Democracy put to the test
MIT field experiment asks: What happens when people gain the ability to govern themselves?
Developing countries that free themselves from authoritarian governments are often called “experiments in democracy.” But what happens when a researcher runs an actual field experiment in democracy? A novel study by MIT economist Benjamin Olken has provided surprising insights about the impact of democratic government in the developing world.
In fieldwork involving 49 Indonesian villages, Olken arranged to have major decisions on public-works projects in some settlements decided by plebiscite — in which all citizens get a vote — rather than by the traditional small councils of village leaders. Unexpectedly, the types of projects selected by majority vote were nearly identical to those picked by village elites; the voting public did not try to redistribute wealth to themselves. And yet when people were allowed to vote, they expressed greater contentment with the results than when decisions were simply handed down by the elites. The conclusion was that even if democracy doesn’t make a material difference in people’s lives, it creates greater civic cohesion.
“I expected more of a change in the outcomes,” says Olken, an associate professor in MIT’s Department of Economics. “But there is more satisfaction and potentially more legitimacy through these direct democratic institutions, as opposed to having a decision made by a small set of people.”
In turn, the study challenges a popular view in development economics: that “elite capture” of politics — the control of government decision-making by a small group — only enriches a select few. “I was thinking that giving more power to everyone could take away elite dominance,” notes Olken. “But that didn’t come out in the data.” Instead the results suggest two plausible ways of looking at local political elites, in Indonesia and elsewhere: “One is that elites are bad guys, trying to steal money for themselves,” says Olken. “The other is that elites are leaders doing a good job of making sure things are allocated the right way.”
Java, unscripted
Indonesia is a logical place to study political development, having thrown off the authoritarian Suharto regime in 1998 after 31 years of rule. Since then, the government has been exploring ways to decentralize politically.
Olken performed his study in 2005 and 2006 in three distinct rural subdistricts: The heavily Muslim area of East Java, the more Christian-populated North Sumatra, and a socially diverse region, Southeast Sulawesi. The median village size was about 1,500 households in Java, and about 230 in the other areas. Each village was given infrastructure projects to implement, often involving roads, sanitation and water. Where the projects were decided by plebiscite, about 80 percent of the village voted — a 20-fold increase in participation compared to the usual village meetings. All the villages are part of an Indonesian program, the Kecamatan Development Project (KDP), funded by the World Bank; Olken is also affiliated with the MIT-based Jameel Abdul Latif Poverty Action Lab, which backs field experiments in development economics.
The results, unveiled in a working paper, “Direct Democracy and Local Public Goods: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Indonesia,” will be published in the American Political Science Review later this year. By an 18 percent margin, villagers who voted were more likely to say the public works in question would benefit them, even when the projects were substantively similar to ones the village councils had chosen. Voting villagers were also more satisfied with the overall KDP program, by a margin of 13 percent, and were even more likely to contribute something of their own — money, labor or food — to the project, by a margin of 17 percent, indicating the greater enthusiasm generated by participatory democracy.
Olken’s study has earned him considerable notice among colleagues, who assert that no social scientist had previously conducted a randomized field experiment altering the political system used by people. “It represents the first effort to study real-world democracy in a natural setting where the stakes mean something to the participants,” says Donald Green, a professor of political science at Yale. And precisely because the villagers and the chiefs approved similar projects, the study uniquely isolates the question of how much democracy matters to people, even if it doesn’t add to their wealth.
In Green’s view, this result “can be taken two ways. If you think direct democracy is a sham, you note that it brings legitimacy without changing the distribution of goods. If you are a supporter of direct democracy, you also note that it brings legitimacy without changing the distribution of goods.” That is, if one’s goal is to change the distribution of wealth in a developing country, the results will appear disappointing and reflect poorly on direct democracy. But if one’s goal is to keep the distribution of wealth intact, the plebiscite system may offer a golden opportunity to do so while maintaining popular support.
Adding data points
Green also believes the issues raised by Olken’s study are “not specific to Indonesia; they apply to all decentralized governments.” That said, Olken himself offers a few caveats about the experiment. Because it was a one-time study, he allows, the small councils, knowing their decision-making would be scrutinized by outsiders, may have made generous decisions in an effort to make themselves look reasonable. Such potential backroom dealing could not be accounted for in the study.
