Read Online Book Collective Decision Making Around The World : [essays On Historical Deliberation Pr

Although there are at least some member characteristics that have an influence upon jury decision making, group process, as in other working groups, plays a more important role in the outcome of jury decisions than do member characteristics. Like any group, juries develop their own individual norms, and these norms can have a profound impact on how they reach their decisions. Analysis of group process within juries shows that different juries take very different approaches to reaching a verdict. Some spend a lot of time in initial planning, whereas others immediately jump right into the deliberation. And some juries base their discussion around a review and reorganization of the evidence, waiting to take a vote until it has all been considered, whereas other juries first determine which decision is preferred in the group by taking a poll and then (if the first vote does not lead to a final verdict) organize their discussion around these opinions. These two approaches are used about equally often but may in some cases lead to different decisions (Hastie, 2008).

This issue features theoretical and empirical articles that highlight deliberative innovations from around the globe. Articles in this issue take on topics such as the instrumental value of deliberation, the use of interactive theater techniques in deliberation, the role of random selection, policy preferences and information sharing, deliberative counterpublics online, and participatory budgeting. The issue also includes two Reflections from the Field and three book reviews that will be of interest to scholars and practitioners.

The challenges posed by political disengagement, participatory inequality, and low political knowledge among citizens are better dealt with through a strengthening of representation over participation because such a strategy need not require citizens to act and think in ways that empirical data gathered over the past 70 or so years tells us they do not or cannot. It is also less demanding in terms of the information that citizens need in order to participate in the relevant ways, and it can produce fair and legitimate outcomes in the absence of widespread participation or even engagement among citizens. This is a foundational, rather than accidental, quality of representative democracy which emerged at least partly out of the need to make democracy compatible with the increasing diversity, size, and complexity of modern mass societies (Manin 2010). As mass societies became too large to allow for direct participation in decision-making by each and all citizens, so new structures had to be conceived to better track the preferences of the citizenry and ensure freedom and equality through self-government (Urbinati 2008). The rise of representative democracy was thus in part a pragmatic response to the new challenges posed by modernity, but it was also a coherent philosophical response to the fact that the participatory model of democracy no longer fits the world. The transition from direct to representative democracy embodied a shift in democratic theory and practice about what kind of institutions could hope to make good on democratic principles of freedom, equality, and self-government given the world as it is. The appeal of representative democracy was not then, and is not now, merely that it provides the most practical response to the deep and wide changes that characterise modern states, although it does so. It is that it is the best philosophical approach we have thus far come up with capable of making good on democratic principles in the modern era.

COVID-19 has turned the world upside down. Everything has been impacted. How we live and interact with each other, how we work and communicate, how we move around and travel. Every aspect of our lives has been affected. Decisions made now and in the coming months will be some of the most important made in generations. They will affect people all around the world for years to come. It is imperative that governments making those decisions have access to the best information available. Throughout this crisis, the international statistics community has continued to work together, in partnership with national statistical offices and systems around the world to ensure that the best quality data and statistics are available to support decision making during and after the crisis. This report gives a small flavor of that cooperation. It has been compiled jointly by 36 international organizations, under the aegis of the Committee for the Coordination of Statistical Activities (CCSA).

Because of these two addenda, Urbinati's picture of representative democracy is more democratic and thus more normatively attractive than representative democracy as it can be theorized on the basis of Manin's historical account. Urbinati's theory, however, accepts as a given the premise that democratic representation must be electoral and, despite the promise of a participatory model of representation, seemingly limits citizens' possibility for action to judgment, criticism, and deliberation, all of them decoupled from actual decision-making power. As in Manin's representative government, in Urbinati's representative democracy, citizens can protest and criticize all they want, but they are not meant to have any form of direct access to the decision-making process. Similarly, the ability to set the agenda is missing from her model. Citizens can hope to influence the representatives' agenda only through the blunt mechanism of elections and the indirect pressure of public opinion.

At the same time, women and girls are effective and powerful leaders and change-makers for climate adaptation and mitigation. They are involved in sustainability initiatives around the world, and their participation and leadership results in more effective climate action. Continuing to examine the opportunities, as well as the constraints, to empower women and girls to have a voice and be equal players in decision-making related to climate change and sustainability is essential for sustainable development and greater gender equality. Without gender equality today, a sustainable future, and an equal future, remains beyond our reach.

If you have investigated a number of career alternatives, you are now ready to target a primary career goal. Initially, it may be easy to rule out several choices as obviously inferior or inappropriate. With the remaining alternatives, it may be very difficult to select the one that fits you best. Additional research regarding the career options, your skills, values, and interests may be necessary. Any decision, career or otherwise, should be approached with sufficient information. The problem now lies in how to process the information and render a decision. There is a good deal of variability among us as to how much prior deliberation we invest in a given decision and the strategies we use. The probability of making a decision with a favorable outcome can be increased with careful consideration and a logical approach. A systematic method uses a framework with which you can effectively analyze and evaluate the data you have gathered for your career decision.

Some groups feel strongly about reaching consensus on issues before moving ahead. If your group is one of them, be sure to read a good manual or book on consensus decision making. Many groups, however, find that voting is a fine way to make decisions. A good rule of thumb is that a vote must pass by a two-thirds majority for it to be a valid decision. For most groups to work well, they should seek consensus where possible, but take votes when needed in order to move the process forward.

Citizen participation in decision making has been widely lauded as a method for improving societal outcomes. Deliberative discussion, in particular, is believed to be more transformative than a mere aggregation of individual preferences, leading to more socially optimal decision making and behavior. I report the results from a laboratory experiment with 570 subjects in Nairobi, directly testing the effect of participation in deliberative group decision making on collective outcomes. Participants engage in a group task to earn compensation toward a shared group fund. Randomly assigned treatments vary according to whether decision making over the task to be completed involves: (1) external assignment; (2) non-deliberative majority voting; or (3) consensus through deliberative discussion. I find that deliberation improves collective decision making. Deliberation is also associated with changes in preferences, greater agreement with decision outcomes, and greater perceived fairness. Evidence for behavior change is weaker, but there is some support for further research into the relationship between preference change and behavior change.

The wisdom of crowds and collective decision-making are important tools for integrating information between individuals, which can exceed the capacity of individual judgments. They are based on different forms of information integration. The wisdom of crowds refers to the aggregation of many independent judgments without deliberation and consensus, while collective decision-making is aggregation with deliberation and consensus. Recent research has shown that collective decision-making outperforms the wisdom of crowds. Additionally, many studies have shown that metacognitive knowledge of subjective confidence is useful for improving aggregation performance. However, because most of these studies have employed relatively simple problems; for example, involving general knowledge and estimating values and quantities of objects, it remains unclear whether their findings can be generalized to real-life situations involving complex information integration. This study explores the performance and process of the wisdom of crowds and collective decision-making by applying the wisdom of crowds with weighted confidence to a survival situation task commonly used in studies of collective decision-making. 2b1af7f3a8