Author Archive

Rikki Dean

Rikki Dean primarily researches approaches to public participation in social policy decision-making. He is a PhD student in the Department of Social Policy and Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion (CASE) at the London School of Economics, and was recently a visiting democracy fellow at the Harvard's Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation. He is also currently a visiting lecturer at the University of Westminster teaching innovations in democratic practice, as well as a research assistant at INLOGOV, University of Birmingham researching accountability in local governance. He tweets at

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In an unheralded committee room at the House of Lords on Wednesday a group of politicians from across the political spectrum came together with the participants and organisers of two recent pilot Citizens’ Assemblies on constitutional reform. It was heartening to hear the genuine appetite for new approaches to involving members of the public in politics. Politicians from the Conservatives, Greens, Labour, Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru, SNP and UKIP all sang the praises of the Citizens’ Assemblies and called for more public participation in politics. Nevertheless, belying this consensus was a little less agreement than apparent at first sight. The two citizens’ assemblies – Assembly North in Sheffield and Assembly South in Southampton – provided a chance for a small …