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Abstract:
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From the Introduction:
"...Institutional arrangements to manage and coordinate actors preferences in a society are more diverse than just the top-down hierarchical mode associated to the State or the self-regulating mechanisms associated with markets. They also include collective or common decision-making processes and rules. Besides, stakeholders with a determining role in the success of public decisions include more than just the State and individuals interacting on a global market. They also include a whole range of formal and informal institutions, each with a role to play at a certain level. 'Political economists need a richer set of policy formulation than just the Market and the State' (Ostrom, E. 1997, page 2).
"Although it is sometimes written, the weaknesses of one decision-making process do not legitimate the validity of the others and the aim, here is not to advocate collective/common processes as the only appropriate type of public decision management. Hierarchical decision-making has shown its limits. It can be slow and costly, and it is often subject to 'bureaucratic failures' when individuals manage to subvert the goals defined by the highest levels of the system (Brinkerhoff, D.W. 1996a). This does not mean, though, that the emergence of the State is just a flaw in human evolution, nor that hierarchical processes have no utility. The existence of externalities, public goods, imperfect information and incomplete markets make it impossible for market mechanisms alone to ensure an efficient coordination of individual actions (Stiglitz, J. 1998). But this does not prove that markets are useless nor that the self-regulating properties of commercial exchanges cannot be worthwhile to manage human societies. In a similar way, collective or common decision, and their related institutions, also have their limits and their beneficial sides.
"Rather than advocating one type of the three decision-making modes, the point is more, in fact, to take account of their co-existence and of the complexity of their interactions in our societies. Hierarchy, markets and collective/common decisions are all present in the real world, and they all have an impact on the success or failure of the ventures undertaken by our societies. Through them, and through the various stakeholders using them, a wide range of decisions made at various levels happen at the same time, on the same realities. These different decisions may go in different directions, ignoring or even opposing each other.
"While it seems clear that a proper co-ordination of the various decision-making modes would be beneficial, little has been done to actually do it and devise ways to take account of their mutual advantages. It would imply dealing with a wide set of actors and institutions: individuals, governmental organisations and, formal and informal structures of the civil society. And it would mean designing and implementing institutional changes based on the potential synergies of the three decision-process modes.
"This paper proposes to deal with this challenging task. It first explores the implications raised by such prospect. Then it presents an approach to tackle the task. The approach pays special attention to the bounded perceptions of stakeholders, to the insufficient information they have and to the stakes related with diverging opinions. The structure of the approach combines practical methods to take account of these limitations. It is quickly presented and some achieved results are highlighted."
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