Policy-making processes

Policy-making processes in democratic countries are based on collective decisions. Although Arrow Theorem described an ideal model which has to comply with five certain assumptions, it nevertheless might be associated with real situations, when the problems of informational objectivity, impartiality, dictatorship, expertise, and consequent manipulation may arise. For instance, there wouldn’t be a possibility to take a reasonable objective decision if there is lack of information, but the additional expertise would mean, that the decision-making process has been influenced or dictated, which will contradict to the principle of democratic fairness. Whereas according to the Arrow Theorem, even in case of an ideal situation with all five assumptions in place there is no optimal decision, and considering, that in real life it is impossible to comply with all 5 required assumptions, the collective democratic way is incapable to take optimal decisions in principle, and this fact gives a lot of opportunities to manipulate with policy-making processes and their results. These kinds of problems may occur in cases, where voting and making choice are taking place – in resource allocation, establishment of taxation systems, determination of voting rules in various committees and legislation structures, etc. Since one of the main aspects of those problems is feasibility of the most optimal decision resulting from a democratic decision-making process, there is a need to determine criteria of the most optimal choice. As long as there are no unified criteria, there could be options to work out those criteria by elaborating information systems and wider consultative stages to support decision-making processes in order to ensure their transparency and objectivity. Or, in contrary, real-world democracies can deal with such problems by consciously using/abusing the ambiguity and emotional components of choice making process, which does not exclude manipulations at different levels. There are all kinds of political technologies might be used for that purposes, and with a certain percentage of probability it would be possible to obtain needed or lobbied decisions.
There is a certain problem of public interest definition and implementation. I would define public interest as a sense of responsibility of an individual for the whole society and motivation to act for sake of society presently or even for future generations. Basically it is a global category, but, since it is formulated by individuals, there is a tendency of different understanding and interpretation of a public interest. As it was mentioned earlier, there is a problem to determine unified criteria covering all aspects based on global strategy however, with taking into account all basic individual values. In stable democratic systems politics should not play a conflicting role but to integrate public and individual interests in order to avoid irrationality and unpredictability. As a solution for balancing between those contradictions, politics should consolidate and fairly promote public interests. In my view, there is always an element of subjectivity in the process of legislation, and there are rare examples when the laws and regulations are introduced with full and universal admissibility. There are often cases, when someone has to follow the decision of the majority, or the decision has been dictated in some obvious or hidden way, but this doesn’t mean that the Arrow Theorem is justifying such contradictions. I consider the Theorem as a hypothetical model existing in a properly balanced combination of factors and assumptions, while the legislation system of a certain country should be based primarily on a realistic analysis and cause-and-effect relationships. And the latter factors are those I would be more worried about in case of being a CEO of an electrical utility company in a democratic state in particular and in any state in general.