Ideas@TheCentre
War gaming for new government policy
In troubled times, the government loves to legislate. Whether it is climate change, terrorism or recession, in our modern democracy people demand that the government ‘Do Something,’ and politicians are usually happy to oblige.
The problem is that politicians tend to have the reverse Midas touch. In Greek mythology, King Midas had the ability to turn anything into gold simply by touching it. In contrast, even with billions of taxpayers’ dollars and all of its good intentions, the government still manages to introduce policies that consistently throw up a string of negative, unintended consequences.
In a recent Policy Note at the Levy Economics Institute in the United States, Martin Shubik introduced a novel suggestion for reducing the problematic elements in new government policy.
Shubik suggests a ‘war gaming group’ inside the bureaucracy with the sole purpose of finding loopholes and negative unintended consequences from legislation.
Starting with the Prussian Army in the early nineteenth century, most significant defence forces do war games to test the robustness of their plans so they can fix mistakes before the heat of battle. It’s a good idea, and one that could be expanded to cover all government policy.
The government could run hypothetical scenarios and offer a cash prize, Shubik suggests $1 million to whoever discovers the most egregious loophole. This provides an incentive for people to find policy mistakes before the policy is introduced. And, if the problems are big enough, then the policy can be amended or abandoned.
John Humphreys is a Research Fellow at the Centre.
