Without a channel for complaint, policy errors are never corrected

The argument

A second argument for this explanation sets aside the interests of decision makers and considers their information. Proponents observe that governing requires knowing what is going wrong, and that this knowledge is held almost entirely by the people affected rather than by those deciding. Where decision-making is exclusive, advocates argue, there is no reliable channel by which that knowledge travels upward: those who could report a failing policy have no standing to report it, and those who might carry the report have reason to suppress it, since bearing bad news to a group that cannot be removed is personally risky. Supporters hold that the result is a state that is not merely self-interested but badly informed. On this account policies are maintained long after they have stopped working, errors compound because nothing registers them, and the decision makers learn of a problem only when it becomes a crisis. Proponents argue that this is why exclusive systems can appear stable and competent for extended periods and then fail abruptly, since the absence of small corrections does not show up until a large one is unavoidable. Advocates add that the comparison with inclusive arrangements is about error correction rather than wisdom. They do not claim that broader decision-making produces better initial judgements, only that it produces complaints that are costly to ignore, and that a system which must respond to complaint will discard bad policies faster than one which need not. Supporters conclude that nations fail because exclusive decision-making removes the mechanism by which mistakes are found, and that over a long enough period an economy is shaped more by how quickly it corrects errors than by how well it avoids them.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Critics argue that narrow governments often invest heavily in gathering information precisely because they lack electoral feedback, and that some have been better informed than broadly accountable ones. They also note that inclusive systems can ignore complaints for long periods when the people complaining are a minority. A further reply is that the argument explains slow correction rather than outright failure, which leaves the sharpest cases of national collapse unaccounted for.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Decision makers can obtain the relevant information through surveys, inspectors and markets without broadening who decides. [Rejecting P2] Channels for complaint exist in many exclusive systems, including petitions and local officials with reason to report accurately. [Rejecting P3] Avoiding large errors may matter more than correcting small ones, in which case speed of correction is not the decisive variable. [Rejecting C] If error correction were the mechanism, failures should be gradual, yet many are sudden and follow identifiable single decisions.