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Global Citizens’ Assembly Network

Research Programme

Focus area for 2023 : Governance

The first phase of our research programme focuses on the governance of global citizens’ assemblies. We assembled a network of researchers to examine the formal and informal structures and practices of:

  1. Internal governance which includes the roles and responsibilities of actors involved in the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of global citizens’ assemblies. 
  2. External governance which includes the roles and responsibilities of actors doing advocacy work to secure the uptake and impact of global citizens’ assemblies. 

Our goal is to generate insight that can inform the ways in which the governance framework of future global assemblies can be structured. In the final quarter of 2023, we will publish a series of technical papers that summarise our key research findings. 

Our Approach

We take a power-sensitive approach to researching global citizens’ assemblies. We recognise that citizens’ assemblies never take place in vacuum. They occur in contexts marked by material, digital, political, social, and discursive inequalities. Our role as researchers is to document and analyse how inequalities are replicated, constructed, as well as overcome in these forums, and, in so doing, open an honest conversation on what global citizens’ assemblies can realistically achieve in the face of power. This approach is inspired by the Evaluation Report of the Global Assembly