How are citizen assemblies perceived and received?

For the first time since Athenian democracy, political authorities allocated decisive policy-making power to the people. Recently in British Columbia, the Netherlands, and Ontario, a group of randomly selected citizens was asked to design the next electoral system. Instead of simply voting, sanctioning or being consulted, they had the chance to develop a new political institution. These three citizen assemblies were organized similarly: each unfolded over an almost year-long process were participants learned about electoral systems, consulted the public, deliberated, debated and decided. The three assemblies came up with three different solutions. However, none has yet resulted in electoral reform. The two Canadian proposals were rejected by the public in referenda, while the Dutch recommendation was submitted to cabinet and mostly ignored. This paper analyzes reactions to the unprecedented and exceptional democratic experiments. It deals with how the assemblies and their proposals were received by political actors (governments, political parties, interest groups, media, and citizens). Empirically, it draws on media content analyses and public opinion surveys. First, a content analysis of the quantity and tone of newspaper coverage was conducted in British Columbia and Ontario throughout the assembly proceedings and the referendum campaign. Second, a rolling cross-sectional survey captured the opinions of a random sample of the population of each province during the campaign. We use this evidence to document the views of both elites and masses toward the assemblies and the electoral systems they proposed, and to explain the failure of all three citizen assemblies to get reform implemented.