Olken also observes that the usefulness of direct democracy can be affected by the question of what is voted on in the first place; California’s ballot-proposition system, he notes, receives criticism for allowing well-funded organizations to set its agenda. Moreover, plebiscites that clearly benefit or hurt certain subgroups — for instance, if a road were rerouted through existing property — could become bitterly contested. “Direct democracy can be very important in the right context,” says Olken. “But the question is: What exactly is the right context?”
Finally, Olken notes, “elite capture” may well be a real phenomenon in other places, even if it seemed absent in these Indonesian villages. “I don’t think we’ve disproven that elite capture is still a problem,” says Olken. “But maybe in some cases elites are doing good things as well. We’re adding data points to the discussion.”
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A population that establishes democracy after a period of rebellion may (or may not, I dunno) be less likely to simply follow their old leaders.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
True, but given the rallying cry 'murica so often gets behind (ra-ra democracy?) I doubt it would apply to us, specifically.
Now, a country establishing a national identity and recovering from civil war may be less likely to adopt such a vision, but then again, I'm thinking of third world dictatorships when I say that. There could be exceptions.
Moreover, the characterization of this study irks me, namely:
It does no such thing, going by the description of what was done. There are many examples of what they're trying to describe (Cronyism, or Elite Dominance, or Crony Capitalism) of political systems in developmental theory, particularly in Africa, and the description of his case isn't anywhere near this definition. Instead, he's done a study where he compares one level of decentralized democracy (local councils) with a further-down-the-chain level of decentralization (direct democracy).
So for the article to suggest that this somehow disproves the effects of elite domination of transitioning democracies is absurd.
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I would say that this study says nothing about 'elite groups' at all, since it doesn't study an elite group, at least not nearly in the same context as that of the modern industrialized world.
I mean, it works well enough in a condo owner's association, we all have a common goal (low cost high quality living), and while we can disagree what plow service to hire, we know we need a plow service. But all you need to do is see California for why direct democracy also winds up with mind numbingly stupid choices that help yourself in the short term without having the capacity or desire to think of the long term or larger effects.
The problem becomes greater still in a nation like America, where democracy has very big ramifications and vox populi has the capacity to change quite a lot - here, we get a mixture between fanaticism and apathy.
Civilization needs democracy the way we need water. But we don't try to drink like camels, now do we?
In that case, the long-term effects of direct democracy aren't terribly relevant since they're going after the legitimizing effects of moving to this in the interim on governmental stability (as the hypothesis would suggest that if you have people more enthusiastic about the participation aspect, they'd probably view the transition government more favourably and more likely to follow it).
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This.
Voting to put in a new well or repaving a road is something easily figured out and understood by the average person.
Macroeconomics and US monetary policy for example... not so much. Average person can barely balance their own checkbook.
I mean. Yes. Sometimes there are.
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Maybe it would be feasible if we had villages of like 50 people rather than villages of like 10,000-1,000,000 with our votes filtered through representatives.
There's also the matter of people simply not getting complex issues.
I think it can get pretty oppressive and retarded at the local level, too. You just need a cult or some other popular idiot ideology being ascendant in a local population.
However, those villages are not making decisions for themselves, each one goes out and votes how it sees to decide the course for the collection of 2 million villages.
In this situation systemically, i can quite see how there would be a vast disconnect and discontentment with democracy.
Are you making a reference to the representative system or the fact that voting isn't something pursued by many people particularly in non-presidential elections or both?
I think he's talking about the fact that representation occurs at the level of cities and counties instead of blocks and neighborhoods.
I am referring to political structures independent of the official structure. Individually each person in the U.S. interacts with a limited subset of the population on a daily basis. This is both due to feasibility concerns and filtering costs.
Such, effectively, we are made up of these groups rather than any large demographic construct. We may have similarities across them, but our political discussions and thoughts are largely limited to a small section of people that we converse with.
It is with these people that we form our consensus of voting. But since each "village" is not the same, and each each village has little consensus building going on between them, the chances of radical change based on direct voting and the changes of dissatisfaction based on direct voting are much more prevalent.
