When do public policies influence citizens’ political attitudes and behavior, and among whom? We study this question using one of the largest social provision programs in the United States: the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). We exploit the staggered roll-out of state-level EITC programs to estimate the causal effect of the program on elections, voter behavior, and attitudes about the government.
Contrary to predictions from the policy feedback literature, we show that the credit leads to higher vote shares and approval ratings for the implementing governor. These effects are temporally limited to the first years of the credit’s availability and dissipate over time.
Taken together, our results offer new insights about the conditions under which particularistic economic policies affect political outcomes.
August 13, 2026
In an article for the journal Nature Communications, BESI Climate lead Jonas Meckling and UC Berkeley Environmental Science, Policy, and Management Ph.D. candidate Em Finkelstine introduce a dataset of 122 institutions that promote cleantech commercialization.
August 13, 2026
A journal article for Nature Communications by UC Berkeley Energy and Resources Ph.D. student Taryn Fransen and BESI Climate lead Jonas Meckling provides an empirical account of the strategic objectives of emissions reduction pledges via interviews with 40 policymakers. They find that the main purpose of emissions reduction pledges is to influence international actors, not enact domestic preferences.
July 20, 2023
In this journal article, which received the American Political Science Association's Theodore J. Lowi Award, BESI Climate lead Jonas Meckling and his coauthor Nicholas Goedeking, researcher at the German Institute of Development and Sustainability, advance a model of the politics of tipping points based on trans-subsystem policy feedback that results in "coalition cascades."
