Events

The Climate Assembly as a ‘mini-Austria’. Socio-demographics, political interest, and attitudes towards climate change

The Centre for Social Sciences invites you to the third lecture of the
Lecture Series of the Research Centre for Social Ecology and Climate Change

Tamara Ehs: The Climate Assembly as a ‘mini-Austria’. Socio-demographics, political interest, and attitudes towards climate change

Date: Thursday, 2 March, 2023, 10.00 a.m.

Zoom link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/84089767324?pwd=OVhDUW1GUm1kRWcwcDdUcFArT2MvUT09

The answer to low satisfaction with democracy in general and to climate change, in particular, is increasingly found in citizens’ assemblies. Following in the footsteps of Germany, the UK, and France, among others, a climate assembly was held in Austria in 2022. Randomly selected citizens developed proposals on how Austria could become climate neutral by 2040. The article analyses the composition of the assembly and thus the question of how far the selection of participants lived up to the claim of a ‘mini-Austria’.

The findings:
1. A curtailed selection process led to a pool of participants that was too small and excluded parts of the population.
2. The participants largely corresponded to the population in terms of socio-demographic
characteristics.
3. However, their attitudes towards climate change as well as at least in part towards politics more general were not considered in the selection process and were not representative.