Parties’ Electoral Pledges and Democratic Representation

Abstract

According to established theoretical conceptions of representative democracy, including the mandate model and the notion of promissory representation, electoral pledges are an important link between citizens’ preferences and policies. The policies and outcomes that parties pledge to pursue tell the voters what parties’ programmatic emphases mean in concrete terms, making informed vote choices feasible. The voters can moreover hold parties retrospectively accountable by comparing parties’ performance during the electoral term against the pledges they made in the previous election, which arguably encourages parties to fulfil their pledges once they are in power. Theoretical conceptions notwithstanding, electoral pledges have a bad reputation: the public tends to regard campaign pledges as unreliable and the media are eager to highlight cases where pledges remain unfulfilled. In contrast to widespread pessimistic beliefs about electoral pledges, systematic analyses conducted in several countries and regions have repeatedly shown that once parties are in government they tend to fulfil a notable share of their pledges. However, the factors that affect pledge fulfilment and the obstacles that a pledge has to pass before becoming a policy remain imperfectly understood. Previous studies have moreover shown that citizens’ perceptions of pledge fulfilment are associated with actual government performance. That association is, however, imperfect and conditional on a number of other factors, notably party loyalties and trust. The relationship between pledge fulfilment and democratic accountability is a research area that has been only partially explored. This panel presents recent advances in research on parties’ electoral pledges. The papers address different stages of democratic representation and draw on various kinds of data, collected in diverse political systems. Paper 1 (Alexandre Fortier-Chouinard et al.) focusses on a theoretically important issue, pledge salience, and introduces a method for measuring it empirically. The paper moreover pays attention to pledge trackers that have gained popularity in recent years. Paper 2 (Petra Vodová and Petr Voda) addresses citizens’ evaluations of pledge fulfilment. The paper introduces a relevant factor that has hardly received attention in previous studies: geographical location. Paper 3 (Kimmo Makkonen et al.) examines the relationship between parties’ pledges and coalition agreements. While coalition agreements affect pledge fulfilment, few studies have previously tested factors that explain the inclusion of pledges in coalition agreements.

Title	Details
A Question of Commitment: Investigating how Citizens Perceive Parties’ Strategies when Engaging with Competition in a Multidimensional Issue Space	View Paper Details
Weighting Pledge Fulfilment: A Measure Based on Pledge Salience	View Paper Details
“I Won't Believe It Unless I See It:” The Effect of Geographical Location of Pledge Fulfilment on Its Evaluation by People	View Paper Details
The Inclusion of Finnish Parties’ Electoral Pledges in Coalition Agreements	View Paper Details
Auction politics: party competition and expansionary election promises	View Paper Details