Fixing Democracy: Citizens’ Assemblies

Past Present Future

D&HR Media Ltd

Politics, News, Philosophy, Society & Culture, History

4.7 • 747 Ratings

🗓️ 21 September 2025

⏱️ 65 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

David talks to Claudia Chwalisz, founder and CEO of Democracy Next, about how citizens’ assemblies could help fix what’s wrong with democracy. Where does the idea of a jury of citizens chosen at random to answer political questions come from? What are the kinds of contemporary questions it could help to settle? How does it work? And what would encourage politicians to listen to citizens’ assemblies rather than to their electorates? Out now on PPF+: The second half of David’s conversation with Hannah White in which they discuss how we could get better decision-making at the heart of government. Why do politicians find it so hard to address the biggest challenges that they face? To get this and all our bonus episodes plus ad-free listening sign up to PPF+ today https://www.ppfideas.com/join-ppf-plus The 2nd film in our autumn Films of Ideas season at the Regent Street cinema is coming up on Thursday 25th September: a screening of My Dinner with Andre, followed by a live recording of PPF with playwright and screenwriter Lee Hall, creator of Billy Elliot. Tickets are available now https://bit.ly/4fWDa7V Tickets are also now available for a special recording of PPF Live at the Cheltenham Literature Festival on Wednesday 15th October: Who Rules The World? Trump, Tech and the Fight for the Future. David will be talking to writer, philosopher and ex-politician Bruno Maçães – plus a special guest to be announced – about where the power really lies. Get your tickets now https://bit.ly/4m2pZno Next Up in Fixing Democracy: How To Stop Election Rigging Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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1:19.0	Hello, my name's David Rundsenman and this is past-present future, the History of Ideas podcast.
1:29.8	Today in our series about fixing democracy, I'm talking to Claudia Schwallets, founder and chief executive of Democracy Next, about her organisation's specialism, citizens' assemblies. It's an idea that often seems to be just about
1:36.9	to come into fashion without ever quite happening. Is it's time now? Claudia, the idea of Citizens' Assemblies, I think to a lot of people,
1:50.2	it sounds like a very modern idea, something quite technical, a device for addressing issues with
1:57.3	our democracy, and it tends to come out of a, I don't want to caricature it here,
2:02.0	but a sort of think tank world. It's often suggested in quite specific context. And yet at the
2:08.8	same time, I think it's fair to say it has deep roots in the core idea of democracy itself,
	...

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