transparency and legitimacy of the process and the people by which the decisions are made. Some argue that deviation from so-called “pure sortition” are normative and arbitrary decisions.
5. Multiple Goals, Multiple Standards for Recruitment
As researchers Paolo Spada and Azucena Moran have suggested, different goals often imply different strategies for recruitment and participation. A Global Citizens’ Assembly (GCA), for example, might serve multiple functions:
Political legitimacy-building
Policy-shaping
Capacity-building
Creating civic imagination and/or civic and collective efficacy
Solidarity and inclusion
Each of these goals could imply different thresholds or strategies for participant selection. Initiatives, such as the GCA, which strive to realise a number of these goals, will need to negotiate key trade-offs and design choices.
For example, a mini-public focused on policy design might focus on demographic spread and random selection to ensure that the selected group represents various segments of the population. In contrast, a transformative civic space that seeks to inspire community engagement might value community embeddedness and narrative diversity over strict demographic representation, as with community assemblies, which are supported via the development of the Assemblis platform, a core component of the GCA.
This highlights the pluralism of goals and the corresponding need for a pluralism of methods. One-size-fits-all approaches are inadequate because they fail to account for the different purposes a GCA may serve. Tailoring the recruitment process to the specific goal of the assembly ensures that the selected group is equipped to fulfill its intended function.
A key consideration highlighted by a number of participants was the importance of context-specific recruitment. Many people highlighted that recruitment methodologies (whatever the methodology used) should be bespoke, responsive to local needs, and co-designed with local partners. This ensures that the process is rooted in the particular dynamics, issues, and challenges faced by different communities.
For instance, regional community assemblies or youth-led assemblies may require different recruitment strategies compared to issue-specific deliberations or national assemblies. These examples demonstrate that recruitment processes must be designed with the particular context in mind to be effective and meaningful.
7. Embracing Constructive Imperfection
By embracing constructive imperfection, we can build more inclusive, legitimate, and adaptive democratic processes that engage citizens in meaningful ways. It is through ongoing innovation, evaluation, and responsiveness that we can work towards a democratic system that truly reflects the complexities of the societies it aims to serve. The key is to continue experimenting, reflecting, and holding the process accountable to the diverse needs of society.
***
Note: This article reflects Iswe’s effort to summarise the contours of the debate in relation to participant selection and recruitment methodologies for the GCA.
In line with the ethos of “deliberating in the open”, Iswe in collaboration with Participedia convened an online workshop on April 23rd 2025 to explore the topic of citizens selection and recruitment for the Global Citizens’ Assembly. This article, as well as the recording of the event and the presenters’ slides form the resources which will be shared with the relevant governance bodies of the GCA who will make the decisions on selection and recruitment methodologies.
Co-authors: Reema Patel, GCA Implementation Director, Iswe and Claire Mellier, Knowledge and Practice Lead, Iswe.
Resources: