Raw Data from the Observation of the French Citizens’ Convention for Climate

Report: The experience of the French Citizens' Climate Convention (CCC) is an unprecedented democratic exercise in terms of both its ambition and its scope: 150 citizens drawn by lot worked during seven three-day sessions (plus two remotely) from October 2019 to June 2020, and submitted their 149 proposals to the President of the Republic in June 2020 to achieve "reducing greenhouse gas emissions by at least 40% by 2030 in a spirit of social justice". The CCC has been the subject of an original monitoring system. Following a call for expressions of interest launched at the beginning of September 2019 by the Governance Committee, some forty researchers committed themselves individually or in teams to the direct observation of all the CCC's working methods. This highly multidisciplinary group brought together researchers in the social sciences who were interested in the very object of the Convention — the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions –, in the exercise of democratization and in its modalities and results in terms of climate policies. They have investigated as well the socio-political conditions of its emergence and how its results are taken into account, as the capacity of citizens to judge the trade-offs on which politicians and experts are stymied, or the modalities of their deliberation on large scale changes to undertake. Direct observation of deliberations among citizens at each of the discussion tables was coupled with a quantitative questionnaire survey, at each session, to probe citizens' values, attitudes towards climate change and opinions on public policy measures, and the quality of discussions in their assembly. Repeating some of the questions captures the changes that occurred over the course of the CCC. In the spirit of opening research data to the public, all quantitative data collected by the collective of researchers are made public. These data are published in three volumes: (A) Raw Data from the Observation of the French Citizens' Convention for Climate. Volume A — A "France in Miniature". Sociodemographic Data from the Draw (halshs-03910234), and, for the data from the questionnaires, (B) Raw Data from the Observation of the French Citizens' Convention for Climate. Volume B — The Representativeness of the Convention. Comparing Citizens' Responses to Questions Asked in National Surveys (halshs-03961042) and (C) Raw Data from the Observation of the French Citizens' Convention for Climate. Volume C — CCC's Responses Session by Session (this volume C assembles eight booklets: one per session) (halshs-03961055). It should be kept in mind that these are raw data, without analysis or interpretation, so they are not intended to be results. Several analyses of the researchers of the collective using these data have been published in 2022 or will be in 2023, in particular: (1) Giraudet L.-G. et al., 2022, "Co-construction" in Deliberative Democracy: Lessons from the French Citizens' Convention for Climate," Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, DOI:10.1057/s41599-022-01212-6, (2) Landemore H., Fourniau J.-M. (eds.), 2022, Les assemblées citoyennes, une nouvelle forme de représentation démocratique, dossier of the journal Participations No. 34 (2022/3), https://www.cairn.info/revue-participations-2022-3.htm, and (3) Reber B., Courant D. (eds.), forthcoming, Convention citoyenne pour le climat. Démocratie délibérative et transition écologique juste, Paris, ISTE.

Author(s)

Bénédicte Apouey, Jean-Michel Fourniau, Solène Tournus

Date of publication
  • 2020
Keywords
  • French Citizens’ Convention for Climate
  • Survey
  • Sociodemographic characteristics
  • Citizens’ assembly
  • Mini-public
  • France
  • Preferences
Issuing body(s)
  • Gis Démocratie et participation
Version
  • 1