Deliberative Decision-Making and the Public Good: A Behavioral Lab Experiment in Kenya

Abstract

"Over the past twenty years, participation by citizens in government decision making has been promoted all over the world. While there are normative reasons to encourage more inclusive decision-making processes, costly and time-intensive collective decision-making processes are often justified on the grounds that they may also improve collective outcomes. In political theory, deliberative discussion, in particular, is believed to be more transformative than a mere aggregation of individual preferences, potentially changing both the outcomes of the decision process and the value that particiapnts place on those outcomes. If outcomes in question relate to a public good, these effects have the potential to encourage individuals to contribute to that public good despite individual incentives to deviate. One of Ostrom’s original design principles for successful commons management was that those affected by rules participate in decision-making related to them. But these referred to endogenously created institutions, whereas the use of participatory processes in public policy more often involves efforts to engage citizens or stakeholders in externally organized decision-making processes. Despite widespread interest, empirical evidence in support of such co-produced decision-making remains weak.

This study uses a behavioral lab experiment in Kenya to examine whether engagement in group decision- making regarding creation of a public good leads to greater contributions to the public good. I find that participation that involves deliberation (but not a simple majority rule) results in better collective outcomes. This effect is achieved primarily through better strategic decision making, which minimizes the costs associated with socially desirable behavior. However, I also find an indirect effect of deliberation, mediated by preference change, on individual effort exerted on behalf of a collective good. This provides rigorous empirical evidence in support of claims by political theorists that deliberation may transform citizens, rather than merely aggregate preferences or coerce agreement."