Democracy 2.0 - Next Generation Democracy

The Logic of Collective Action

noreply@blogger.com (Bstarn) — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 18:15:00 +0000

Mancur Olson wrote “The Logic of Collective Action” to try to analyze how real-world voting systems get coopted by interest groups, etc. Arrow was trying to see if any voting procedure could be counted on to yield “rational” results, as that term was understood at the time. Arrow was (in effect) one or two steps up the “abstraction/theory/academic” scale as compared to Olson.

Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases

by Daniel Kahneman, Paul Slovic, Amos Tversky - 1982 - 574 pages

In the political sphere, Graham Allison's Book ESSENCE OF DECISION, based on an earlier article in the American Political Science Review, identifed 2 alternatives models to "rational decision-making" which he called Model II (based on organizational behavior) and Model III (based on political analysis pioneered by Richard Neustadt). (I was Allison's research assistant and Neustadt was chair of my dissertation committee.)

All of these yield extremely interesting differences in both prediction and prescription vis-a-vis "economic/rational" decision-making.

What people can learn from how animals make collective decisions

noreply@blogger.com (Bstarn) — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 19:49:00 +0000

[A good article from the Economist. Some excerpts -- BSA]

http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13097814
Decisions, decisions

Feb 13th 2009
From The Economist print edition
What people can learn from how social animals make collective decisions

Mary Evans

DICTATORS and authoritarians will disagree, but democracies work better. It has long been held that decisions made collectively by large groups of people are more likely to turn out to be accurate than decisions made by individuals. The idea goes back to the “jury theorem” of Nicolas de Condorcet, an 18th-century French philosopher who was one of the first to apply mathematics to the social sciences. Now it is becoming clear that group decisions are also extremely valuable for the success of social animals, such as ants, bees, birds and dolphins. And those animals may have a thing or two to teach people about collective decision-making.

Animals that live in groups make two sorts of choices: consensus decisions in which the group makes a single collective choice, as when house-hunting rock ants decide where to settle; and combined decisions, such as the allocation of jobs among worker bees.

Condorcet’s theory describes consensus decisions, outlining how democratic decisions tend to outperform dictatorial ones. If each member of a jury has only partial information, the majority decision is more likely to be correct than a decision arrived at by an individual juror. Moreover, the probability of a correct decision increases with the size of the jury. But things become more complicated when information is shared before a vote is taken. People then have to evaluate the information before making a collective decision. This is what bees do, and they do it rather well, according to Christian List of the London School of Economics, who has studied group decision-making in humans and animals along with Larissa Conradt of the University of Sussex, in England.
The runaway queen

In a study reported in a special issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, researchers led by Dr List looked at colonies of honeybees (Apis mellifera), which in late spring or early summer divide once they reach a certain size. The queen goes off with about two-thirds of the worker bees to live in a new home leaving a daughter queen in the nest with the remaining worker bees. Among the bees that depart are scouts that search for the new nest site and report back using a waggle dance to advertise suitable locations. The longer the dance, the better the site. After a while, other scouts start to visit the sites advertised by their compatriots and, on their return, also perform more waggle dances. The process eventually leads to a consensus on the best site and the swarm migrates. The decision is remarkably reliable, with the bees choosing the best site even when there are only small differences between two alternatives.

But exactly how do bees reach such a robust consensus? To find out, Dr List and his colleagues made a computer model of the decision-making process. By tinkering around with it they found that computerised bees that were very good at finding nesting sites but did not share their information dramatically slowed down the migration, leaving the swarm homeless and vulnerable. Conversely, computerised bees that blindly followed the waggle dances of others without first checking whether the site was, in fact, as advertised, led to a swift but mistaken decision. The researchers concluded that the ability of bees to identify quickly the best site depends on the interplay of bees’ interdependence in communicating the whereabouts of the best site and their independence in confirming this information.

