Replication Data for: The Electoral Costs of Policy Commitments

Existing arguments across political science posit that parties in government use domestic or international institutions to lock in their own policy preferences by tying the hands of successors. This paper shows that these arguments contrast with the assumption of office-seeking parties, and therefore portray an incomplete picture of the incentives of governments. The paper emphasizes the trade-off between implementing policy preferences, on the one hand, and exploiting partisan differences for electoral success, on the other hand: Locking in a policy takes an issue off the table, but it also undermines a party's ability to leverage differences to the opposition in elections. Because office-seeking parties need to take into account such electoral implications of a commitment, they have a disincentive to tie their successors' hands. The paper advances this argument in the context of the establishment of independent central banks, provides empirical evidence, and suggests implications for the literature on international institutions as hands-tying mechanisms.