21st century democratic decision-making for the Swiss societal transition.
Imagined by EPFL and BSL
Big Picture
Improve citizens’ understanding and participation for advanced democratic decision-making, balancing and enhancing both collective and individual freedoms, in particular towards reaching societal goals of universal human wellbeing within the limits of the biosphere, while respecting human rights, building on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 1993 Vienna Declaration.
The Academic Citizens’ Assembly (ACA) is a model of a citizens’ assembly built on academic principles (evidence-based, lobby-free, no ideology), open to the whole society and, using a novel process and tools, scalable to potentially include millions of participants. This deliberative and participative approach builds on the Swiss tradition of direct democracy, and aims to bridge the gap between high-quality deliberation and decision-making of past citizens’ assemblies, and the legitimacy of direct democracy.
Climate crisis, biodiversity loss, growing inequality - Science shows that nothing short of a radical reduction of humanity’s aggregate energy and material metabolism, combined with a complete restructuring of almost every economic activity, to ensure inclusive and universal satisfaction of human needs, will get us where we need to be. Technology will help, but only once we agree on the goal of society, and redefine our common values.
Science can identify feasible pathways and their limits, but cannot make normative or value-based choices for us.
For various reasons, both direct and representative democracy failed in starting a dialog of society to redefine our goals, values, and institutions, such as employment, governance, or taxation. Indeed the growing complexity and interrelation of issues, the non-linear regimes many Earth systems and ecosystems are increasingly entering, coinciding with media fragmentation, fake news, and growing power of lobbying - all combine to make the problem more difficult.
Starting this much-needed dialog of society, the Academic Citizens’ Assembly is an experiment to test a new governance model better suited to solving today’s challenges.
The Challenge
Prototype Edition
The 2021 Symposium, held on Friday 4th June, prototyped a small-scale version of a possible solution to start a societal dialogue and define concrete actions towards change: the Academic Citizens’ Assembly
Deliberation with Swiss academia, administration, arts, companies, and crucially
YOU !
Who are we?
The EPFL-BSL annual Symposium on Societal Transition Pathways, first held in 2020, brings together a community of practitioners and scholars interested in the societal transition towards a more inclusive, more just society allowing universal human thriving within the limits of the biosphere. We are lobby-free, nor associated with or financed by any political organization, and strictly adhere to the scientific method. The material used in preparation of the Academic Citizen Assembly is prepared by the academic community and is scientifically sound, hence the name of our project.