Rethinking Climate Assemblies Within Complex Democratic Systems: Coupling and Pathways of Influence Beyond Policy Uptake

This is an accepted article with a DOI pre-assigned that is not yet published.Climate citizens’ assemblies are often evaluated narrowly on whether their recommendations become implemented as policy. Though useful, such evaluations risk overshadowing the broader democratic and systemic potentials climate assemblies might have. This article argues for a shift in our thinking about climate assemblies. Instead of seeing them primarily as interventions that can influence short-term policy processes, we might think of them as drivers of long-term democratic capacity-building within complex political and social systems. Drawing on complex systems theory and the concept of social tipping points, the article develops a conceptual framework for thinking about the different ways in which climate assemblies can enable transformative change beyond immediate policy change. It compares empirical cases where citizens’ assemblies have been able to ‘tip’ policy outcomes with national climate assemblies that have had limited short-term policy adoption, but still contributed to the development of new democratic competencies, institutional learnings, and shifts in public discourse. By situating climate assemblies within the wider literature on system transformation, the article argues that their most transformative capacities might not lie in their direct impacts on legislation, but in their ability to create new democratic feedback loops, redefine democratic norms, and build the democratic infrastructures required to enable adaptive climate action in the long term.