Deliberative Forms of Democracy and Intergenerational Sustainability Dilemma

Abstract

Intergenerational sustainability (IS) has emerged as the most serious social problem reflecting climate change and accumulation of public debt in modern democratic societies, undermining the potential interests and concerns of future generations. However, little is known about whether or not deliberative forms of democracy with majority voting help support at maintaining IS by representing future generations’ potential interests and concerns. We institute IS dilemma game with three forms of decision-making models with majority voting and examine how they maintain IS in laboratory experiments. In the IS dilemma game, a sequence of six generations is prepared where each generation consisting of three subjects is asked to choose either maintaining IS (sustainable option) or maximizing their own generation’s payoff by irreversibly costing the subsequent generations (unsustainable option) with anonymous voting systems: (1) majority voting (MV), (2) deliberative majority voting (DMV) and (3) majority voting with deliberative accountability (MVDA). In MV and DMV, generations vote for their choices without and with deliberation, respectively. In MVDA, generations are asked to be possibly accountable for their choices to the subsequent generations during deliberation, and then vote. Our analysis shows that a decision-making model with only majority voting generally does not address IS, while DMV and MVDA treatments induce more and much more generations to choose a sustainable option than MV, respectively. Overall, the results demonstrate that deliberation and accountability along with majority voting shall be necessary in models of decision-making at resolving IS problems and representing future generations’ potential interests and concerns.

Characteristics That Influence Individuals’ Intentions to Use and Bequeath Common Assets: Time-Perspective Scales and Demographic Attributes

“…Shahrier et al [36] and Timilsina et al [37], who studied ISDG with Bangladeshi and Nepalese participants, respectively, showed that rural people tended to choose sustainable options more frequently than urban people did. On the other hand, Koirala et al [38] found that gender was not a significant factor in their ISDG in which university students participated. Timilsina et al [37] found that there were no significant differences in the choice of the sustainable option by gender, education, income, and single-family status in their ISDG of 102 Nepalese.…”

Public debt sustainability: a bibliometric co-citation visualization analysis

“…The consensus regarding its definition, measurement and magnitude is yet to be reached (Maebayashi and Konishi, 2021;D'Erasmo et al, 2016;Afonso, 2005;Blanchard et al, 1991;Buiter, 1985). Furthermore, the lack of agreement over its measurement adds to the challenges already faced by financial experts (Koirala et al, 2021;Werding, 2021).…”

“…Looking at governments' increasing reliance on borrowings, many economists have anticipated that such a situation is heading towards a "debt trap" (Rengel, 2020;Sovacool and Walter, 2019). When confronted with an environment of high deficits, the debt trap is the sustainability problem, which is perceived to be a long-term issue related to the government's budgetary position (de-C ordoba et al, 2022;Koirala et al, 2021;Gebhardt and Siemers, 2020;Schaltegger and Weder, 2014). The long-term imbalances in the government's resources or budgets give rise to unsustainable public debt (Butkus et al, 2021;Briceño and Perote, 2020;Ari and Koc, 2018;Jha and Sharma, 2004).…”

“…, 1991; Buiter, 1985). Furthermore, the lack of agreement over its measurement adds to the challenges already faced by financial experts (Koirala et al. , 2021; Werding, 2021).…”

“…When confronted with an environment of high deficits, the debt trap is the sustainability problem, which is perceived to be a long-term issue related to the government's budgetary position (de-Córdoba et al. , 2022; Koirala et al. , 2021; Gebhardt and Siemers, 2020; Schaltegger and Weder, 2014).…”