ABSTRACT
In late 2012 the Irish government took the long-anticipated step of establishing the Irish Constitutional Convention (www.constitution.ie), whose fi rst formal session was held during the weekend of 26-27 January 2013. Internationally, there have been plenty of examples over the years of the involvement of citizens in debates on constitutional reform, whether this occurs when they are given a voice in referendums or public initiatives or when they are allowed to run for election as members of a convention (a recent example being Iceland’s Constitutional Council of 2011). Ireland’s Constitutional Convention also included citizens as members, but it is the nature of how these citizens were selected to participate and how the process was run that are of particular interest. There are a small but growing number of cases in which governments have opted to follow ‘deliberative principles’, selecting citizens at random rather than by election and managing the discussions along deliberative lines.
