Modeling sequential bargains and personalities in democratic deliberation systems

Abstract

Purpose This paper aims to introduce a negotiation support system (NSS) with a theoretical modeling that considers the aspects of human personality and negotiator’s behavior to assist the decision-making of public managers and stakeholders in democratic bargaining processes and support social-efficient outcomes. Design/methodology/approach A game theoretical modeling of public participatory negotiations characterized by complete and perfect information is explored with the inclusion of personality aspects and negotiation styles. The importance of the negotiation knowledge disclosure in the sequential bargains of participative budgeting is highlighted by an experiment with 162 state-owned companies’ managers and graduate students to present the contribution of the system’s applicability. Findings A considerable number of Pareto-efficient deliberation agreements are obtained with few interactions when the negotiation strategies and the personality aspects of opponents and stakeholders are freely available (a symmetry in the public negotiation knowledge). In addition to the set of Pareto-efficient agreements, those with the best social outcome (i.e. that maximize the group satisfaction despite individual losses) are observed when the informational tool for personality and negotiation style inference is enabled. Originality/value Many scholars argue for Pareto-efficient allocation instead of equal divisions of resources within participative democracies and public governance. This work provides a new system with an empirical application and theoretical modeling which may support those arguments based on the nonverbal negotiation aspects.