Is there a causal link between the effects of public policies and how voters respond? The answer to this question is important to understand whether politicians are truly accountable for the consequences of their policy decisions. However, it's not easy to prove the causal link between public policies and how voters respond to their effects. Since politicians make strategic policy choices, the link between policy effects and voter behavior could be spurious. For example, a politician might decide to “reward” geographic areas where they enjoy greater support with tax policies that benefit voters in those areas. In that case, the causal link would be reversed (reverse causality): it’s not the favorable effect of a policy choice that generates a positive response from voters, but rather the opposite. More broadly, establishing a causal link between public policies and the electoral response requires an appropriate “counterfactual” to understand how voters would have reacted if different policies had been implemented.

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