Across Europe, public authorities have increasingly convened citizens’ assemblies - also called mini-publics, citizen panels, or representative and deliberative processes. In these forums, randomly selected citizens reflect the diversity of the population, deliberate on a specific issue, and formulate recommendations.

Citizen Impact offers a systematic account of whether, how, and why citizens’ assemblies have impact. It conceives citizens’ assemblies as institutional arrangements embedded in broader political system characterised by the interplay of power dynamics among political parties, interest groups, and social movements. The project focus on three dimensions:

• Influence on policymaking: Do citizens’ assemblies shape policy agendas, decisions, or implementation?
• Reception in the public sphere: How are citizens’ assemblies framed across news media and digital publics?
• Interactions with civil society: How do citizens’ assemblies connect with civil society organisations  and other form of participation?

Approach & Methods

We combine comparative cross-national analysis with in-depth process-tracing. Our mixed-methods design integrates:

• Analysis of national trends and institutional designs
• Media and discourse analysis
• Stakeholders mapping and qualitative interviews
• Comparative case studies to unpack complex causal processes

• Vincent Jacquet - Principal investigator
• Damien Pennetreau - Postdoctoral Researcher (in charge of welcoming citizens' assemblies into the public sphere).
• Elisa Minsart - Postdoctoral researcher (in charge of the influence of citizens' assemblies on policymaking and their interactions with civil society).
• Lionel Cordier - Postdoctoral researcher (in charge of the influence of citizens' assemblies on policymaking and their interactions with civil society).

Communications and presentations

Pennetreau, D., Jacquet, V., & Serra-Silva, S. (2025). The Politics of Citizens’ Assemblies: Comparing Discourses Across Six Public Debates. Paper presented at the ECPR General Conference, Thessaloniki, 25–29 August 2025. Presented by Damien Pennetreau.

The 2 ERC Starting Grants for Jérémy Dodeigne's POLSTYLE project and Vincent Jacquet's CITIZEN_IMPACT project will enable the emergence and development of a genuine pole of excellence in Political Science within UNamur's Transitions Institute.