Nationwide deliberative democracy experiment to decide resource management
-
E Africa, Tanzania, Offline- Where did this use case occur?
-
2015- When did this use case occur?
-
Center for Global Development- Who were some of the key collaborators
-
As a research, a representative sample of 2,000 citizens were involved in the survey experiment. A portion of these survey respondents were invited for the deliberative processes.- How many people participated?
-
Ecological/Environmental, Nation/Country- What are some keywords?
What was the problem?
A 2010 exploration revealed natural gas reserves off Tanzania's coast worth roughly 15 times its annual gross domestic product.
How does the community approach the problem?
To avoid risks associated with the discovery of natural resources in jurisdictions with weak governance institutions, an experiment used the idea of deliberative polling to assess if ordinary citizens can make meaningful judgements about complex resource management issues.
• an information treatment administered to a random subset of individuals and a deliberation treatment to which a subset of the information treatment group was invited. For the information treatment, participants received information about the natural gas discovery and the pros and cons of various policy options. Participants invited to the national deliberative exercise had small group deliberations about specific gas policy options. Causal effects from the experiment were identified through random assignment. Finally, elite policymakers were selected and assigned to treatment and control groups for an accountability experiment.
No Specified Tools
What were the results?
The findings of the experiment indicated democratic deliberation led to participants being slightly more in line with orthodox economics prescriptions for using the gas, i.e., reduced support for fuel subsidies, and increased support for transparency and oversight. Deliberation also reduced support for direct distribution through cash transfers but did not alter the strong preference for spending over saving. The group of respondents who received information about natural gas policy but did not participate in deliberation showed measurable increases in gas knowledge, but none of the changes in opinion was caused by deliberation.
How participatory was it?
Inform
The purpose of the experiment was limited to sharing possible policy approaches with the citizens.
What makes this Use Case unique?
'A case study that explores citizen perception of resource management.' -Robin