The Citizens’ Assembly on the topic of housing by the Province of Drenthe is halfway through its process. In July 2024 the group of citizens will hand over their final policy advice to the Drents Parlement (provincial parliament, consisting of 43 elected representatives). What are some of the experiences so far?
A lot of enthusiasm
Even though a citizens’ assembly is a fairly intensive form of participation that requires a lot of dedication from its participants, citizens were eager and enthusiastic to participate in it. In February 2024 a survey on the future of housing and living in Drenthe, was distributed among a randomly selected group of 30,000 residents of the province. Included in the survey was an invitation to take part in the citizen’s assembly. A very considerable amount of 6,427 residents replied to the survey with their input on housing of which 2,359 people also responded positively on the invitation to participate in a citizens’ assembly. These high numbers show how engaged residents are in the topic and want to contribute their time and effort for future-proof policy.
In a second weighted lottery a group of 150 residents were selected to participate. The attendance rate in the first two meetings of the citizen assembly was about 90%, again showing that the participants take the task seriously.
Evaluating the Citizens’ Assembly
So far participants have met twice, once in the Province House in Assen and once in the city of Emmen. The first session of the Assembly focused mainly on introducing the topic and choosing the sub-topics that participants wanted to discuss in more depth in the next meeting. During the second session different experts were invited to provide background information on the chosen topics and the participants took the conversation a step further by discussing different dilemmas.
In order to evaluate and learn from this citizens’ assembly the Province of Drenthe will be collaborating with researchers from the University of Groningen (partner in Speak Up), University of Twente, and the University of Tilburg. At the end of every session of the citizens’ assembly participants are asked to fill in a questionnaire about their experiences. Part of the purpose of the research is to understand how participants in democratic innovations, such as this citizens' assembly, experience their participation and the impact it has on for example their perceptions.
The Citizens’ Assembly on housing is one of the three initiatives in citizen participation and connected governance that the Province of Drenthe is implementing and evaluating within the Interreg project. The other two initiatives are set to start after the summer.
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