The Citizens' Assembly Scam - How a Good Idea Becomes a Bad Constitutional Shortcut

You hear the phrase and it sounds almost noble: Let the people decide. A randomly selected group of ordinary citizens, brought together to deliberate on a complex policy question like the environment, electoral reform, or constitutional change, and then produce a recommended path forward. What could be more democratic? What could be more pure? I will tell you what it actually is: a profoundly anti-constitutional idea dressed in the robes of high-minded civic engagement. And if you care about the republic the Founders gave us, you should be deeply alarmed. Let me explain why, using the tools that matter - first principles, constitutional structure, and a healthy dose of what Hayek called the knowledge problem.

What a Citizens' Assembly Actually Means in Practice

Proponents describe it as deliberative democracy, sortition pulled from the Athenian practice of selecting governing councils by lot. The idea is that a statistically representative sample of citizens, balanced by age, gender, ethnicity, and region, is convened, given expert briefings, and asked to debate and vote on a specific policy question. The outcome is then presented to elected officials as a kind of informed public opinion. On its face, it sounds like a corrective to the distortions of partisan politics, lobbyists, and soundbite culture. But here is what it actually does: it creates a parallel decision-making body with no constitutional legitimacy, no accountability to the electorate, and no respect for the separation of powers. It substitutes a curated snapshot of public opinion after expert briefing for the messy, slow, representative process the Constitution actually mandates. And worse, it is almost always designed to produce a predetermined outcome. The very design of the assembly, from the framing of the question to the selection of experts who brief the participants, tilts the table toward a specific result. That is not letting the people decide. That is letting a few people decide who gets to frame the debate.

The Madisonian Rebuttal and Why It Still Holds After Two Centuries

James Madison understood the problem of factions better than any modern political scientist. In Federalist No. 10, he argued that the cure for the mischief of faction is not to create some idealized direct democracy, which he saw as prone to majority tyranny and instability, but to establish a representative republic that refines and enlarges the public's views through a chosen body of citizens whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country. The citizens' assembly inverts this. It takes a random, unaccountable group, insulates them from electoral pressure - which is precisely why elites love it, because they cannot be voted out - and then presents their conclusions as a kind of higher wisdom. The very feature that makes it pure, namely no constituencies, no re-election, and no parties, is also what makes it dangerous. It has no skin in the game. As Milton Friedman might put it, the problem with citizens' assemblies is the same as the problem with any form of central planning: the people making decisions bear none of the consequences. They set policy in a sterile, advisory bubble, then go home, leaving the rest of us to live under the recommendations they handed down. Accountability is the foundation of liberty in a republic. Remove it, and you have rule by an unaccountable few, no matter how representative their demographics appear on paper.

The Knowledge Problem and Why It Dooms the Entire Experiment

Friedrich Hayek taught us that the dispersed knowledge of society cannot be gathered by any central planner, no matter how well-intentioned. A citizens' assembly is central planning with a human face. It presumes that a few dozen or a few hundred randomly selected citizens, given a crash course in a complex subject like climate policy or electoral reform, can arrive at a better answer than the spontaneous order of a free society working through voluntary exchange, markets, and democratic deliberation over time. The assembly is fed curated experts, given curated materials, and guided through curated deliberation. The outcome is not wisdom from the people, it is the product of the design. The question sets the answer. And this is the dirty secret the advocates do not advertise: citizens' assemblies are almost always promoted by progressive foundations and advocacy groups precisely because they are easier to capture than an elected legislature. You do not need to win an election. You do not need to persuade a majority of voters. You just need to influence the selection of a small, unaccountable panel and the framing of the expert information they receive. Thomas Sowell's unconstrained vision is on full display here: the belief that a group of well-intentioned people, properly educated, can solve complex social problems through rational deliberation, bypassing the messy, incentive-driven reality of politics and human nature. It is a vision that has failed every time it has been tried, from central planning to the progressive era's faith in expert commissions.

What the Constitution Actually Says and Does Not Say

Nowhere in the Constitution is there any provision for a citizens' assembly. That is not an oversight, it is by design. The Founders created a representative republic with three branches, each accountable in different ways to the people. The House is elected every two years. The Senate originally by state legislatures, now by popular vote, serves six-year terms. The President is elected by the Electoral College. Judges are appointed for life. Every one of these institutions has a different form of accountability, a different constituency, and a different time horizon. That variety is a feature, not a bug. It slows down hasty change, protects minority rights, and forces compromise. A citizens' assembly short-circuits all of that. It is a single-shot, unaccountable body with no checks and balances, no appeal, and no way for the people to discipline it at the ballot box. It is, in effect, an extra-constitutional institution that pretends to speak for the people while being immune from the people's judgment. And once you establish one, what stops you from establishing another and another until the constitutional system is hollowed out from within? You end up with a parallel government of commissions and assemblies that bypass the messy work of elections and representation. That is not reform. That is a power grab dressed in civic language.

The Real Agenda and the Slippery Slope We Are Already Sliding Down

Follow the money and the advocacy. Citizens' assemblies are being pushed hardest in contexts where progressive elites cannot win through the normal political process. In Canada, a citizens' assembly on electoral reform was used to try to push proportional representation, a change that voters themselves consistently reject when given a direct vote. In Ireland, a citizens' assembly on abortion helped pave the way for a constitutional amendment that many pro-life advocates saw as procedurally rigged. The pattern is always the same: an unelected, unaccountable body is used to legitimize a policy change that the elected government is too afraid to push through on its own. This is not democracy. It is elite capture disguised as populism. Henry Hazlitt would have seen this clearly. In Economics in One Lesson, he taught us to look at the long-run effects on all groups, not just the immediate visible benefit. The visible benefit of a citizens' assembly is civic engagement and thoughtful deliberation. The unseen cost is the erosion of representative government, the normalization of unaccountable decision-making, and the concentration of power in the hands of those who design the process. Ludwig von Mises would add that such assemblies suffer from the economic calculation problem: without market prices and genuine electoral accountability, they cannot rationally allocate resources or make sound political judgments. They are a form of interventionism that claims to be democratic but is actually a mechanism for bypassing democracy.

The Principled Alternative and Why Tradition Matters

What should conservatives and classical liberals say instead? We should defend the constitutional republic we have, the one that requires winning elections, persuading your neighbors, and living under the laws you pass. It is slower, messier, and harder. But it is also the only system that preserves liberty over the long run because it preserves accountability. If you want to engage ordinary citizens in governance, do it the old-fashioned way: run for school board, attend town hall meetings, write letters to your representative, start a civic association. Participate in the institutions the Constitution does provide, like the jury, the militia, the political party, and the local government. A citizens' assembly is the political equivalent of a shortcut. And as the Founders knew, in a republic, shortcuts lead to serfdom. George Gilder would remind us that the entrepreneur and the citizen volunteer are the true sources of social innovation, not panels of experts. The spontaneous order of a free society, with its failures and successes, its trials and elections, is far wiser than any curated group of deliberators. The next time someone tells you a citizens' assembly is a way to let the people decide, ask them one question: If this is such a great idea, why are you so afraid to put it to a real vote with real representatives who can be thrown out if they get it wrong? The answer will tell you everything you need to know about whether they trust the people or merely want to use them.