Democratic colonization

The evolving research agenda of decolonizing deliberative democracy spans historical critiques of its Western roots (Banerjee 2022; Hammond 2019), challenges to the West’s perceived monopoly on deliberative values such as consensus-seeking (Ani 2014), critical and constructive efforts to rethink deliberative theory (Beausoleil 2025; Mendonça & Asenbaum 2025), engagements with broader projects of decolonizing or de-parochializing political thought (Gagnon et al. 2021; Getachew & Mantena 2021), and critiques of extractivist uses of deliberative frameworks that overlook their colonial legacies (Banerjee 2022). Democratic colonization has been linked to ‘West-centric paradigms and hegemonic pedagogical frameworks that lay claim to universality and immutability’ (Ibhawoh 2024). In her thought-provoking piece ‘Must deliberative democracy’s statutes fall?’, Curato (2024) challenges whether certain assumptions and institutions in the field should be revised to make way for others to emerge. The rational discourse rooted in the Frankfurt School, which forms the basis for deliberative democracy, tended to overlook issues of racism and colonialism, while simultaneously portraying the European-centric evolution of reason as the sole source of progress. The inclination to export democratic innovations from Europe to the rest of the world may stem from the preconceived notion that only Europe can offer a true evolution of democracy, while the rest of the world is considered primitive and in need of catching up.

On the practical side, others have scrutinized citizens’ assemblies themselves on colonization grounds, contending that representative forums will inevitably replicate historical oppressions against indigenous communities. In these proportional forums, settler majorities may overwhelm indigenous voices, perpetuating explicit or tacit forms of racism that influence deliberation (Johnson 2024). Prior to implementing such innovations, a ‘politics of reconciliation’ with marginalized communities is deemed necessary (Bashir, cited by McCaul 2024). Many voices decry the monopolization of the field of deliberative democracy and democratic innovation by Western academia, lamenting the lack of dialog with indigenous academia and the failure to explore indigenous forms of political deliberation despite four decades of theoretical and practical development in the field (Asenbaum et al. 2024). Decolonization scholars further contend that the current field of democratic innovation, including the use of citizens’ assemblies, lacks sufficient radicalism (Eseonu 2023). They argue that the agenda associated with these innovations only introduces cosmetic changes to Western liberal institutions, falling short of addressing the root issues or offering transformative solutions.

We contribute to this discourse by focusing on a particular mechanism: the role of democratic colonization in the transposition of democratic innovations. In this context, we define democratic colonization as the uncritical exportation or importation of democratic institutions, accompanied by forms of coercion, be they violent, economic, or epistemic. Democratic colonization involves three elements: exportation or importation, thoughtlessness, and force.

Exportation and importation describe one-directional transpositions of democratic institutions. In cases of exportation, actors from the country of origin actively promote or disseminate a democratic institution abroad. Importation, by contrast, is led by actors in the receiving country who adopt an external model. While both dynamics can occur independently, neither alone is sufficient to constitute democratic colonization. We must critique instances of democratic colonization but also avoid dismissing innovations simply because they originate elsewhere. What is problematic in democratic colonization is not merely foreignness, but rather the presence of coercion. Conversely, what is commendable about rejecting democratic colonization is not simply lauding local practices as inherently deliberative without careful normative scrutiny, but rather uncovering the forms of oppression and domination that can lurk behind both foreign and local practices.

What characterizes democratic colonization is not the cross-border movement of institutions, but the absence of dialogical adaptation to local contexts. Thoughtlessness refers to the uncritical application of institutional designs as standardized models, detached from the political, social, and cultural specificities of the receiving context. In this sense, the lack of dialog is not simply a matter of insensitivity—it amounts to the commodification of democratic innovation, treating it as a one-size-fits-all product (Mendonça & Asenbaum 2025).

Coercive mechanisms reinforce this dynamic, taking the form of violence, economic pressure, or cultural imposition. While the historical influence of military intervention and the conditional lending practices of multilateral institutions are well documented in Latin America (Stiglitz 2002), cultural forms of coercion tend to be more subtle. These often manifest as epistemic injustices and a pervasive sense of superiority. Such superiority may be expressed by exporters toward destination countries, but also emerges in local-local dynamics—when domestic actors importing deliberative practices position themselves as ‘experts’ on deliberative democracy, displaying little willingness to learn from the communities for whom the innovation is intended.