This is something members of the European Parliament should think about. In the same journal, Simon Hix, also of the London School of Economics, and his colleagues examined their voting and concluded that, as might be expected, it was along party-political lines even though the incentives to do so were far less than at national parliaments. Dr Hix and his colleagues reckon that European parliamentarians share the collection of information but, unlike the honeybees, they do not necessarily progress to investigating the issues for themselves before taking a vote.

There is danger in blindly following the party line, a danger that the honeybees seem to avoid. Condorcet’s theory fails to consider whether there is an inbuilt bias among a group that comes together to consider a problem. This “groupthink” occurs when people copy one another. According to Dr List: “The swarm manages to block and prevent the kind of groupthink that can bedevil good decision making.” Dr List adds that people demonstrate this kind of bad decision-making when investors pile into a stock and others follow, creating a bubble for which there is no good reason.

Another form of groupthink occurs when people are either isolated from crucial sources of information or dominated by other members of the group, some of whom may have malevolent intent. This too has now been demonstrated in animals. José Halloy of the Free University of Brussels used robotic cockroaches to subvert the behaviour of living cockroaches and control their decision-making process. In his experiment, reported in an earlier issue of Science, the artificial bugs were introduced to the real ones and soon became sufficiently socially integrated that they were perceived as equals. By manipulating the robots, which were in the minority, he was able to persuade the cockroaches to choose an inappropriate shelter—even one which they had rejected before being infiltrated by machines. Could this form the basis of a new way of catching them?

The way animals make collective decisions can be complex. Nigel Franks of the University of Bristol, in England, and his colleagues studied how a species of ants called Temnothorax albipennis establish a new nest. In the Royal Society journal they report how the insects mitigate the disadvantages of making a swift choice. If the ants’ existing nest becomes threatened, the insects send out scouts to seek a new one. How quickly they accomplish this transfer depends not only on how soon the ants agree on the best available site but also on how quickly they can migrate there. When a suitable place is identified, the scouts begin to lead other scouts, which had remained behind to guard the old nest, to the new site. The problem is that if the decision is reached rapidly, as it might have to be in an emergency, then relatively few scouts know the route. It would then take much longer to train all the scouts needed to achieve the transfer, which involves carrying the queen, the workers and the brood to the new nest.

Dr Franks and his colleagues identified a type of behaviour called “reverse tandem runs” that makes the process more efficient. During the carrying phase of migration, the scouts lead other scouts back along the quickest route to the old nest so that more scouts become familiar with the route. Thus the dynamics of collective decision-making are closely entwined with the implementation of these decisions. How this might pertain to choices that people might make is, as yet, unclear. But it does indicate the importance of recruiting active leaders to a cause because, as the ants and bees have discovered, the most important thing about collective decision-making is to get others to follow.

Governmental transformation through data feeds and data visualization

noreply@blogger.com (Bstarn) — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 15:38:00 +0000

[Some great examples of use of mashups and web 2.0. From a posting on Dave Farber's IPer list--BSA]

_____________________________

__________
From: W. David Stephenson [D.Stephenson@stephensonstrategies.com]
Sent: Sunday, July 06, 2008 7:44 AM
To: David Farber
Subject: my speech at PdF2008 on governmental transformation through data
feeds and data visualization

To: Dave Farber
From: W. David Stephenson

I think your readers will be interested in a subject that I believe will be
critical to whoever is elected: the seemingly arcane (but in truth quite
fascinating and dynamic ) subject of widespread, automated releases of
government data combined with new Web 2.0-based tools to turn that data into
informative, illustrative visualizations.

I've just finished a white paper on the subject for Don Tapscott's Gov. 2.0
project<http://tinyurl.com/54buw6> , which was the basis for my presentation
at Personal Democracy Forum 2008, which you can download at
SlideShare<http://tinyurl.com/4pgfnp>.

