Ieva Česnulaitytė

She has been working on democratic innovation for over a decade, initially sparked by her research on populism and the extent to which it is driven by people’s disillusionment with the political system and with a lack of agency to shape the decisions affecting their lives.

Claudia was involved in designing the world’s first permanent Citizens’ Assemblies in Paris, Ostbelgien, and Brussels (on climate). 

Before founding DemocracyNext, Claudia set up and led the OECD’s work on Innovative Citizen Participation - establishing an evidence base of ~600 examples of Citizens’ Assemblies, setting standards for implementation, and establishing guidelines for institutionalisation. She co-authored the OECD’s flagship report Innovative Citizen Participation and New Democratic Institutions: Catching the Deliberative Wave and led the development of the OECD Good Practice Principles for Deliberative Processes. She oversaw the development of the OECD Evaluation Guidelines for Representative Deliberative Processes (2021) and wrote the OECD paper on Eight Ways to Institutionalise Deliberative Democracy (2021). She set up and co-ordinated the OECD Innovative Citizen Participation Network, and edited the OECD blog Participo. At the OECD, Claudia also managed five pilot projects of citizen participation in cohesion policy, supported by the European Commission, advised on institutionalising deliberative democracy in the Basque Country in a project with Arantzazulab, and advised on designing deliberative processes in Finland and Lebanon.

She is the author of The People's Verdict: Adding Informed Citizen Voices to Public Decision Making (2017) and The Populist Signal: Why Politics and Democracy Need to Change (2015). 

She is one of the 2023 Obama Leaders in Europe and is on the Global Advisory Council of The Data Tank.