The normative and empirical work on the functioning and governance of citizens’ assemblies cannot legitimately be monopolized by democratic theorists and political scientists. This article brings together contributions from four citizens who participated as members of the Citizens’ Convention on End-of-life Issues in France from December 2022 to April 2023. By virtue of their first-person involvement, these participants speak from a unique epistemic standpoint—made visible and acknowledged here, for the first time, as part of fundamental research in democratic studies. These four contributions add to the general discussion on governance put forward in this issue from a different, yet complementary, perspective. They shed light on the wide diversity of expectations and judgments generated from within a citizens’ assembly, the tensions citizens perceived and experienced, and their views on the challenges and future of citizens’ assemblies.
Berriau et al. (Tue,) studied this question.