Deliberation and the wisdom of crowds

Franz Dietrich and Kai Spiekermann

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: Does pre-voting group deliberation improve majority outcomes? To address this question, we develop a probabilistic model of opinion formation and deliberation. Two new jury theorems, one pre-deliberation and one post-deliberation, suggest that deliberation is beneficial. Successful deliberation mitigates three voting failures: (1) overcounting widespread evidence, (2) neglecting evidential inequality, and (3) neglecting evidential complementarity. Formal results and simulations confirm this. But we identify four systematic exceptions where deliberation reduces majority competence, always by increasing Failure 1. Our analysis recommends deliberation that is ‘participatory’, ‘neutral’, but not necessarily ‘equal’, i.e., that involves substantive sharing, privileges no evidences, but might privilege some persons.

Keywords: jury theorems; group deliberation; social choice theory; majority voting; group competence; sharing evidence (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D70 D71 D80 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 53 pages
Date: 2025-03-31
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm
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Published in Economic Theory, 31, March, 2025, 79(2), pp. 603 - 655. ISSN: 0938-2259

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http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/123889/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Deliberation and the wisdom of crowds (2025)
Working Paper: Deliberation and the Wisdom of Crowds (2024)
Working Paper: Deliberation and the Wisdom of Crowds (2024)
Working Paper: Deliberation and the Wisdom of Crowds (2024)
Working Paper: Deliberation and the Wisdom of Crowds (2023)
Working Paper: Deliberation and the Wisdom of Crowds (2022)
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