Table of Contents

List of Tables List of Figures List of Abbreviations Acknowledgements 1: Power to the People? 2: Why Citizen Assemblies and How Did They Work? 3: Who Were the participants? 4: How Did the Decisions Come About? 5: Did the Citizen Assemblies Make the Right Decisions? 6: Did the Participants Decide by Themselves? 7: Did Participants Become Better Citizens? 8: Why Were the Assemblies' Reform Proposals Rejected? 9: Should we let Citizens Decide? Appendix 1: Description of Electoral Systems Appendix 2: Question Labels, Wordings, and Codings for Chapter 5 Appendix 3: Question Labels, Wordings, and Codings for Chapter 7 Appendix 4: Question Labels, Wordings, and Codings for Chapter 8 References

About the Author

Patrick Fournier is principal investigator for the next two Canadian Election Studies, and was co-investigator of the CES for the 2004, 2006, and 2008 elections. He is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the Universite de Montreal. His research interests include political behaviour, political psychology, citizen competence, opinion change, and survey methodology. Henk van der Kolk co-directed the Dutch Parliamentary Election Studies in 1998, 2006, and 2010. He is Associate Professor in the Political Science Department at the University of Twente. In 2006, he was involved in educating the citizen assembly on electoral reform in the Netherlands. His research interests are: electoral systems, electoral behavior, political participation, and local politics. R. Kenneth Carty has held the Brenda & David McLean Chair in Canadian Studies, served as the Director of the UBC Centre for the Study of Democratic Institutions, and is a past President of the Canadian Political Science Association. He is Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of British Columbia. He is a specialist on the structure, organization, and behaviour, of political parties and competitive party systems. Andre Blais is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a past President of the Canadian Political Science Association. He is Professor in the Department of Political Science at the Universite de Montreal. He holds a Canada Research Chair in Electoral Studies. He is the principal investigator for the Making Electoral Democracy Work project. His research interests are elections, electoral systems, turnout, public opinion, and methodology. Jonathan Rose served as the Academic Director of the Ontario Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform. He is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Studies at Queen's University. He has held visiting positions at Victoria University of Wellington, the International Study Centre, and Kwansei Gakuin University. His research interests include Canadian politics, mass media, political communication, political advertising, and propaganda.