Deliberative innovation

While most studies on citizens’ assemblies focus on how to make these forums deliberative, less attention has been paid to how deliberatively they come into being. This is where our normative proposal of deliberative innovation aims to contribute. To clarify our approach, we begin by distinguishing between two possible meanings of the term deliberative innovation. The first is content-based: an innovation is deliberative if it incorporates and promotes core deliberative principles—such as inclusiveness, reason-giving, and mutual respect (Bächtiger et al. 2018). In this sense, deliberativeness refers to the characteristics of the innovation itself. Under this definition, many would consider well-organized citizens’ assemblies to be deliberative innovations (Landemore 2020). The second is process-based, which is the focus here: an innovation is deliberative if it emerges through dialogic exchange. Ideally, this includes meaningful dialogue with the intended beneficiaries of the innovation—such as the communities where it will be implemented—but also with the broader community of practice in deliberative democracy and democratic innovation, particularly across the Global South and Global North. In this sense, deliberativeness is not only a feature of the outcome but of the innovation process itself. Deliberative innovation, in this second sense, can be defined as the development or introduction of democratic practices and institutions that are new or untested in a given context and that arise through reciprocal dialog—both locally, with those affected, and globally, with peers in the field. The term deliberative signals a normative commitment: innovation should unfold in ways that reflect deliberative principles. To counter democratic colonization, policymakers and practitioners from both the Global North and Global South must engage in reciprocal, deliberative exchanges. Innovation should not occur in isolation—neither from global deliberative experiences nor from the local social, cultural, and political contexts in which these practices take root. By focusing not only on what these democratic innovations are, but also on how they emerge and evolve, we hope to broaden the understanding of deliberative practice—making room for transposition, contextual adaptation, and the transformative potential of global-local dialogs. While our focus here is on citizens’ assemblies, the concept applies to a wide range of democratic reforms.

As a normative framework for understanding how democratic innovations come into being, deliberative innovation is characterized by three key attributes: receptiveness, sensitivity, and generativity. We begin with receptiveness, which refers to the capacity to remain open, to listen to criticism, and to adapt in the process of innovation. As the transposition of citizens’ assemblies unfolds worldwide in multiple directions, it is inevitable that challenges arise, new criticisms emerge, and innovative solutions are tested. Policymakers and practitioners should remain receptive to this ongoing evolution, incorporating relevant adjustments into their own designs. Innovators owe this receptiveness both to the broader community of global practitioners and, most importantly, to the local communities who are the intended beneficiaries of their innovations. Innovators in the Global North must avoid isolating themselves within preestablished circles; instead, they should make a conscious effort to engage with developments in the Global South and recognize how emerging practices there can contribute to their own learning (Tully 2020; Williams 2020). Sensitivity refers to a demonstrated willingness to adapt innovations to the specific contexts in which they are implemented. It involves resisting a superficial, one-size-fits-all approach that overlooks local realities, needs, and constraints. In other words, sensitivity is positioned against ‘the commodification and de-contextualization of deliberative innovations’ (Mendonça & Asenbaum 2024: 17). As democratic innovations spread, they need to be attuned to local contexts and made to prioritize the betterment of the most marginalized within those contexts. When transposing democratic institutions, the focus should be on emancipation—the idea that these institutions should improve the conditions of the most oppressed. Sensitivity applies not only to Southern countries but also to marginalized groups in Northern countries, including the poor, the disadvantaged, immigrants, and other vulnerable populations. Generativity refers to the ability to spark incrementally new ideas, practices, and models through the process of deliberating with others engaged in promoting democracy. Through deliberative innovation, practitioners and communities can generate novel solutions not only to challenges specific to the Global South but also to those recognized globally within the field. Both Northern and Southern innovators should remain open to embracing innovations that emerge organically during the process of transposing democratic practices, regardless of whether the transposition occurs from North to South or vice versa.

