posted 2009-10-20T15:41:52Z
the bureaucratic structure of government systems is important in many respects, as demonstrated quantitatively by klimek et al. in terms of cabinet size as a predictor of standard indicators for human development, political stability, voice and accountability, and government effectiveness. they also uncovered the curious fact that although the distribution of cabinet sizes appears to be continuous, there are no cabinets of size 8. 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.