Next week, the University of Glasgow’s Politics Department will be hosting a two-day event to provide practitioners the chance to explore the experiences of deliberation from across Europe.

The COST Action “Constitution-making and deliberative democracy” aims to contribute to the advancement of knowledge in the broader field of democratic deliberation and in particular with reference to constitution-making. In Europe and across the world, several countries are turning to deliberative democracy to reform their constitutions, and in many others this question is high on the political agenda. Such transformation also shuffles quite radically the role of the citizenry regarding constitutional changes. Traditionally such changes are the sole responsibility of elected officials, in collaboration with experts. With the deliberative turn, many more actors may be involved in the designing of constitutions: citizens both individually and collectively in the forms of informal associations, social movements, civil society organisations, participatory consultants and research teams.

The Action seeks to bring together all these actors – who are usually not in contact – to discuss and reflect on this democratic challenge, not only in terms of normative ideals but also and above all on the empirical challenges raised by this complex and multi-faceted democratic transformation.

The Action’s meeting on 24-25 October in Glasgow will provide many practitioners the possibility to present the experiences of deliberation in their countries - a great opportunity to learn from good practices across Europe. The meeting takes place between 09.00 and 13.00 on 24 and 25 October in Wellington Church (at University of Glasgow).

There’s more info here.

The Action is happy to welcome at its meeting five participants from the Participatory Budgeting Conference on a first-come-first-served basis. Please enter your details below and we’ll get back to you.