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Citizen Infrastructure

Intergenerational deliberation

Most of the big questions citizens’ assemblies wrestle with — climate, biodiversity, anything about the long term — are inherently intergenerational. The consequences land on people of very different ages, and stretch across decades. Yet society offers almost no setting where a 7-year-old and a 70-year-old actually decide something together, unless they happen to be in the same family. Intergenerational deliberation is the deliberate attempt to build that room.

Why mix the generations

Section titled “Why mix the generations”
  • Each brings what the others lack. Elders bring experience and the long view; children bring fresh eyes and ask “why?” about things adults have quietly accepted. Put them together and the conversation gets richer than either could manage alone.
  • The recommendations are intergenerational too. Which raises a problem worth naming: intergenerational stewardship. If an assembly’s calls to action will take decades to deliver, who holds them accountable as the people affected grow up and the people in power move on? Designing for that hand-off is part of the work.

The frontier

Section titled “The frontier”

The progression runs from children “on the side” — a photo opportunity or a nice-to-have — through parallel children’s assemblies, toward something more ambitious: fully intergenerational assemblies where young and old deliberate as equals. This is the direction CRIN is most interested in experimenting with. France’s 2025 assembly on “children’s time” leaned this way — mostly adults, but with child consultations and some genuinely intergenerational deliberation built in.

It’s a natural companion to children & young people’s assemblies and to the question of who deliberation can enfranchise.

Sources

Section titled “Sources”