ABSTRACT
The chapter aims to present the Polish experience with citizens’ assemblies. It discusses nine innovative deliberative forums that took place between 2016 and 2021 in Poland’s largest regional cities. The authors examine a number of technical and organizational aspects of the deliberative processes that took place in Gdańsk, Lublin, Kraków, Łódź, Warsaw, Wrocław, and Poznań. They discuss the legal basis and practical limitations of the application of deliberative mini-publics in Poland. Subsequently, the constitutive features of the citizens’ assembly held in Poznań in 2021 are presented. As these innovations in Poland are organized exclusively at the local level, the authors analyze the Polish assemblies from the perspective of the epistemic benefits of involving local stakeholders in such in-depth deliberations. The article addresses the following questions: (1) What are the specificities of Polish citizens’ assemblies and the extent to which they are consistent with good practices developed in other countries and identified in the OECD (2020) report; (2) What are the perspectives for the development of this deliberative innovation in Poland? (3) Does the local level create good conditions for the practice and development of deliberative innovations?
