Limiting Fluctuations in Quantum Gravity to Diffeomorphisms

Within the background field formalism of quantum gravity, I show that if the quantum fluctuations are limited to diffeomorphic transformations, all the quantum corrections vanish on shell and the effective action is equivalent to the classical action. I also show that this choice of fields renders the path integral independent of the on-shell condition for the background field, and therefore incorporates a form of background independence. The proposed approach may provide insight into the development of a finite and background independent description of quantum gravity.