In recent times we have seen a spate of climate assemblies across Europe as the climate emergency gains increasing prominence in the political agenda and as the citizens’ assembly approach to public engagement gains popularity. However, there has been little empirical research on how the scope of citizens’ assemblies affects the internal logic of the assembly process and its impacts on external policy actors. This is a significant oversight given the power of agenda setting. It is also of particular importance for climate assemblies given the exceptional scale and complexity of climate change, as well as the need for co-ordination across all policy areas and types of governance to address it. In this paper, we start to address this gap through an in-depth case analysis of the Climate Assembly UK. We adopt a mixed methods approach, combining surveys of the assembly members and witnesses, interviews with the assembly members, organisers, MPs, parliamentary staff, and government civil servants, and non-participant observation of the process. We find that attempts to adapt the assembly’s scope to the scale of the climate change issue compromised assembly member learning, the co-ordination of the resulting recommendations, assembly member endorsement of the recommendations, and the extent of their impact on parliament and government. We argue that more democratization in setting the agenda could help combat these issues.

Participation is increasingly used to legitimize and improve environmental decision making. However, in practice participants often find the process empty and frustrating. This has adverse consequences for environmental planning and consenting processes, where participants become disillusioned, and negative feelings develop into active opposition, causing delays, spiraling costs, and conflict. This paper addresses the gap between participatory ideals and unsatisfactory environmental decision-making in practice. We take a fresh look at how participatory ideals can be implemented and propose a new framework based on translating participatory ideals into practice. We identified commitments and values for fair and achievable participatory environmental decision-making from science and technology studies (STS), procedural environmental justice, and deliberative democracy. These were synthesized and organized into a set of principles (inclusivity, process-orientation, empowerment, and reflection) and then translated into “practical” criteria. The result is a new framework that links participatory ideals to practice.

Research methods with roots in complexity science are increasingly popular in social research. However, they are not widespread and have potential to deliver value more fully and consistently to social research and methodology. One reason for this is that methods are often used alone, or only with traditional social research methods. We attempt to support and catalyse the use of complexity-framed methods in combination in social research, by systematically reviewing which methods framed in the language of complexity (not including traditional social research methods) have been combined, how, and why. We do this to make clear the state-of-the-art of combinations and to consider gaps and potential new combinations. We find many examples of different methods used together, with simulation methods well-represented. Most examples appear in recent years despite the methods, and interest in complexity, being around much longer. We identify four types of combination, seven purposes, and consider future directions.

Climate assemblies are a novel method of public consultation in which quasi randomly selected citizens are brought together to learn about climate change, discuss with their fellow citizens, and recommend solutions to the commissioning body. While previous studies have considered the effects of participation on citizens' assembly members' attitudes and behaviour, there have been few studies on climate assemblies (see Andrews 2022). This is an important gap as the number for meaningful climate action to be implemented. Moreover, most studies have not provided longitudinal analysis, rely on quantitative data only and are experimental. In this paper, we explore the long‐term impacts of participating in a climate assembly on the assembly members' climate knowledge, views, political engagement and consumption behaviours. We draw on a mixed method study that included survey data collected from members of Climate Assembly UK (CAUK) during and after the assembly, and interview data collected shortly after the assembly's conclusion to explore the underlying reasons for changes in a real case. We show that assembly members were more concerned about climate change and were more likely to engage in climate‐conscious consumption habits following CAUK than before the assembly. Notably, these changes were evident 12 and 29 months after the end of the assembly, suggesting that members maintained the new habits and attitudes that formed following CAUK's conclusion. This paper contributes to debates about the role of citizens in climate policymaking.