Trust Both Ways: Citizens’ Assemblies and the Future of Political Agreement

Trust Democracy invites you to an evening talk with French democracy expert Bernard Reber, a political and moral philosopher at CNRS – Sciences Po, Paris, on whether citizens’ assemblies can help rebuild trust in democracy.

When people are selected by lot to join an assembly, their role in the relationship changes. They are no longer only trusting officials. They are now the ones being trusted. Unlike survey respondents answering from behind a screen, or protesters voicing criticism from the outside, assembly members must form judgments and defend them in front of people who see things differently. That is a more demanding and more political kind of participation - and it changes the dynamic of trust for all involved.

Drawing on the most in-depth survey of French citizens to date, Citizen Deliberation and Political Trust in Democracy, Bernard will examine France’s two large national citizens’ conventions, on climate and on end-of-life care. He will also look at the institutional choices behind them, including governance committees, facilitators and decision-makers, and what these choices mean for anyone designing an assembly, in Aotearoa New Zealand or elsewhere.

About the evening

Bernard will give a talk, followed by an audience Q&A.

Date: Thursday 19 November 2026

Time: 6pm

Venue: RHLT3, Victoria University of Wellington Rutherford House, Wellington

About the speaker

Bernard Reber is a Swiss and French political and moral philosopher at CNRS – Sciences Po, Paris. His work focuses on responsible deliberation and pluralism, and on how norms play out in real-world contexts, in conversation with the social, political, natural and engineering sciences.

For over 30 years he has studied deliberative processes as an analyst, organiser, facilitator, evaluator and adviser. That experience has shown him two gaps: philosophers often overlook the practical questions that come up in deliberation, and practitioners often have limited exposure to the philosophical debates behind their work. More recently, he has been exploring the risks and potential of AI for participatory processes.

Bernard directs the ISTE-Wiley collections Interdisciplinarity, Sciences and Humanities (in French and English), is responsible for the humanities and social sciences in the Encyclopaedia Sciences, and co-directs the Sociology, Ethics and Epistemology of Sciences field (29 volumes).