We do not view receptiveness, sensitivity, and generativity as isolated attributes. Rather, a single practice can embody all three dimensions simultaneously, as we will illustrate in our examples. For example, by responding to critiques within the field, practitioners can act generatively—developing innovations that are also sensitive to the local context. We fully acknowledge that realizing this ideal is difficult. Language barriers, structural inequalities, and political or legal constraints frequently stand in the way. But even when practice falls short, the ideal still matters. It serves as a regulative principle—offering direction, inspiring reflection, and anchoring democratic work in a commitment to dialog and mutual learning.

Receptiveness: Fostering global and local dialog in the process of transposition

We defined receptiveness as the capacity of policymakers and organizers to remain open, to listen to criticism, and to adapt during the process of innovation. This quality has two faces: attentiveness to the global community of practice—engaging with advances and critiques in international dialogs on democratic innovation—and attentiveness to the local communities where the innovation will take root. Democratic innovators must balance both, ensuring that their designs respond to global knowledge while remaining grounded in local realities. This dual orientation applies equally to conveners and organizers in the Global South and the Global North.

Notably, these experiences occurred almost simultaneously in four different countries on the continent. By 2019, when the four cases began to emerge, citizens’ assemblies had already been developing in North America, Europe, and Australia for roughly 15 years. Large-scale cases, such as the Irish Constitutional Convention (Farrell, Harris & Suiter 2017), had already been implemented, while others, like the French Climate Assembly, were about to be convened. The literature on mini-publics was expanding rapidly, with several books, edited volumes, and a vast number of journal articles—almost all in English. In 2020, the OECD (2020) published its first report on the topic, documenting more than 400 mini-publics in the Global North. By 2019, the organizations and individuals involved in the four examples we examine could draw on this accumulated knowledge to learn and adapt. As we will see, they did not merely ‘copy’; they made a conscious effort to engage in thoughtful adaptation and dialog with both global peers and local communities. In the process of transposing these institutions, new ‘sounds’ emerged. The resulting innovations differ, in important ways, from their Northern counterparts.

Interestingly, the organizers were unaware of each other and had no knowledge of similar cases in Latin America. Now, they collaborate on various projects and, along with others, have formed a community of practice in Latin America. More recently, some of them have collaborated on new projects, such as Resurgentes—a UN-funded initiative that organized four climate assemblies in Buenaventura (Colombia), Mar del Plata (Argentina), Bujaru (Brazil), and Nuevo León (Mexico) (Česnulaitytė, Rey & Niño-Aguilar 2025). Despite this, all drew inspiration from Northern references, though they arrived at the concept through different paths—some through academic exposure to mini-publics, others through prior experience with participatory mechanisms. They were aware that they were transposing a foreign institution. The drive to create something ‘new’ kept organizers moving forward, despite various challenges. Persistence—sometimes seen as stubbornness—was common across all four examples. One organizer described his motivation simply as ‘madness,’ reflecting the frustration many faced in getting others on board.

All four groups of practitioners maintained contact with international partners while designing their cases and made deliberate efforts to engage in meaningful dialog with other democratic innovators worldwide. Delibera in Brazil was the first Latin American member of Democracy R&D, a global network created in 2018 to promote the use of citizens’ assemblies and other civic sortition methods. Lxs 400 was implemented through a collaboration between Chilean civic organizations, public institutions, and the Stanford Center for Deliberative Democracy. In Mexico, the organizers established an international observatory with members such as Healthy Democracy—a US-based organization known for developing and implementing the Citizens’ Initiative Review in Oregon—the OECD & Democracy R&D (Castillo & Mejía 2022). Democracy R&D provided assistance in the development of the methodology for this particular case, and the recruitment process used open-source software developed by the UK-based Sortition Foundation. In Colombia, the organizers held meetings with representatives from the OECD’s Democratic Innovations Unit.

