Pledge Fulfilment Research Articles

Electoral Consequences of Individual Politicians' Pledge Fulfilment

Electoral Consequences of Individual Politicians' Pledge Fulfilment

The electoral consequences of policy-making in coalition governments

Does policy-making in coalition governments affect cabinet parties’ electoral performance? Previous research shows that about two thirds of all propositions promised in coalition agreements are actually enacted. But does non-compliance with pledges made in the agreement affect subsequent electoral support? Drawing on the literature on performance voting, we expect that non-compliance is punished by voters, but the effect is conditioned by the importance of the issue and by a parties’ seniority status within the coalition. To test our argument, we have compiled the new comparative COALITIONPOLICY dataset on the enactment of more than 7000 policy pledges by 217 cabinet parties in 19 Western and Eastern European countries from 2000 to 2015. Across a broad range of models, we find no effect of pledge fulfillment on subsequent electoral performance. If anything, adherence to policy-promises only increases support for the prime minister party. These results have important implications for our understanding of political representation, coalition governance, and electoral competition in multiparty democracies.

Globalization and Promissory Representation

AbstractDespite the centrality of promise keeping to representation, we know little about how it is affected by economic globalization, which is one of the modern world's defining characteristics. We argue that globalization reduces governing parties' ability to keep their campaign promises. We test the empirical implications of our theory with a mixed‐methods approach that combines a large‐n quantitative comparative analysis of pledge fulfillment with a typical case study to trace the underlying causal mechanisms of the theory. The findings indicate that international economic integration exerts a large negative effect on the likelihood of pledge fulfillment in a broad range of contexts and that the hypothesized mechanisms are clearly observable in the detailed case study. These findings have important implications for democratic representation in a globalized world.

Not as expected: the role of performance expectations in voter responses to election pledge fulfilment

Not only the content, but also the context of election pledges should affect how voters respond to broken and fulfilled pledges. Borrowing from other disciplines, the hypotheses in this study propose that voters with low expectations reward pledge fulfilment more than voters with high expectations, while voters with high fulfilment expectations punish pledge-breakers more severely than voters with low expectations. A survey experiment using real-life political events was designed where 2465 respondents first received information that either significantly raised or lowered their expectations of pledge fulfilment. They were then presented with the actual fulfilment status of the pledge, either confirming or disconfirming their manipulated expectations, and asked to give their perceptions of the governing party’s performance. Interestingly, the findings support the presence of a confirmation, not a disconfirmation bias, suggesting that pledge performance attitudes are formed more similarly to other political attitudes than evaluations of private/public goods or services. Combined with a negativity bias in media coverage of election pledges, this confirmation bias in voters provides a partial explanation of the low esteem voters generally hold of governments’ pledge fulfilment. The results have implications for our understanding of how pledge fulfilment matters to voters, and how governments are held accountable for their performance.

Increase Your Rate Of Pledge Fulfillment

Successful FundraisingVolume 31, Issue 2 p. 6-6 Maximize Pledge Payments Increase Your Rate Of Pledge Fulfillment First published: 09 January 2023 https://doi.org/10.1002/sfr.32108Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume31, Issue2February 2023Pages 6-6 RelatedInformation

The Effect of Ministerial Instability on Government's Mandate Fulfilment: Evidence from the Portuguese Case

AbstractResearch on the fulfilment of electoral promises has been particularly fruitful over the past decades. Most of it focused on examining pledge fulfilment at the cabinet level, and little emphasis was placed on the reasons underlying the level of compliance. As a consequence, core factors in explaining pledge fulfilment have not yet been explored. One such factor might be instability in a government's internal functioning. We argue that ministerial instability is relevant for explaining a government's broken promises, and that its importance increases at the junior minister level and among the most salient ministries. Relying on data on the fulfilment of electoral promises and ministerial instability in Portugal between 1995 and 2019, backed by interviews with former ministers and junior ministers, we provide evidence that the fulfilment of electoral promises is significantly influenced by portfolio volatility, particularly at the junior ministerial level and in the most important ministries.

How rational are voters when expecting government parties to fulfil pledges? A cross‐national survey experiment

AbstractThat parties fulfil their pre‐election pledges once they are in government is a fundamental idea of many democracy models. This paper addresses the question of whether the government/opposition status of their party affects how much citizens want governments to fulfil their promises. We hypothesize that interest‐driven, rational voters are more likely to prefer their own party to keep its promises and investigate whether this rationale is impacted by public opinion and expert views. The analysis is based on a survey experiment conducted in Australia and Austria. It finds that voters broadly adhere to the democratic principle of expecting pledge fulfilment but, at the same time, some take a rational approach to government promises. The opinions of the public and experts mitigate but do not change this effect. Another key finding is the significant difference in the preference for promise keeping versus promise breaking between government and opposition voters in the Austrian case, the country with the more heterogeneous and polarized political system. This paper contributes to the literature on voters’ attitudes on democracy and pledge fulfilment by showing that voters are normatively driven but a significant number of voters deviate and instead follow the rational voter logic.

