Why has the new focus on institutions had minimal positive impact on developmental outcomes in the global South? Could deliberative institutions funded on ordinary citizens’ participation improve development performance? This article uses examples from Porto Alegre and Kerala to suggest that deliberative strategies improve governance, increase the supply of basic collective goods, and strengthen the citizens’ democratic capabilities, while remaining growth neutral. Donors should work to reduce the current bias against deliberative solutions and actively support local actors interested in pursuing deliberative development.
The current development paradigm asserts that the quality of basic governance institutions is the key element in fostering economic growth. This has led to ‘institutional monocropping’; the imposition of uniform blueprints based on idealised versions of Anglo-American institutions without regard to local context. The result has been persistence of weak governance, low levels of public participation, political paralysis and decline in economic growth rates among the supposed beneficiaries.
Theoretical support from Dani Rodrik and Amartya Sen forms the foundation for an alternative theory of institutions based on the inherent value of social choice. ‘Deliberative institutions’ founded on public discussion and exchange of ideas, information, and opinions offer the only way to adequately define desirable development goals. The potential benefits of deliberative development include:
- The exercise of social choice has intrinsic value. Moreover, institutional monocropping is not reconcilable with a belief in diversification of social, political and economic risk.
- There are positive spillover effects of increased participation such as the strengthened democratic capabilities of citizens.
- Diminishing the power of private elites and politicians as a result of improved access to information, increased participation and higher expectations of public policy can stem corruption.
- Increased transparency in the process of allocation of public resources and bringing better information to public managers about citizens’ preferences is likely to produce more effective infrastructure investments.
- Recent empirical work debunks the idea that democracy impedes growth, and suggests that redistributive strategies can have a positive effect on real income growth. Public participation is likely to improve the quality of economic growth.
- Fundamental organisational change will not take place unless the distribution of power that underlies the prior institutional arrangement is changed.
Three problems must be overcome for deliberative democracy to function as a development strategy. Ordinary citizens must find it worthwhile to invest their time in participation so that the deliberative institutions are socially self-sustaining. Deliberative processes should not be economically inefficient. However, the biggest impediment is likely to be the ‘political economy problem’ of private elites and politicians who resist any reform that diminish their power. If monocropping is not a good solution, what other strategies should be explored? Recommendations to donors and policy makers include:
- The examples of deliberative development on municipal and regional level in Porto Alegre and Kerala suggest that deliberative development, like ‘thin democracies’ based on electoral processes, is growth-neutral.
- When systems of deliberation are seen as actually shaping real outcomes, ordinary citizens tolerate their messiness and invest the time and energy required to make them work.
- Political and administrative elites that would benefit from increased power and legitimacy as a result of augmented engagement by their constituents are likely to support a deliberative process.
- Effective social participation requires a solid initial administrative structure with a capacity to provide informational inputs and implement decisions. Uncoordinated and decentralised actions of civil society are insufficient for the emergence and sustenance of deliberative institutions.
- The process of institutionalising deliberative development is linked to the dynamics of electoral competition and existence of civil liberties.
- Neither ‘thin democracies’ nor authoritarian regimes guarantee higher economic growth; hence policy makers should explore the potential benefits of deliberative development.