The international contacts we refer to were voluntarily initiated by Latin American organizers, and the resulting dialogs were collaborative and mutually enriching. Equally important, these exchanges were complemented by sustained engagement with local communities. In this sense, receptiveness operated on the two levels we previously described: internationally, through horizontal exchanges with global peers; and locally, through deliberative engagement with affected communities and stakeholders. In the Chihuahua Jury, organizers conducted surveys involving 5010 citizens of the state and 11,435 public officials to identify key themes requiring discussion. Similarly, in its sequenced deliberation, the ICA began with a first chapter focused on broad urban planning themes to help define the agenda for later stages. In Chile, the two topics—health and pension reform—were prioritized in a national consultation that the Chilean Association of Municipalities conducted in 2019. In Brazil, the remits of the three assemblies were not imposed by Delibera but emerged through dialog with local officials responsible for implementing the project. Each assembly was tailored to address a distinct issue, aligned with climate change mitigation priorities specific to its locality. Also in Brazil, the organizers introduced an innovative component within the project’s governance system called the ‘Content Group.’ Prior to the commencement of the assemblies, organizers invited dozens of institutions from the three public branches, universities, and interest groups to participate in these groups, one for each assembly. In the Salvador assembly, for instance, 43 stakeholders were invited, of whom 19 accepted the invitation and participated in the group. The Content Group played a crucial role in the decision-making process concerning the methods to be employed in the assemblies. Apart from its involvement in the design phase, the group provided recommendations during implementation, ensured a diverse range of perspectives, assisted in disseminating information about the assembly, and in some cases, aided in preparing materials for the learning phase.

Sensitivity: In the search of a new sound for citizens’ assemblies

Sensitivity refers to a demonstrated willingness to adapt innovations to the specific contexts in which they are implemented. All four examples made conscious efforts to adapt the general model of citizens’ assemblies to their local contexts rather than simply replicating international examples. Some of these adaptations were driven by financial and legal constraints, as we will explain, while others resulted from a deliberate sensitivity to the local context.

In contrast to European assemblies, which may benefit from substantial budgets, citizens’ assemblies in Latin America typically operate within much tighter financial constraints. For instance, the ICA project incurred costs of around $80,000 USD, Decidadania $40,000, and the Chihuahua City Jury $5330. Notably, none of the projects included in this study surpassed the $200,000 mark, a very low amount compared to the OECD (2020) standard. In stark contrast, European assemblies, such as the French ones, incurred costs exceeding five million euros each. Similarly, some American deliberative polls surpassed $2,000,000, and Irish assemblies typically operate around the $1,000,000 mark. The scarcity of funds may pose challenges to upholding deliberative standards, and although cheap deliberation is not a cure-all, it can lead to innovative ideas on cost-effectiveness. For instance, austerity may inspire creative approaches such as organizing meetings in public spaces [e.g., public universities in Bogotá (Nielsen & McDonald-Nelson 2025)], conducting in-person recruitment efforts (Brazil), or employing strategies like golden tickets (Mexico).⁴ Budget constraints have consistently led organizers to rely on volunteers to execute mini-publics in the region. Both the Brazilian and Bogotá examples saw active involvement from universities and students who volunteered in various stages, including the design, learning, and deliberative phases.

One legal barrier in all four examples was the payment of economic compensation to participants due to legal restrictions and the legalistic approach of many public administrations in the region. None of these examples could use public funds to pay members. Instead, they had to respond generatively to this challenge. In all four examples, payments were provided by the private sector or international funding, which, in turn, encouraged organizers to build broad alliances to move the cases forward. In Colombia, a coalition of nine civic organizations—both national and international—was formed to create a public innovation laboratory within the City Council, which was responsible for designing and implementing the ICA. The Decididania project organizers also partnered with international cooperation agencies and the three local administrations, which allocated public resources for implementation in the different municipalities.

Beyond local challenges like those mentioned, all four examples showed careful attention to grounding key aspects of citizens’ assembly design—such as remits, descriptive criteria, and recruitment methods—in their respective contexts.

In all four examples, the themes and remits of the assemblies were carefully selected to address the most pressing local issues. The Mexican jury focused on corruption—an issue seldom tackled by assemblies in the Global North but especially urgent in a state (Chihuahua) marked by high-profile corruption scandals (Castillo & Mejía 2022). While topics like urban planning and climate change are common in citizens’ assemblies (Curato et al. 2024), the discussions in Bogotá and Brazil were tailored to their specific contexts. For instance, Delibera required each of the three Brazilian municipalities to focus on environmental issues relevant to their local realities—such as the impact of the jeans industry in the case of Toritama. To select these municipalities, Delibera initially drew a random sample of 200 municipalities and then contacted public officials directly to gauge their interest. Ultimately, 45 cities from all five regions of Brazil and 14 of the 27 states applied. To ensure sustainability and true capacity-building, Delibera encouraged municipalities to invest their own resources rather than relying entirely on external support.

