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Politicians By Chance | Civic Europe
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Politicians By Chance

We want a major participation of the citizens in the politics, for this we want to introduce the Citizens' Assemblies randomly selected.

Creators

Who is behind this?

Fabio Quattromani

COMITATO ITALIANO PER LE ASSEMBLEE DEI CITTADINI ESTRATTI A SORTE – POLITICI PER CASO

https://www.politicipercaso.it/

Italy

Idea

Idea pitch

We want to bring in Italy first and then in Europe the legal institute of the citizens’ assembly of people randomly selected. These discuss, helped by experts, about a matter and propose their solutions.
Our idea is to experiment with a first national assembly in Italy in which the participants will discuss the ecological transition. It will be divided in two phases: agenda setting, opened to all the citizens, and assembly; it will be coordinated by a scientific committee.

Where will your project idea take place?

Italy

What is the specific societal challenge faced by this region?

West Democracies are in crisis. We need to think of new instruments to solve the lack of legitimacy of democracy. If the citizens’ assemblies were formed in our country we could face challenges at every level: from the problems of the little city hall on the mountains till the problems of a big city like Naples, hoping to face even the problems of the entire country. In this way the citizens would feel part of the policy making and could discuss the single problems from the bottom leaving behind their prejudice, the so called democratic iterations, necessary for the development of the society in harmony.

Who are you doing it for?

Every citizen able to vote.

How do you plan to get there?

We want to create a citizens' assembly.
First of all we want to implement the knowledge of this institute between the citizens.
After this we will establish a first assembly on the climatic transition.
It will be divided in two phases:
1) First an online consultation opened to all citizens for the agenda setting.
2) Five meetings of the Assembly, one weekend every month.
We expect between 100 and 150 components. The recruiting pool will be selected by a surveys company and will be also a guarantee committee needed to certificate the procedures. The works of the assembly will be supported by academic experts.
Some of the meetings will be dedicated to the explanations of the experts, to these will follow sessions opened to the stakeholders. For all the citizens there will be the possibility to propose their ideas on our website.

What are the expected results?

We hope to raise awareness the people about this very important instrument useful to rebuild our democracies. The citizens will be able to discuss about different topics and problems and they will have to unify their strengths to solve them.
Civic discussions will take place in the assemblies and even the non participants to the assembly will feel themselves a part of the choice because there will not be the distance between citizen and politician. The choices will be public, motivated and transparent so that everybody can understand the reasons behind these.
The stakeholders will have a space to tell about their problems and how they want to solve them.

How does your idea strengthen active citizenship at a local and community level?

The institute itself provides an improvement of the active citizenship in the country.
Let's think about a citizens' assembly in a city hall, where the citizens will take part in the decision for the solution of their nearest problem.
In a national view there will be a major control of the choices of the government and the citizen will be able to discuss the problem taking information by the documents of the assembly avoiding fake news.

Why is this idea important to you?

We are a group of young active citizens. We have dealt with different political battles and we think that this one is the most important because put the citizen at the centre, in this way democracy will be stronger and nearer to the citizen. We fight for civic rights and this instrument is fundamental to accelerate the affirmation of these rights.

€ 50000,-

Total budget

€ 35000,-

Funding requested from Civic Europe

Major expenses

Online Platform 5000 EUR, Academic Experts 15000 EUR, Project Management 10000 EUR, Scientific Content Production 5000 EUR, Participant'd refund 15000.

What do you need from the Civic Europe community?

We want to discuss about our idea because we know that is something very new. At the same time we are young active citizens and we need advices from who has more experience.

Team

quatfabio

Idea created on April 25, 2021

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