My argument is that government can transform itself both internally and
externally, improving performance, lowering costs, and building public
support and involvement, through a combination of:

* automated (preferably, real-time) data feeds, at first behind the
firewall, and then externally as well, in a variety of formats such as RSS
and KML
* easy access for both employees and (again, eventually) the public, to
the growing number of easy-to-use Web 2.0 data visualization tools that
allow taking data that may be hard to understand in tabular form and instead
turn it into eye-catching and informative visualizations -- plus Web 2.0
tools such as tags, topic hubs, and threaded discussions that encourage
sharing the data and insights -- and increase the chance of "wisdom of
crowds" knowledge emerging as a result!

I just received some crucial support from academia for my argument that
government agencies should make it a policy to release, on a real-time
basis, a wide range of data feeds in RSS, geospatial, and other formats, as
the keystone of their e-gov reform projects. A new study from
Princeton<http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080603-study-gov-websites-s
hould-focus-on-rss-xmlnot-redesigns.html> concluded that there's nothing a
government agency can do to be more responsive to the public than to follow
the leads of the District of Columbia (to my knowledge, no one is in their
league, since they publish more than 150 real-time data feeds) and release
data feeds:

".we argue that the executive branch should focus on creating a simple,
reliable and publicly accessible infrastructure that exposes the underlying
data. Private actors, either non-profit or commercial, are better suited to
deliver government information to citizens and can constantly create and
reshape the tools individuals use to and and leverage public data. The best
way to ensure that the government allows private parties to compete on equal
terms in the provision of government data is to require that federal
websites themselves use the same open systems for accessing the underlying
data as they make available to the public at large." (my emphasis)

IMHO, the Princeton study is excessively pessimistic about enlightened
governmental agencies' ability to serve the public by creative use of these
data, not does it address the secret sauce from use of public data and
visualization tools either behind the firewall or among the general public -
the potential for "wisdom of the crowds" to emerge when a large and varied
assortment of people use the data feeds plus Web 2.0 tools, such as those on
the Many Eyes<http://services.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/> and
Swivel<http://swivel.com> data visualization sites.

It also doesn't deal with the benefits D.C. has gotten by using the data
feeds behind the firewall to erase barriers between agencies, coordinate
programs, etc.. In my paper for the Gov. 2.0 project (and in the Slideshare
presentation), I argue that internal data visualization sites are great ways
for agencies to test the water regarding data feeds: the steps needed to
have an effective internal program to share data feeds government-wide are
essentially the same as for external sites, and the benefits (increased
inter- and intra-agency cooperation, empowering a wide range of users,
improving coordination between programs serving the same geographic area,
etc.) are also similar -- and substantive.

I truly believe this is the most important steps that government agencies on
all levels can take, with low cost and a minimum of planning, to improve
responsiveness, cut operating costs, and involve the public in a substantive
way (please note the complete list of benefits I cite at the end of the
presentation -- they're impressive and achievable!).

______________________________ __
<http://tinyurl.com/2kmeor>W. David Stephenson | Principal | Stephenson
Strategies
D.Stephenson@stephensonstrategies.com< mailto:D.Stephenson@stephensonstrategi
es.com> | 617 314-7858 | 335 Main Street, Medfield, MA 02052
The Homeland Security 2.0 Blog<http://stephensonstrategies.com/> |
Twitter<http://twitter.com/DavidStephenson>

Making Homeland Security Everyone's BusinessTM

I'll speak on public data at Personal Democracy Forum, June
23-4<http://tinyurl.com/yvxzbe > & Netroots Nation, July
17-20<http://tinyurl.com/5mugjs>

"Let My Data Go! case for transparent government"<http://tinyurl.com/yoh2tx>
"21st century disaster tips you won't hear from
officials"<http://www.youtube.com/WDavidStephenson> Now on
YouTube<http://www.youtube.com/WDavidStephenson>

homeland security technologies to watch in 2008<http://tinyurl.com/3cloyx >
"Expecting the Unexpected: networked terrorism and disaster
response"<http://www.hsaj.org/?article=3.1.3>

