Cost-Benefit Analysis and the Democratic Ideal

Karine Nyborg and Inger Spangen

Nordic Journal of Political Economy, 2000, vol. 26, 83-93

Abstract: In traditional cost-benefit analyses of public projects, every citizen’s willingness to pay for a project is given an equal weight. This is sometimes taken to imply that cost-benefit analysis is a democratic method for making public decisions, as opposed to, for example, political processes involving log-rolling and lobbying from interest groups. Politicians are frequently criticized for not putting enough emphasis on the cost-benefit analyses when making decisions. In this paper we discuss the extent to which using cost-benefit analysis to rank public projects is consistent with Dahl’s (1989) criteria for democratic decision-making. We find several fundamental conflicts, both when cost-benefit analysis is used to provide final answers about projects’ social desirability, and when used only as informational input to a political process. Our conclusions are illustrated using data from interviews with Norwegian politicians.

JEL-codes: A13 D61 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2000
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:noj:journl:v:26:y:2000:p:83-93

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