Assemblies—gatherings in which large numbers of people come together to deliberate and make collective decisions—can be powerful tools for movement-building and participatory governance. Movement assemblies help community power-building organizations and coalitions build capacity, power and political clarity, and policy assemblies commissioned by governments bring everyday people’s voices and ideas into public policy-making. There have also been a few especially powerful examples of governing-power assemblies that are connected both to social movements and to government, policy-making and policy implementation. Assemblies and other co-governance models can be implemented much more widely as an important complement to elections, representative democracy and public administration.

In this draft report, we discuss different types of assemblies, share examples and explore the challenges of deepening assemblies’ impact and strengthening their political durability. We also offer lessons to movement organizations, participatory democracy practitioners, governments and philanthropy on how we can better support, design, institutionalize and expand assemblies as tools for justice and democracy.

We welcome feedback on anything in the report. We plan to publish a final version of it in early 2025.

Additional Resources

Assemblies as a Tool for Just Democracy (draft report)