Citizens’ evaluations of electoral pledge fulfilment in Finland: Individual pledges and overall government performance

This study addresses citizens' evaluations of government parties' electoral pledge fulfilment at two levels, distinguishing between the fulfilment of individual pledges and the overall extent to which the government parties have fulfilled their pledges. At the level of individual pledges, those identifying with a party are more likely than non-identifiers to offer both positive and negative judgements on pledge fulfilment, but no clear differences are evident between government and opposition party identifiers. When it comes to evaluations of overall pledge fulfilment, government party identifiers tend to provide above-average performance ratings, whereas those identifying with an opposition party tend to give relatively negative ratings. Respondents who indicate that they do not identify with any party and have little interest in politics tend to choose the ‘can't say’ alternative when faced with questions about the fulfilment of individual pledges. This study draws on survey data from the 2019 Finnish National Election Study.

The Fulfilment of Election Pledges in India

The central idea of promissory representation is that parties make promises to voters during election campaigns and then fulfil those promises after elections if they have the power to do so. Until now, most comparative research on the making, breaking, and keeping of parties’ campaign promises, or “election pledges,” has considered Western democracies. The present study examines pledge fulfilment in India, focusing on pledges made by the two main Indian parties, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Indian National Congress at the 2009 and 2014 national parliamentary elections. The evidence indicates that election pledges are prominent parts of electoral discourse and policymaking in India, as they are in Western countries. However, the form of pledge making and keeping is characterised by the distinctive features of Indian politics, notably the prevalence of valence politics on socio-economic issues and identity politics on issues relating to religion, castes and tribes, and gender.

What makes a good minister of a political party? Impact of party- and field-related experience on party pledge fulfilment

The article examines the effect of the personal characteristics of ministers on their party and coalition partners' pledge fulfilment. Partisanship and additional party-related experience is expected to help party pledge fulfilment. Previous field-related experience should additionally open up the space for alternative principals. However, partisan motivation should be the leading mechanism for the behaviour of the minister – and field-related experience can help partisan ministers to follow party mandates better. The joint dataset of objectively testable pledges in the Czech Republic (2007–2015) supplemented by information on government ministers is used to test hypotheses. The article shows that not only holding the portfolio but also the particular features of ministers, especially those related to party-related experience, influence their ability to fulfil party promised policy.

Which Promises Actually Matter? Election Pledge Centrality and Promissory Representation

Parties make hundreds of campaign promises but not all are seen by voters as central to a party’s offering. Studies of government promise fulfillment accept that not all promises are equivalent but in practice treat all promises equally because they lack an appropriate means of measuring promise centrality. To demonstrate the importance of accounting for pledge fulfillment, we develop a conjoint experiment method to measure public opinion about promise centrality which can be used to construct centrality weights. We demonstrate this approach’s utility by examining the 2017 UK Conservative manifesto. Centrality weighting reduces our assessment of Conservative promise keeping by 21 percentage points (1.3 standard deviations of typical promise-completion rates found in comparative studies). Weighting increases the centrality of EU promises sevenfold and immigration promises sixfold, and reduces the centrality of miscellaneous administrative promises by more than half. These results illustrate that pledge centrality cannot be ignored when assessing pledge fulfillment.

How party platforms on immigration become policy

AbstractWe focus on one of the most salient policy issues of our time, immigration, and evaluate whether the salience of immigration in governing parties’ manifestos translates into actual legislative activity on immigration. We contend that democratic policymakers have genuine incentives to do so. Furthermore, we argue that the country context matters for pledge fulfillment, and we find that the migration salience of governing parties’ manifestos more strongly translates into policy activity when the level of immigration restrictions is higher and when countries’ economies perform well. This research has important implications for our understanding of the relationships between economic performance, democratic representation and immigration policy making.

