Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Who should govern who governs? The role of citizens in reforming the electoral system / Dennis F. Thompson -- Citizen representatives / Mark E. Warren -- Institutional design and citizen deliberation / Hilary Pearse -- Agenda-setting in deliberative forums: expert influence and citizen autonomy in the British Columbia Citizens' Assembly / Amy Lang -- Descriptive representation in the British Columbia Citizens' Assembly / Michael Rabinder James -- Do citizens' assemblies make reasoned choices? / André Blais, R. Kenneth Carty, Patrick Fournier -- Communicative rationality in the citizens' assembly and referendum processes / R.S. Ratner -- Deliberation, information, and trust: the British Columbia Citizens' Assembly as agenda setter / Fred Cutler [and others].

Is it possible to advance democracy by empowering ordinary citizens to make key decisions about the design of political institutions and policies? In 2004, the government of British Columbia embarked on a bold democratic experiment: it created an assembly of 160 near-randomly selected citizens to assess and redesign the province's electoral system. The British Columbia Citizens' Assembly represents the first time a citizen body has had the power to reform fundamental political institutions. It was an innovative gamble that has been replicated elsewhere in Canada and in the Netherlands, and is gaining increasing attention in Europe as a democratic alternative for constitution-making and constitutional reform. In the USA, advocates view citizens' assemblies as a means for reforming referendum processes. This book investigates the citizens' assembly in British Columbia to test and refine key propositions of democratic theory and practice.