Democracy vs. Efficiency: Some Arguments from the Small Group

Abstract

A parallel is drawn between certain styles of conflict resolution as described by social psychologists and the consensual and adversarial modes of small group decisionmaking as described by political scientists in order to point to a problem: Processes seen by social psychologists as yielding high task productivity and happy participants are thought by students of politics to produce tyranny and inequality; and processes seen by students of politics as producing democratic outcomes are thought by social psychologists to yield unstable and inadequate solutions to problems. The parallel is then examined in detail to further illuminate the decision processes involved, to identify certain gaps in our knowledge of these processes, and, through an analysis of findings largely derived in the laboratory, to provide a possible solution for our problem. Specifically, it is suggested that a decision process combining trust, the desire for unanimity, and advocacy may give us what we want of both efficiency and democracy.