Abstract
AbstractDoes pledge fulfilment bear any electoral consequences for government parties? While previous research on retrospective voting has largely focused on electoral accountability with respect to the economy, the theoretical framework presented in this study links government parties’ performance to their previous electoral pledges. It is argued that government parties are more likely to be rewarded by voters when they have fulfilled more pledges during the legislative term. Good pledge performance of a party is associated with the ability to maximise policy benefits (accomplishment) and to be a responsible actor that will stick to its promises in the future as well (competence). Analysing data from 69 elections in 14 countries shows that a government party's electoral outcome is affected by its previous pledge performance. A government party that fulfils a higher share of election pledges is more likely to prevent electoral losses. This finding indicates that voters react at the polls to party pledge fulfilment, which highlights the crucial role of promissory representation in democratic regimes. Surprisingly and in contrast with economic voting, there is no evidence that retrospective pledge voting is moderated by clarity of responsibility.
Highlights
Does pledge fulfilment bear any electoral consequences for government parties? While previous research on retrospective voting has largely focused on electoral accountability with respect to the economy, the theoretical framework presented in this study links government parties’ performance to their previous electoral pledges
European Journal of Political Research published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of European Consortium for Political Research policy proposals that are written down in their electoral programmes
European Journal of Political Research published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of European Consortium for Political Research fulfilment as well as the enactment of single pledges – has demonstrated that citizens’ accurate evaluations of pledge fulfilment depends significantly on the actual performance of government parties
Summary
Does pledge fulfilment bear any electoral consequences for government parties? While previous research on retrospective voting has largely focused on electoral accountability with respect to the economy, the theoretical framework presented in this study links government parties’ performance to their previous electoral pledges. A government party that fulfils a higher share of election pledges is more likely to prevent electoral losses. This finding indicates that voters react at the polls to party pledge fulfilment, which highlights the crucial role of promissory representation in democratic regimes. In recent years have scholars started to give serious thought towards using government performance as a record of fulfilment of promises made by parties in their electoral programs, and to study differences across countries and under different institutional arrangements (Naurin et al 2019). The pledges approach focusses on specific parts of a party’s electoral programme, prospective policy commitments (and not all statements in a manifesto), and depending on the content of the pledge associates them with different sources, such as legislation, ministerial decrees, or budgetary issues. The empirical results of Thomson et al (2017) have shown that while parties’ electoral promises are not “cheap talk”, not all of them are kept
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