The Citizens’ Jury Model of Public Participation: A Critical Evaluation

“Our political system has become so complex that the decency and common sense of average citizens have only a faint influence on our national politics.”1 This is the premise underlying the Jefferson Center’ s efforts over the past decade to promote the use of Citizens Juries as an alternative approach to public involvement in policy making processes. The intent is not to usurp the decision-making power of elected officials but to ensure that they have a thorough understanding of the general public’ s views when they exercise that power. More fundamentally, the aim is “to change the [policy] dialogue to form a partnership between average citizens and elected officials.”2 The Citizens Jury model, the Center contends, is an effective means of obtaining informed and representative citizen input to policy decisions and of fostering this partnership. As will be shown in the evaluation which follows, the model meets the first objective. But there are reasons to question the extent to which the informed input is truly representative and there are reasons to doubt that the model will lead to a partnership between citizens and policy makers.