Negotiating Government Policy: Better Decisions Through Democratic Synergy

Abstract:     
This essay was derived from a lecture delivered at the University of Paris II. It begins by reviewing the benefits of public participation in agency decisions, including enhancing the information available to the agency when it makes the relevant decision; serving as a means for the agency to determine what its customers - the public - want in the form of services and decisions; defusing politicized situations; and, adding a degree of democratic legitimacy to an otherwise bureaucratic decision. While traditional notions of public participation do not result in the public actually participating in the decision, it does set up a form of dialogue and a rough sort of negotiation. Experience has shown rather dramatically, however, that considerable benefits can result if the agency actually shares the decision making by engaging representatives of those who will be substantially affected by the policy in its development. The essay then develops the process by which that can occur.

To achieve these results, the process should be viewed as a form of representative democracy and care needs to be taken to ensure that the variety of interests that would be affected by the policy are in fact represented in the deliberations leading up to it. That requires an adherence to structure and process. The agency plays an absolutely critical role. If it does not take its obligation seriously, both substantively and procedurally, the result will be neither legitimate nor successful. The agency, after all, represents the sovereign in the negotiations, and it is responsible for implementing, for better or for worse, the policy choices made by the body politic as embodied in legislation.

Using consensus as the basis for an agreement is a key element of negotiating policy - in terms of actually reaching agreement and in terms of the quality of the resulting agreement. That undoubtedly sounds counter intuitive, especially for the difficult, complex, controversial matters that are customarily the subject of direct negotiations. One would expect that the controversy would make consensus unlikely or that if concurrence were obtained, it would likely be so watered down - the least common denominator - that it would not be worth much. Interestingly, it has exactly the opposite effect. Thus, far more can be achieved using consensus than by stopping short and "collaborating" but not agreeing.

The resulting collective judgment is to a very real extent the practical application of theoretical notion of a deliberative democracy that is currently much discussed in the literature.

Accepted Paper Series