Quality and statistical thinking in a parliament and beyond

ABSTRACT

After decades of an intensive academic career, with research activities having a strong statistical and quality background, I was given the opportunity of running twice for election to the National Parliament of Portugal. This article is mostly about the challenging experience of being a Member of Parliament from 2009–2015. I aim to provide sufficient evidence to convince the reader that statistical thinking, quality tools, and fact-based approaches are necessary to better governing. These tools and approaches can help to provide a better understanding of how Parliaments work and some of the strongest features of their organizational culture. Routine application of these tools can yield better results, increased efficiency and efficacy in Parliaments, politics and in public policy making.

For that purpose, I provide specific illustrations, which show how I applied statistical tests, variation analysis, clustering, and Bayesian interpretations to several situations related with the Portuguese Parliament. The goal of this article is to provide enough support to show that: (i) statistical or quality thinking and tools can help to better understand and improve Parliaments, as well as come up with better evidence-based decisions made by politicians; and (ii) Parliaments and societies are likely to get better if more people with a sound statistical background accept the challenge of becoming Members of Parliament, at least for a while.

KEYWORDS:

• democracy quality
• evidence-based policy making
• politicians utility functions
• quality tools and parliaments
• statistical thinking in politics

Acknowledgments

I want to thank the organizers, scientific committee, and participants of the Fifth Stu Hunter Research Conference and particularly to Ronald Does, for first suggesting my participation in it as a speaker. I also acknowledge the help, support, additional important comments, or incentives provided by Marco Reis, the article discussants for tremendous insights and encouragement (Bo Bergman, Geoff Vining, and Ronald Does), Ron Kenett, and Bradley Jones (who also invited me to be make a similar presentation at the 2017 European Discovery Summit, where additional insights were also received and allowed to further improve the contents of this article).

Additional information

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Pedro Manuel Saraiva

Pedro Manuel Saraiva received his Diploma from the University of Coimbra, Portugal (1987) and then a Ph.D. degree from MIT (1993), both in Chemical Engineering. He has been Assistant (1993–2001), Associate (2001–2010), and Full (2010-) Professor at the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Coimbra. Member of the Portuguese National Parliament (2009–2012 and 2012–2015). Pro-Rector of the University of Coimbra (2003–2004 and 2005–2006). Vice-Rector of the University of Coimbra (2007–2009) in charge of Quality, Innovation, Entrepreneurhsip, and Technology Transfer. Member of the Board of BIOCANT-Biotechnology Science Park (2005–2009). Advisor of the President of Portugal for Higher Education (2006–2009). President of the Regional Agency for the Development of the Centro of Portugal (2004–2005 and 2012–2014). First receiver of the Feigenbaum Award (1998) by ASQ (American Society for Quality). Associate (2010–2015) and then Full Member (since 2015) of the International Academy for Quality (IAQ) where he is also the Chair of the Think Tank for Quality in Education (since 2016). Main research activities and interests in the fields of Process Systems Engineering, Data Analysis, Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Quality Management, with several books and over 100 indexed papers published. Has supervised around 10 Ph.D. students that have already completed their thesis. Currently belongs to the Process Chemometrics Laboratory of the Process Systems Engineering research group at the Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Coimbra, Portugal.