In recent years, citizen assemblies (medborgarråd) and other forms of climate mini-publics have emerged as tools to bring public deliberation into climate governance. In Sweden, such initiatives have been conducted at both national and local levels — for example in Malmö, Gothenburg, Borås, and Sollefteå — initiated by municipal governments, civil society organizations, and research projects. These efforts demonstrate a growing ambition to strengthen democratic engagement and incorporate citizens’ perspectives into policymaking on climate change. 

Yet, significant communicative challenges remain if mini-publics are to become effective vehicles for deliberation between citizens holding diverse views and contribute to tangible climate policy. Mini-publics often operate in parallel to formal decision-making, and the ideas they generate risk being overlooked, misunderstood, or simplified when entering policy processes shaped by institutional logics of representation, expertise, and negotiation. Understanding how deliberative outcomes are communicated, translated, and received is crucial if mini-publics are to play a constructive role in climate governance. 

This project addresses these communicative challenges by examining how outputs of climate mini-publics in Swedish municipalities are used and negotiated by policy actors, and how the design of mini-publics can better support communication between citizens, experts, and decision-makers.  

The overall aim of the project is to strengthen the communicative interface between climate mini-publics and formal climate governance. The project seeks to advance both scholarly and practical understanding of how deliberative outputs can become meaningful contributions to policy, and how communicative design can foster constructive understanding between citizens, experts, and decision-makers engaged in climate governance. 

Team

Martin Westin,  SLU 

Andreas Johansson, Uppsala University