Federated Assemblies

TL;DR

This paper introduces federated assemblies, a hierarchical structure of citizen groups interconnected through algorithms that ensure representation guarantees, aiming to enhance democratic deliberation.

Contribution

It proposes novel algorithms for random selection in federated assemblies, addressing hierarchical representation constraints.

Findings

Algorithms provide different representation guarantees

Analysis under various graph assumptions

Potential to improve democratic processes

Abstract

A citizens' assembly is a group of people who are randomly selected to represent a larger population in a deliberation. While this approach has successfully strengthened democracy, it has certain limitations that suggest the need for assemblies to form and associate more organically. In response, we propose federated assemblies, where assemblies are interconnected, and each parent assembly is selected from members of its child assemblies. The main technical challenge is to develop random selection algorithms that meet new representation constraints inherent in this hierarchical structure. We design and analyze several algorithms that provide different representation guarantees under various assumptions on the structure of the underlying graph.