The Fulfillment of Parties’ Election Pledges: A Comparative Study on the Impact of Power Sharing

Thomson, Robert; Royed, Terry J.; Naurin, Elin; Artés, Joaquín; Costello, Rory; Ennser‐Jedenastik, Laurenz; Ferguson, Mark; Kostadinova, Petia; Moury, Catherine; Pétry, François; Praprotnik, Katrin

doi:10.1111/ajps.12313

Cited by 263 publications

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“…Our choice of specific and directly testable statements is appropriate in the Irish context because parties are quite detailed when setting out their policy intentions. Thomson et al (2014) provide a more detailed discussion of this definition of election pledges and the following reliability tests. The case of Fianna Fáil in the February 1982 election is unusual in that the party only made two pledges according to the definition of pledge used here, and these were not contained in a manifesto.…”

Section: Identifying Election Pledges and Measuring Fulfilment And Otmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Governing together in good and bad economic times: the fulfilment of election pledges in Ireland

Thomson

Costello

2016

Irish Political Studies

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The idea that parties make promises to voters during election campaigns and then attempt to fulfil those promises if elected to government is central to the theory and practice of democracy. This study examines how economic conditions affect the fulfilment of parties' election pledges in Ireland. We formulate and test propositions relating to two mechanisms relating to economic conditions that negatively affect the likelihood of pledge fulfilment. The first is that parties do not adjust pledges to prevailing economic conditions, and the second is that they do not accurately anticipate future economic conditions. We test these expectations with evidence on the fulfilment of 3,681 pledges made by Irish parties in the period 1977 and 2011, which is one of the largest country-specific datasets on pledge fulfilment currently available. Given the considerable variation in economic conditions faced by Irish governments in this time period, these cases offer a particularly powerful test of the impact of economic conditions on pledge fulfilment. Studies, 31:2 (2016), pp. 182-203 2 According mandate theory and the responsible party model, the fulfilment of election pledges by governing parties is central to democratic representation, providing a mechanism through which citizens exercise control over public policy (Downs, 1957;Klingemann et al., 1994). Parties offer competing policy platforms to voters and 'the party which attracts the most votes on this basis then forms the next government, but it is bound (both morally and by fears of retribution at the next election) to carry through the program on which on which it has been elected' (Budge & Hofferbert, 1990: 111). This is the author version of an article published in Irish PoliticalExisting research on pledge fulfilment has found considerable variation in the extent to which governing parties fulfil their election pledges and has identified a number of factors that help to explain this, such as the role of the party in government, the institutional division of power, and the nature of the pledges made (e.g. Pomper & Lederman, 1980;Rallings, 1987;Royed, 1996;Thomson, 2001;Artés & Bustos, 2008;Naurin, 2011;2014;Kostadinova, 2013). We contribute to this growing body of comparative research by examining how economic conditions influence pledge fulfilment.Our empirical analysis focuses on pledge fulfilment in Ireland over a 34-year period, 1977-2011. The eleven Irish governments that held office between 1977 and 2011 varied considerably from each other with respect to the economic conditions they faced, including the boom years of the Celtic tiger as well as the bust following the 2008 financial crisis. This means that our cases offer considerable variation in our key explanatory variables concerning economic conditions. Moreover, by examining variation in pledge fulfilment across these eleven governments, we hold constant important features of the political culture, party system and electoral system that may account for some of the variation in pledge fulfi...

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Section: Identifying Election Pledges and Measuring Fulfilment And Otmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Governing together in good and bad economic times: the fulfilment of election pledges in Ireland

Thomson

Costello

2016

Irish Political Studies

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“…Our expectation is that, in times of economic growth, governments would do better with respect to policies that require spending, because the likelihood of pledge fulfillment is higher under conditions of economic improvement (see e.g., Thomson et al . ). Minority Government , coded as one (1), otherwise zero (0), accounts for the possibility that minority governments, lacking sufficient support in the legislature, may be held back in implementing desired policies .…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 97%

Party Promises, Voter Understanding, and Mandate Responsiveness inEastEuropean Politics

