The Effect of Policy Traceability on Legislative Incentives

Theories of legislative politics have long emphasized how a policy's traceability—whether and how voters connect legislative action with policy effects—shapes political incentives to legislate. Douglas Arnold emphasized how the “nature of the causal chain that links a policy instrument with its policy effects” structures the logic of congressional action. Despite its prominence, this key theoretical claim has received little empirical attention. In this article, we use two survey experiments to test how several policy attributes—including traceability—shape legislators and public policy preferences. We find that elites are responsive to both policy traceability and problem traceability—whether a policy problem itself can be linked to elite actions. By contrast, prospective voters are indifferent to both forms of traceability. With respect to other policy attributes, elites and mass publics share similar preferences. Our results provide support for a previously untested theory of policymaking and describe the nature of strategic decision-making by legislators.