Policy Boards and Policy Smoothing

Abstract

Partisan politics and random election outcomes generate policy uncertainty and partisan business cycles. To reduce policy uncertainty, society must design the policy-making environment to overcome electoral uncertainty and partisanship. I show that delegating policy to an independent policy board with discretionary powers will produce substantial policy smoothing and lower policy uncertainty relative to a simple model in which elected officials set policy. Board members are chosen in a partisan, noncooperative environment; yet in the benchmark model, policy variability is eliminated, and the cooperative bargaining solution is replicated.