Commentary
Allen Lab Fellow Tyler Fisher examines the untapped potential of city charters as a vehicle for deliberative democracy, arguing that advocates should work to embed tools like citizen assemblies, participatory budgeting, and town meetings directly into the governing architecture of cities, institutionalizing deliberative democracy one municipality at a time.
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For the last year, I have served as a Charter Review Task Force Member in the community I call home: Edgewater, Colorado. The Task Force’s task? Review the city’s founding document and make recommendations to our city council on improvements that would improve governance in our city of 5,000 people, which covers only two-thirds of a square mile, but borders Denver directly.
As I served, I thought about how to integrate what I have learned about the power of deliberative democracy into our local context. I am increasingly convinced by advocates and researchers that deliberative democracy tools are powerful solutions that meet the democratic crises we face. Throughout the process, I introduced three draft charter provisions — an annual town meeting, a citizen assembly selected by civic lottery, and a participatory budgeting process; the drafts are below.
My experience as a charter reviewer convinced me that city charters may be an overlooked opportunity for the U.S.-based deliberative democracy advocates. City charters are a natural home for requirements that local governments create better ways for citizens to address the most important issues facing their communities directly.
Deliberative democracy is an umbrella term for democratic processes that give ordinary citizens structured opportunities to learn about issues, discuss them with one another, and shape public decision-making. A citizen assembly, for example, typically brings together a representative group of residents — often selected through a civic lottery — to study an issue, hear from experts, deliberate together, and produce recommendations for elected officials. Participatory budgeting allows residents to directly help shape how public dollars are spent by enabling them to tell their leaders easily how they would spend municipal resources if they could. Annual town meetings create recurring forums where citizens can propose legislation, publicly debate community priorities, and formally advise elected officials.
These democratic models are growing in popularity across the United States and around the world. In France, President Emmanuel Macron commissioned a national citizen assembly on assisted suicide and end-of-life care: 184 citizens participated in 60 hearings over four months — eventually making recommendations to the French parliament, which adopted two bills on the topic. In Fort Collins, just an hour north of Edgewater, local leaders convened a 20-member citizen assembly to deliberate on the future of 164 acres of land in the city: their recommendations were approved by 68% of city voters.
FIDE-North America has evaluated the impact of Citizen Assemblies in Boulder, Colorado; Victoria & Saanich, British Columbia; and in Yukon, Canada. My colleagues at Change.org are running deliberative democracy projects in partnership with mayors across the country, including, for example, in Columbia, South Carolina (on the topic of local business revitalization), and in Bozeman, Montana (on the topic of Affordable Housing).
These are just a few examples of the many deliberative democracy projects underway across North America and around the world. Participedia, a project started by my Ash Center colleagues, has tracked 962 deliberative processes, a part of a larger data set of nearly 2,500 innovations in democratic practice. A separate OECD database has tracked 733. And organizations like Democracy Next have guides to help governments assemble citizen assemblies that build on lessons learned.
These experiments are often promising because they create conditions modern democratic life rarely does: citizens have time to learn, deliberate, revise their views, and produce recommendations outside the incentives of social media, cable news, and performative politics.
A structural problem, though, limits almost all deliberative democracy initiatives: governments are rarely required to use them.
Most citizen assemblies and participatory budgeting processes happen because a mayor, councilmember, governor, or nonprofit leader decides they are worthwhile. A strategy built primarily around reacting to political opportunities only gets us so far, though. First, many elected officials are reluctant to engage in meaningful power-sharing with their constituents and may never choose to experiment with deliberative democracy at all. Second, even when deliberative democracy projects succeed, the political will to continue them can disappear as leadership changes and elected officials leave office. Without structural requirements, deliberative democracy risks remaining optional, episodic, and personality-driven. The solution is to institutionalize deliberative democracy, one municipality at a time.
That is where city charters matter.
A city charter is essentially a local constitution. It establishes the rules of democratic life within a city: how power is distributed, how decisions are made, and what values a community chooses to elevate.
Cities use charters to determine everything from election systems to ethics rules to the powers of mayors and councils. Charters account for the balance of power that citizens have, relative to the power that elected officials have.
If deliberative democracy genuinely improves public legitimacy, civic trust, and policy outcomes, then reformers should not merely advocate for more pilots or encourage elected officials to experiment with these tools. They should work to embed deliberative democracy directly into the governing architecture of cities.
That could mean requiring annual citizen assemblies on major policy questions. It could mean guaranteeing residents structured opportunities to shape portions of municipal budgets. It could mean bringing formal, annual town meetings — where elected officials must publicly respond to citizen recommendations and which are common in the Northeast — to the rest of the country. Critically, these approaches do not replace representative democracy. They supplement it. Elected officials would still govern, legislate, and make final decisions. Charters could ensure that residents also have durable opportunities to participate in governance between elections.
Importantly, the pathways already exist. City charters can typically be amended through ballot referendums, charter review commissions, citizen petitions, and periodic revision processes. Deliberative democracy advocates should begin viewing these mechanisms not as procedural technicalities, but as strategic opportunities.
Below, I’ve offered up illustrative language that could be modified to appear in municipal charters all across the country; towns, cities, and counties could all adopt them. Such language is often characterized as “model policy” in the politics industry.
(a) An Annual Town Meeting shall be convened each year during the first quarter, open to all registered electors and residents of the city.
(b) The purpose of the meeting shall be to deliberate on matters of community concern and to advise the City Council through resolutions adopted by majority vote of those present.
(c) Any resident may introduce a resolution for discussion. Resolutions shall be submitted to the City Clerk at least ten (10) days before the meeting for inclusion on the agenda.
(d) The City Council shall hold a public discussion within sixty (60) days of any resolution adopted at the Town Meeting and shall issue a written response indicating whether and how it intends to act upon the recommendation.
(e) The City Manager shall ensure that the meeting is accessible to all residents, including through live translation and virtual participation options.
(a) The City Council shall annually authorize a Citizen Assembly to deliberate on one topic of public importance identified by the Council.
(b) Fifty (50) residents shall be randomly selected from the City’s registered voter list, with demographic balancing to reflect the City’s population. Selected residents may decline participation.
(c) Participants shall receive a stipend of at least $150 for their service.
(d) The Assembly shall meet for not fewer than three hours to study the designated topic, receive expert testimony, and produce recommendations.
(e) The Assembly’s report shall be public and presented to the City Council, which shall schedule a public hearing on its recommendations within ninety (90) days.
(f) Funding of not less than $10,000 per fiscal year shall be included in the City budget for the administration of the Citizen Assembly.
(a) At least thirty (30) days before the City Council’s first discussion of the annual budget, the proposed budget shall be published in full, with an accessible summary of expenditures by category.
(b) All registered voters shall be provided an opportunity to express preferences for allocating a portion of the budget through an online or paper platform established by the City.
(c) The City Manager shall compile and present a report summarizing the results of this participatory process to the Council prior to budget adoption.
(d) The Council shall publicly acknowledge the participatory budgeting results before adopting the annual budget.
(e) Results of the participatory budgeting process shall be advisory and non-binding but must be recorded in the budget minutes.
Tyler Fisher is a Policy Fellow at the Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation at the Harvard Ash Center and the Founder and Principal of Trailmark Strategies.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and do not necessarily represent the positions of the Ash Center or its affiliates.
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