Kostadinova

2016

Politics & Policy

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The literature on reform policy fulfillment after the collapse of Communism identifies mandate responsiveness as the weakest aspect of the quality of democracy in Eastern Europe. We build on this research and specify both direct and interaction effects of party promises and voter understanding on policy outcomes. On the empirical level, we develop a measure of citizen comprehension of party positions to analyze this component of the mandate model, previously omitted in much of the scholarship on the topic. Our findings suggest that elements of mandate responsiveness are emerging in the post‐communist countries, and that they are present in some policy areas but not in others. The effect of campaign pledges on policy outcomes is contingent on voter awareness of what politicians promise. This knowledge is improved by the distinctiveness in party programs regarding democratization and marketization. Related Articles Related Media http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2015/10/27/what-does-law-and-justices-election-victory-in-poland-mean-for-europe/ http://nottspolitics.org/2015/03/09/promises-promises-in-the-croatian-presidential-elections/ http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2013/10/22/the-once-stable-czech-party-system-is-at-risk-of-unravelling-in-this-weeks-parliamentary-elections/

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“…Recent pledge research (Kostadinova, 2013;Toros, 2015;Praprotnik, 2015;Thomson et al, 2014;Naurin, 2013;Dobos and Gyulai, 2015) mostly takes inspiration from a small selection of classic pieces in pledge research (Royed, 1996;Artés, 2013;Artés and Bustos, 2008;Naurin, 2011;Moury, 2011;Mansergh and Thomson, 2007;Costello and Thomson, 2008; and the APSA papers by a group of first generational pledge scholars: Thomson et al, 2010;2014) and the theoretical literature these classic pieces make reference to. The two main theoretical sources of these classic studies are the literature on responsible party government (following, inter alia, APSA, 1950 andKlingemann, Hofferbert andBudge, 1994; for an overview see: Körösényi and Sebők, 2013) and the theory of parties and coalitions as adapted to European context (such as Laver and Shepsle, 1996;Strøm et al, 2008).…”

Section: Sebők M: Mandate Slippage Good and Bad: Making (Normativementioning

confidence: 99%

“…On the one hand, 'saliency'-based approaches (such as the classic study by Budge and Hofferbert, 1990) map general trends in policy-making (often relying on budgetary data) in order to gauge the relevance of party manifestos in setting the direction of government. 'Pledge' research, by contrast, singles out individual commitments and the fulfillment thereof, regardless of overarching tendencies in governance (see e.g., Royed, 1996;; Thomson et al, 2014). As the latter approach has generated a more extensive literature, in the following pledge research serves as our main focus.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mandate Slippage, Good and Bad: Making (Normative) Sense of Pledge Fulfillment

Sebők

2016

Intersections

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Intersections. EEJSP 2(1): 123-152. DOI: 10.17356/ieejsp.v2i1.131 http://intersections.tk.mta.hu AbstractDespite the substantive findings of existing research, the electoral mandate is still an elusive category in representation theory and empirical political science. The article offers a conceptual framework that promises to properly evaluate mandate fulfillment in general, and pledge fulfillment in particular from the standpoint of the normative theory of representation. In this framework the non-fulfillment of pledges is not necessarily bad for representation since mandate slippage, or the gradual process of abandoning the mandate in the post-election phase, may come in both bad and good forms. The proposed framework also develops an empirical research agenda for measuring the causes of bad mandates and mandate slippage by relying and expanding on the toolkit of empirical pledge research. Outcome oriented pledges serve as a prime example of bad mandates, whereas agency shirking is a major cause of bad mandate slippage.

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The Fulfillment of Parties’ Election Pledges: A Comparative Study on the Impact of Power Sharing

Cited by 263 publications

References 35 publications

Governing together in good and bad economic times: the fulfilment of election pledges in Ireland

Governing together in good and bad economic times: the fulfilment of election pledges in Ireland

Party Promises, Voter Understanding, and Mandate Responsiveness inEastEuropean Politics

Mandate Slippage, Good and Bad: Making (Normative) Sense of Pledge Fulfillment

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