Do you believe that the people and parties who win elections don't have any effect on the policies of governments? Does this apply to every country, or do some

Do you believe that the people and parties who win elections don't have any effect on the policies of governments? Does this apply to every country, or do some countries avoid being controlled by puppet-masters? I suppose it's possible that all the policy changes we've seen in governments around the world over the past decades have been due to changing whims of secretive puppet-masters which happen to coincide with the platforms of the candidates who ended up winning the elections, but I don't think that's the simplest explanation for the patterns observed.