Cost-Benefit Analysis and the Democratic Ideal

Karine Nyborg and Inger Spangen ()
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Inger Spangen: Statistics Norway, https://www.ssb.no/en/forskning/ansatte

Discussion Papers from Statistics Norway, Research Department

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.

Keywords: Democracy; cost-benefit analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A13 D61 D70 H43 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1997-11
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Cost-Benefit Analysis and the Democratic Ideal (2000)
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