Emerging forms of empowered participatory governance have generated considerable scholarly excitement, but critics continue to ask if such initiatives are “for real”: Are participatory governance processes sufficiently independent? Do citizen participants make good policy choices? An in-depth look at the case of the British Columbia Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform suggests that real citizen empowerment depends on both the institutional constraints of the participa-tory setting and how citizen interests and arguments for policy outcomes crystallize over the course of a participatory process.

The issue of independence takes into account both structural limitations of a participatory institution, such as its mandate, length of time, and who is allowed to participate, and limitations on the discourse within participatory institutions, for example, the way that information and arguments are framed to favor particular interests. On the problems of structural limitations, see Mark Greaves , “Municipality and Community in Chile,” Politics & Society 32, no. 2 (June 2004 ): 203 - 230 .



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Several people of Aboriginal ancestry had attended the regional selection meetings, but by chance, none had had their names selected. The Chair pooled the names of these people and chose a man and a woman at random to participate as “Aboriginal representation.”

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Citizens’ Assembly Chief Research Officer Ken Carty, personal communication.

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That is not to say participants were unaware of each others’ political leanings. But overt talk about politics was confined to the private spaces and the off-hours of the Assembly.

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One Assembly staff person told me that when they first were organizing the process, the staff joked about other dynamics that random selection could introduce into the Assembly’s work—if the group was truly representative of the general population, then they could expect that a certain number of alcoholics, drug addicts, and other difficult characters would participate in the Assembly. This, of course, did not turn out to be the case. Field notes, March 6, 2004.

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See, for example, a statement written by Equal Voice, an organization dedicated to increasing women’s political representation, October 20, 2005, http://www.equalvoice.ca/news_marie_102005.htm (accessed May 7, 2006).

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