<http://www.youtube.com/WDavidStephenson>named to Feedster's "500 most
interesting and informative" blogs list

Government 2.0: The Next Generation of Democracy

noreply@blogger.com (Bstarn) — Thu, 22 May 2008 14:43:00 +0000

[Some excerpts from my opinion piece at Internet Evolution -- BSA]

Government 2.0: The Next Generation of Democracy http://www.internetevolution.com/author.asp?section_id=506&doc_id=154118&

For years, experts predicted e-government would be a driving force for broadband usage. The assumption was that many government services, from dog tags to taxes, could be done electronically over the Internet. Despite modest success in this area, e-government hasn't pushed broadband usage. But now many pundits are starting to realize that the better value of e-government may be allowing the public to have greater input on government operations and processes.

[..]
Now, the goal is to use Web-based collaboration to "reinvent government." Well known author and futurist Don Tapscott advances this concept in his new research project called, Government 2.0: Wikinomics, Government & Democracy.
[..]
Wikis and Web 2.0 technologies have the potential to fundamentally transform the way we are governed and radically reshape political philosophy. Not since the days of John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau have we had such opportunity and the tools to address many shortcomings of democratic society, especially the domination of special interests and lobbyists.

As Winston Churchill once commented, "Democracy is the worst form of government, but it is better than any other type of government we have ever tried." Government 2.0 represents an opportunity to redress the many shortcomings of the worst possible government we have -- democracy as we know it today.

[..]These are just some simple examples of the possibilities of applying Internet and Web 2.0 technologies to how we are governed. We are only limited by our imagination, in optimizing the Internet as a new revolutionary tool to truly personalize democracy. For more musings on this subject, please see my blog, Democracy 2.0 – Next Generation Democracy.

Futarchy and Wisdom of Crowds

noreply@blogger.com (Bstarn) — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 20:57:00 +0000

Good article in Scientific American - When Markets Beat the Polls
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=markets-predict-outcome-better-than-polls

It also discusses "Futurachy" http://hanson.gmu.edu/futarchy.html on new ways of governance
--BSA

The Myth of the Rationale Voter

noreply@blogger.com (Bstarn) — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 19:25:00 +0000

[A book I highly recommend. Excerpts from their web site - BSA]

http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8384.html

The Myth of the Rational Voter:
Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies
Bryan Caplan

The greatest obstacle to sound economic policy is not entrenched special interests or rampant lobbying, but the popular misconceptions, irrational beliefs, and personal biases held by ordinary voters. This is economist Bryan Caplan's sobering assessment in this provocative and eye-opening book. Caplan argues that voters continually elect politicians who either share their biases or else pretend to, resulting in bad policies winning again and again by popular demand.

Boldly calling into question our most basic assumptions about American politics, Caplan contends that democracy fails precisely because it does what voters want. Through an analysis of Americans' voting behavior and opinions on a range of economic issues, he makes the convincing case that noneconomists suffer from four prevailing biases: they underestimate the wisdom of the market mechanism, distrust foreigners, undervalue the benefits of conserving labor, and pessimistically believe the economy is going from bad to worse. Caplan lays out several bold ways to make democratic government work better--for example, urging economic educators to focus on correcting popular misconceptions and recommending that democracies do less and let markets take up the slack.

The Myth of the Rational Voter takes an unflinching look at how people who vote under the influence of false beliefs ultimately end up with government that delivers lousy results. With the upcoming presidential election season drawing nearer, this thought-provoking book is sure to spark a long-overdue reappraisal of our elective system.

Larry Lessig's new Change Congress

noreply@blogger.com (Bstarn) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 21:28:00 +0000

I am excited about Larry Lessig's new focus and I hope will be an impetus to look at new forms of democratic government that is not under special interests and lobbyists.

http://lessig08.org/

Bill