Organizers also made substantive modifications and adjustments to the selection process, deviating from international ‘standards’ in meaningful ways. Let us begin with descriptive criteria—the factors used to stratify the sample and ensure the selection of members from diverse backgrounds. In the Global North, the primary criteria for selecting participants typically include gender, age, and location. A group chosen based on these factors is generally considered descriptively representative of the general population. However, in more unequal contexts, achieving meaningful descriptive representation can be more complex, often requiring the inclusion of additional criteria, particularly socioeconomic status. Without accounting for this factor, an assembly may consist of individuals who vary in gender, age, and location but predominantly come from upper or middle-class backgrounds. From the outset, citizens’ assemblies in Latin America recognized the need to incorporate other descriptive criteria and, at times, had to deviate from strict proportionality. For instance, the Chihuahua jury intentionally included non-proportional representation of indigenous groups and LGBTQ+ communities. The ICA placed particular emphasis on the socioeconomic criterion, achieving high levels of proportionality concerning income. Half of the assemblies in Bogotá were composed of low-income citizens, while fewer than 5% consisted of high-income participants.

Finally, one of the most interesting features of some Latin American examples of mini-publics—such as Decidadania, as well as others not included in this study, like the recent ‘meta-deliberative’ assembly in Bogotá (Česnulaitytė, Rey & Niño-Aguilar 2025)—is the use of in-person recruitment. After facing difficulties in recruiting participants due to limited budgets and insufficient data, the organizers of Decidadania turned to face-to-face recruitment strategies. Mailing letters can be expensive, and the digital divide poses challenges to relying on email. In-person recruitment compels organizers to engage in one-on-one conversations, embedding these exchanges within broader social spaces. Visiting universities, schools, public streets, and workplaces to explain the concept of citizens’ assemblies fosters more dialogical engagement than mass mailing. The Brazilian experience with in-person recruitment was later replicated in Bogotá’s meta-deliberative assembly and in other Global South contexts, such as India, representing an example of South–South democratic transposition (Castillo et al. 2024).

Generativity

Generativity refers to the ability to spark incrementally new ideas, practices, and models through the process of deliberating with others engaged in promoting democracy. A democratic innovation process that is receptive and sensitive—rather than isolated and uncritical—has far greater potential to generate genuine innovation. This is one of the central aims of deliberative innovation: not merely applying existing models, but improving them through the very process of transposition.

The Latin American cases already implemented offer valuable innovations for both the region and the world, some of which have already been transposed to other parts of the Global South and the Global North. One example is in-person recruitment: instead of relying on databases, mailing lists, or polling firms, organizers—often without access to such resources—go out into the streets, invite people to participate, and then randomly select a stratified sample from those who agree. In-person recruitment is now recognized as a way to enhance the participatory effects of citizens’ assemblies by making the process more open and flexible.

Another example is the deliberate deviation from strict proportionality. In some Latin American cases, this approach has been used to ensure the inclusion of groups that would otherwise be underrepresented if selected purely in proportion to the population. Additional innovations include Brazil’s creation of a Content Group to involve stakeholders in the design and oversight of the process, and Bogotá’s development of a sequenced deliberation model⁵—later adopted, with important variations, by The Democratic Odyssey in Europe (Nicolaidis 2025) and by the Copenhagen Semi-Permanent Climate Assembly (Česnulaitytė, Rey & Niño-Aguilar 2025). The OECD (2021) now recognizes sequenced deliberation as one of the models for institutionalizing public deliberation.

Other innovations, though not examined in this study, are worth noting: the meta-deliberation citizens’ assembly in Colombia (Česnulaitytė, Rey & Niño-Aguilar 2025), designed to have randomly selected citizens co-create the design of a future assembly; the adaptation of public venues such as universities for hosting citizens’ assemblies—an emerging topic in scholarship on the role of space in shaping deliberative practice (Nielsen & McDonald-Nelson 2025); and the Bujaru assembly’s pioneering recruitment strategies to strengthen the inclusion of Indigenous communities in mini-publics. While such innovations merit further normative scrutiny—since they may challenge some of the standard justifications for random selection—they can, at least in their experimental stage, generate creative and contextually appropriate solutions for both the region and other settings.