See my reply to Neil Dullaghan—I think that gives somewhat of a sense here. Some other things:
I don’t have a ton of observations on any one specific policy, so I can’t say much about whether some special policy area (e.g., pollution regulation) exhibits a different pattern.
I look at whether this policy, or a version of it, is in place. This should capture anything that would be a direct and obvious substitute, but there might be looser substitutes that end up passing if you fail to pass an initial policy. The evidence I do have on this suggests it’s small, but I still wonder about it.
My method is about close votes. I try to think about what it means for things that are less close, and I think it basically generalizes, but it gets tricky to think about the impact of, e.g., funding a campaign to move a policy from being unpopular and neglected to popular and on the ballot.
See my reply to Neil Dullaghan—I think that gives somewhat of a sense here. Some other things:
I don’t have a ton of observations on any one specific policy, so I can’t say much about whether some special policy area (e.g., pollution regulation) exhibits a different pattern.
I look at whether this policy, or a version of it, is in place. This should capture anything that would be a direct and obvious substitute, but there might be looser substitutes that end up passing if you fail to pass an initial policy. The evidence I do have on this suggests it’s small, but I still wonder about it.
My method is about close votes. I try to think about what it means for things that are less close, and I think it basically generalizes, but it gets tricky to think about the impact of, e.g., funding a campaign to move a policy from being unpopular and neglected to popular and on the ballot.