In this paper we analyze whether immigration policy occurs following the programmatic commitments of political parties in party manifestos, as the party mandate theory would suggest; or instead, it is an unplanned, disorderly process, as the agenda setting perspective would predict. In the first perspective it is assumed that political parties clearly announce their policy priorities during the electoral campaign, and try to put them into practice during the legislature. In contrast, the agenda setting approach considers the policy process as an essentially disorderly and unplanned process. Taking into account these theoretical perspectives we first describe how political parties have framed immigration from the mid-1990s to present. Then we assess whether there is correspondence between promises and political activities by political party, and whether these differences can be linked to a number of factors. We use the databases created by the SOM project and the Spanish Policy Agendas project.
