Direct Democracy?

[nihilistcat]

I'd want to see the studies, naturally.  I'm unsure how one would test whether a decision is 'better'.

Here's one:

"Nearly all research on the accuracy of individual versus group decision making has used ad hoc groups, artificial problems, and trivial or nonexistent reward contingencies. These studies have generally concluded that the knowledge base of the most competent group member appears to be the practical upper limit of group performance and that process gains will rarely be achieved. We studied individual versus group decision making by using data from 222 project teams, ranging in size from 3 to 8 members. These teams were engaged in solving contextually relevant and consequential problems and, in direct contrast with previous research, the groups outperformed their most proficient group member 97% of the time. Furthermore, 40% of the process gains could not be explained by either average or most knowledgeable group member scores. Implications for management practice are also discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record © 2012 APA, all rights reserved)"


http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=buy.optionToBuy&id=1990-04483-001

I have this study in pdf on my computer (but I had to purchase it). I have more on my computer as well, but this is probably the most rigorous study I've seen on this topic. It has a pretty good sample size, and its methodology was really good as well. 

There's lots of ways to measure this. For example, in the context of corporate decision making, you can look at the byproduct of decision making (a marketing campaign, a new product, reorganization of back office functions, whatever) and you can track the outcomes very precisely. 

But you do raise an interesting point. Sure, a clerk in the group may say we need to do X this way to shorten the red tape involved, but do we consider that "advisement" or participation in the decision making process? The way this study approached this question is they looked at "consensus" decision making. In other words, all group members had to agree on the final decision (consequently, even the least qualified group member could block a decision and force the group to address his/her issue). However, to what extent does less tangible cues influence group members? For example, is there a tendency to follow the most qualified and highest ranking group member? But this is actually pretty easy to determine with simple statistics, so I think these studies are valuable and so I think there is merit to the idea of group decision making, but again, this study was done in the context of corporate decision making (and so its results are limited to that context, and I'm not sure to what extent we can extrapolate more broad based conclusions from this study)?