Democratic innovations against climate change: the French Citizens’ Convention on Climate

In spite of the partial failure marked by the Senate's stop to the referendum, it is worth considering the way in which France has elaborated and applied an instrument of its so-called Democratic Innovations (Elstub and Escobar 2019, 11–31, 28), namely the Climate Citizens’ Convention which was instigated in order to involve citizens in discussions and deliberations on how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 40% by 2030, since in the near future, citizens involvement in policy-making will be inceasingly needed, especially on an issue that is confronting the future of humanity as closely as climate change. The idea of setting up a participatory body in order to address the climate crisis was one of the outputs of the Grand Debat National established to channel the strong protests put forward by the so-called gilet jaune in 2018 into the context of an open debate and to identify solutions agreed between the gilet jaune movement and the national government. The French experiment employed what is commonly known in the literature as a “mini-public” (Smith, 2012) , i.e. a panel composed of randomly selected citizens that, over the course of several weeks or months, is granted with the task of analyzing and deliberating on a specific policy question, such as – in this case – how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Generally, the goal of a mini-public is to come up with policy recommendations to be then transmitted to the decision-makers who will then choose if it is appropriate to take them into consideration while drafting acts and regulations.

The French Climate Citizens’ Convention is to all intents and purposes a mini-public, since it was made up of 150 randomly selected citizens, chosen by direct call, out of a total of 255 thousand telephone numbers selected in all French regions, including those overseas and representing all age groups and socio-professional categories. Out of all that were contacted, 30% directly accepted the invitation, 35% said they were interested and another 35% declined the invitation. The government supplied transportation, lodging, meals, babysitting services as well as a daily attendance allowance to all participants so as to incentivize all those that were contacted to take part in the Convention. Besides the 150, selected by lot and the official members of the Convention, a complex governance structure was set up in order to assure neutrality and impartiality to the process. Several technical and legal experts as well as experts in participatory and deliberative democracy composed the so-called “governance committee” entitled with the task of offering help and support to the works of the Convention along every step of the process. Also, three independent guarantors were appointed to ensure that the necessary conditions were met to guarantee the independence of the Citizens' Convention and ensure it could work in suitable conditions.