Is Transparency to No Avail? Committee Decision-Making, Pre-Meetings, and Credible Deals
34 Pages Posted: 21 Jul 2007
Date Written: July 2007
Abstract
Transparent decision-making processes are widely regarded as a prerequisite for the working of a representative democracy. It facilitates accountability, and citizens may suspect that decisions, if taken behind closed doors, do not promote their interests. Why else the secrecy? We provide a model of committee decision-making that explains the public's demand for transparency, and committee members' aversion to it. In line with case study evidence, we show how pressures to become transparent induce committee members to organize pre-meetings away from the public eye. Outcomes of pre-meetings are less determined, more anarchic, than those of formal meetings, but within bounds. We characterize feasible deals that are credible and will be endorsed in the formal meeting.
Keywords: Committee decision-making, reputational concerns, transparency, pre-meetings, deliberation
JEL Classification: D71, D72, D82
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?
Recommended Papers
-
The Wrong Kind of Transparency
By Andrea Prat
-
The Wrong Kind of Transparency
By Andrea Prat
-
Fiscal Restraints and Voter Welfare
By Timothy J. Besley and Michael Smart
-
By J.c. Ely, Drew Fudenberg, ...
-
By Drew Fudenberg, J.c. Ely, ...
-
Does Government Decentralization Increase Policy Innovation?
-
Yardstick Competition and Political Agency Problems
By Paul Belleflamme and Jean Hindriks
-
Strategic Consultation in the Presence of Career Concerns
By Gilat Levy
-
Political Yardstick Competition, Economic Integration, and Constitutional Choice in a Federation