Social Epistemology Review: On Democracy, Citizen Assemblies, and the True Representation Movement: A Conversation with Dr. Roslyn Fuller

The below conversation was originally conducted as an interview on the True Representation Movement (TRM) Podcast and published as an excerpt at the Social Epistemology Review.

The original TRM Podcast conversation can be found here:

Part 1 and Part 2

Ahmed Bouzid (AB): Roslyn, thanks again for making time. I know we talked not too long ago, and I wasn’t sure when we’d reconnect—but here we are. Honestly, I’ve been thinking a lot about the stuff you’ve said, especially around citizen assemblies. You’ve been on the inside of that world and also pretty openly critical, which is rare. I wanted to learn from your experience as we build out TRM.

Roslyn Fuller (RF): Yeah, happy to jump in again. I’ve spent quite a bit of time with citizens assemblies—advising, observing, participating. But over time it became clear that what looked like democracy on the surface, often wasn’t. It was more like a well-funded performance.

AB: That’s what worries me too. I’ve been watching the way a lot of these organizations present themselves—they look grassroots, but then you go to their website and it’s like ten vice presidents, sleek videos, and office space that’s probably nicer than most startups. The funding tells the real story.

RF: Totally. A lot of the hype around assemblies and sometimes even the assemblies themselves have been at least partly bankrolled by so-called ‘impact investors’, organizations like Soros’s Open Society or NewDemocracy in Australia. And look, whatever you think of those funders, the second you take their money, you’re in their orbit. The space stops being about open public input and starts being about elite-managed outcomes. Deliberations in assemblies are often framed in a way that leads people toward a certain conclusion and some participants have complained about this.

To read the rest of the interview, read the original at the Social Epistemology Review.