it seems fairly clear to me that more populism is preferable under higher uncertainty, and more technocracy is preferable when plausible policy options have a greater range of expected values.
I’m sorry, I don’t understand what the difference is between those things.
With overseas aid budgets, the set of plausible policy options, such as decreasing and increasing the budget by different amounts, has a large range of expected values, and the uncertainty surrounding the expected value of each policy option is low. For this, I think more technocratic approaches are preferable.
With income tax rates, the set of plausible policy options, such as decreasing and increasing income tax rates by different amounts, has a smaller range of expected values, and the uncertainty surrounding the expected value of each policy option is high. For this, I think more populist approaches are preferable.
I’m sorry, I don’t understand what the difference is between those things.
I think examples and better wording might help:
With overseas aid budgets, the set of plausible policy options, such as decreasing and increasing the budget by different amounts, has a large range of expected values, and the uncertainty surrounding the expected value of each policy option is low. For this, I think more technocratic approaches are preferable.
With income tax rates, the set of plausible policy options, such as decreasing and increasing income tax rates by different amounts, has a smaller range of expected values, and the uncertainty surrounding the expected value of each policy option is high. For this, I think more populist approaches are preferable.
In the last paragraph, did you mean to write “the uncertainty surrounding the expected value of each policy option is high”?
Yes I did, apologies, just corrected it.