To how many politicians should government be left?

TL;DR

This paper investigates how government effectiveness varies with cabinet size, providing empirical evidence that larger groups tend to be less efficient and undergo qualitative behavioral changes, supported by a physical opinion dynamics model.

Contribution

It offers the first empirical analysis linking government size to efficacy and introduces a physical model to explain the observed phenomena.

Findings

Government performance declines as cabinet size increases.

A qualitative change in decision-making behavior occurs at a specific group size.

Empirical data from UNDP, World Bank, and CIA support the model.

Abstract

The quality of governance of institutions, corporations and countries depends on the ability of efficient decision making within the respective boards or cabinets. Opinion formation processes within groups are size dependent. It is often argued - as now e.g. in the discussion of the future size of the European Commission - that decision making bodies of a size beyond 20 become strongly inefficient. We report empirical evidence that the performance of national governments declines with increasing membership and undergoes a qualitative change in behavior at a particular group size. We use recent UNDP, World Bank and CIA data on overall government efficacy, i.e. stability, the quality of policy formulation as well as human development indices of individual countries and relate it to the country's cabinet size. We are able to understand our findings through a simple physical model of opinion dynamics in groups.