A **Citizen Assembly** is a body of people brought together to deliberate on public issues, usually with the goal of producing recommendations or decisions that are representative, inclusive, and informed.
Citizen assemblies are part of the broader family of Deliberative Democracy practices, designed to give ordinary people a structured role in shaping policy - newdemocracy.com.au 
# Recruitment and Participation The defining feature of a citizen assembly is not simply that anyone can join, but that participation is based on a **structured selection process** rather than self-selection. This method aims to produce a group that is demographically representative of the wider population.
# Sortition
The classical term for random selection is Sortition (from the Latin *sortiri*, meaning “to draw lots”). Ancient Athenian Democracy used sortition extensively to assign citizens to juries and offices. Modern citizen assemblies revive this idea by using a lottery to invite participants - participedia.net
# Civic Lottery
In contemporary practice, sortition is usually only the first step. Pure random selection may not guarantee a balanced assembly. Instead, a two-stage process is common:
1. Random invitation – A large number of citizens are randomly chosen from population registers or postal addresses and invited to take part.
2. Stratified selection – From those who accept, a smaller group is randomly drawn, but with adjustments to ensure representation across key demographic categories such as age, gender, geography, and socio-economic status.
This combined process is often called a **Civic Lottery**, **Democratic Lottery**, or **Stratified Sortition** - sortitionfoundation.org
# Acceptance
Because invitations are random, acceptance is voluntary. Typically, response rates are low, often under ten percent. The stratified lottery is conducted from among those who consent. This voluntary step introduces some self-selection, but careful weighting and outreach aim to preserve representativeness - citizensassembly.ie
# Terminology
- Sortition – the general term for random selection.
- Stratified Sortition – the method used in most modern assemblies to balance demographic representation.
- Civic Lottery – a popular phrase to describe the process in accessible terms.
In practice, most organizers and researchers will say that citizen assemblies use **sortition**, but clarify that it is “stratified sortition” or a “civic lottery” rather than a simple lottery.