In a village where all decisions are made by a council and then that is passed onto a democratic system everyone has the same political discourse already, that little change happens is unsurprising. But once you have multiple villages attempting to make the same decisions, you have the same "elite structure" that the village had on the small scale, except that it exists as a few active villages rather than a few accessible people. Invariably people will feel left out and mad at how things get decided and as the system gets larger this will be more prevalent as they are moved further and further from the decision making process.
What matters more than their relative wealth is how easy it is for the other villagers to throttle the elders. Even my state rep would be hard to have a conversation with unless he was feeling friendly, and if I wanted to tell him everything he was doing wrong it would probably be even more difficult.
I am open to the idea that the constant threat of instantaneous strangulation is the key to fighting governmental corruption.
You say that now, but I think the Tea Bagger types will be far more quick on the strangulation draw then anyone with actually good ideas.
Is that what Singapore does? They have silly-low corruption.
Hopefully.
If I'm a village elder and I don't have anything more to my name than just being older than the rest of the villagers, I wouldn't exactly compare my position as an 'elite' to an 'elite' in a country like the United States, or the UK.
No it doesn't. In most areas political parties don't even come into play below the county/state level. General apathy kills local politics, because if you're any good you'd be in higher office or the private sector because it pays better, is generally more interesting and makes a bigger difference.
edit
And as people have said there's some major flaws in drawing any general conclusions from this case study. We don't even know if the elders would generally do what consensus called for or if the villagers were coerced into agreeing or were unused to making decisions and so followed the elder's example or if it was just a coincidence.
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I actually think this little detail is highly significant. It has implications for transparency and voter participation.
Yes, but public referendums create all kinds of idiotic bullshit just as easily; take a look at California for example.
This is a huge difference.
For instance, if the Tea Party were a coalition-member party, they'd probably control a good part of the Republican Party within reason.
I am not sure about that (not disagreeing; I sincerely don't know). What I do know is that your average voter probably could not identify the constituent factions of the Democratic or Republican coalitions. In fact there is an enormous amount of debate even among seasoned newshounds when it comes to where the fracture points are. Having, say, the corporate Republicans in a different party from the libertarian and fundamentalist Republicans would go a long way to make people understand exactly what they are voting for.
I certainly don't purport to know.
That said (and this isn't the topic of the thread, really), the more dispersed the "centers of power" the less we can fear getting totally screwed (which I sincerely doubt will happen).
It's a one-party state! Lee-Kuan Yew gives his family state money!
The main part is state-sanctioned bribery (judges, police, tax officials, bankers etc do as they are told by the government or they are fired/lose bonuses).
There is also bribery within the sex industry - people paying police to avoid getting prosecuted etc.
Oh, and state officials don't have to make their assets and income public. So there's very little public data for any supposed survey.
Fuck Singapore, seriously. What a narrow definition of 'corrupt'.
It's been a while since I studied up, but if I recall, Singapore government officials have extremely high salaries. That's not quite the same as "state-sanctioned bribery".
It is when those salaries are functionally indistinguishable from bribes - i.e. used to control the work of the person. There is a huge difference, for example, between the legal and financial rights of a foreigner, a native Singaporean, and anyone affiliated/related to the Lee Kuan Yew. Judges' decisions are notoriously political, and always in the interests of the Party.
You can't take Singapore's apparent positives in a vacuum, ignoring all the negatives. It's a totalitarian state in many ways, and such states necessitate dishonesty.
Not really. Canada, for instance, has had a multi-party, non-coalition system for ages.
The American system just has alot of things in place that make a 3rd party useless and not very function at a national level.
In short, people vote based on soundbytes and commercials, not based on actual policy, economic theory, or even their own social viewpoints. This means that instead of the best statesmen or proposal, the best ad agency wins elections.
So, we learn that the smaller a group is, the easier a time it has making decisions. It shouldn't really be that surprising that in smaller, family-oriented communities input from "the people" doesn't have to be formalized into an electoral result in order to transfer more or less accurately to community leaders.
It likewise isn't all that surprising that people feel better about a decision if they have input into it, whether or not that input actually winds up mattering.
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Third parties aren't ineffectual because of how the system is set up, they're ineffectual because people naturally organize into the largest groups they can before they fragment. Third parties don't have any pull because by definition they encompass a tiny minority of the population. That's how representative democracy is supposed to work.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.