Pledge Fulfillment Periods May Vary

The Major Gifts ReportVolume 23, Issue 4 p. 6-6 Capital Campaign Procedures Pledge Fulfillment Periods May Vary Thomas Schroeder, Thomas SchroederSearch for more papers by this author Thomas Schroeder, Thomas SchroederSearch for more papers by this author First published: 01 March 2021 https://doi.org/10.1002/mgr.31695Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume23, Issue4April 2021Pages 6-6 RelatedInformation

The Effects of Women's Descriptive Representation on Government Behavior

Does the representation of women in cabinet and party leadership positions affect whether governments are more or less likely to fulfill the policy promises they make during election campaigns? This research note studies the effects of women's descriptive representation in cabinet and party leadership on policymaking by analyzing the pledge fulfillment of parties in 10 European countries, the United States, and Canada. The empirical analysis suggests that governing parties are more likely to fulfill their election promises when levels of women's representation are higher. The results have implications for our understanding of the descriptive and substantive representation of women, as well as for party competition and policymaking more broadly.

The policy-seeking voter: evaluations of government performance beyond the economy

Voters hold governments to account through elections, but which criteria are most important to voter evaluations of incumbent performance? While (economic) outcomes have long been central to studies of retrospective voting, recent studies have considered the influence of policy output—the policies implemented by incumbents to achieve their goals. Building on this promising development, this study identifies three ways in which policy output is expected to affect voter evaluations of incumbent performance—the congruence between implemented policy and (1) individual preferences; (2) public opinion; and (3) election pledges. A discrete choice experiment was designed to assess the relative importance of these three aspects of policy output in comparison to each other; as well as to two important economic indicators. Overall, the findings support the notion that policy output matters to voters even beyond outcomes. The findings also show that voters value congruence between policy and their personal preferences considerably more than policy congruence with public opinion; and election pledge fulfillment. This indicates that voters are egotropic in their evaluation of implemented policy, and more policy-seeking than accounted for in much of the empirical retrospective voting literature. These results inform our understanding of how policy output matters to voters, as well as of how voters hold governments accountable for their performance.

Useful Pledge Fulfillment Steps

Successful FundraisingVolume 28, Issue 11 p. 4-4 Pledge Fulfillment Useful Pledge Fulfillment Steps First published: 05 October 2020 https://doi.org/10.1002/sfr.31594Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume28, Issue11November 2020Pages 4-4 RelatedInformation

Issue Salience and Pledge Fulfilment in Minority and Majority Coalitions: Evidence from the Czech Republic

The article focuses on the differences in pledge fulfilment strategies in majority and substantive minority governments. Issue ownership and dynamic agenda-setting literature are applied, expecting that government parties will focus on fulfilling the party’s most salient pledges, and also the pledges that are publicly salient for the whole electorate. Adding these expectations to the context of substantive minority governments, parties must accommodate these attempts because they face the opposition actor(s) with veto power and their own policy motivation. Compared to majority governments, the odds of adopting party-salient pledges should decrease for minority coalition parties. The effect of public-salient issues should also differ from the majority governments. This analysis is conducted on government party pledges in one minority and two majority governments in the Czech Republic (formed after 2006, 2010, and 2013 elections). The analysis shows a generally weak effect for party and public issue salience on pledge fulfilment. The decreasing effect of party issue salience for minority government parties is supported; the effect of public issue salience does, however, not differ in its decreasing direction from the majority governments. The additional model including combinations of the high and low party and public salience shows that for minority governments, public salience decreases the odds of fulfilment regardless of party issue salience. The article concludes with a contextual explanation of the minority government’s special character in the Czech case.

Increase Your Annual Pledge Fulfillment Rate

Successful FundraisingVolume 28, Issue 7 p. 4-4 Annual Giving Increase Your Annual Pledge Fulfillment Rate First published: 08 June 2020 https://doi.org/10.1002/sfr.31476Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume28, Issue7July 2020Pages 4-4 RelatedInformation

Media Coverage of Campaign Promises Throughout the Electoral Cycle

ABSTRACT Previous studies conclude that governments fulfill a large share of their campaign pledges. However, only a minority of voters believe that politicians try to keep their promises, and many voters struggle to recall the fulfillment or breaking of salient campaign pledges accurately. I argue that this disparity between the public perception and empirical evidence is influenced by the information voters receive throughout the electoral cycle. I expect that the media extensively inform readers about political promises. In addition, I posit that news outlets focus more on broken than on fulfilled promises and that the focus on broken promises has increased over time. I find strong support for these expectations based on a new text corpus of over 430,000 statements on political commitments published between 1979 and 2017 in 22 newspapers during 33 electoral cycles in Australia, Canada, Ireland, and the United Kingdom. Newspapers inform voters regularly about announced, broken, and fulfilled promises. Yet, across the four countries, newspapers report at least twice as much on broken than on fulfilled promises. Moreover, this negativity bias in reports on political promises has increased substantively. The results have implications for studying campaign promises, negative information in mass media, and the linkages between voters and parties.

Blockchain-enabled logistics finance execution platform for capital-constrained E-commerce retail

As one of the most prevailing retail channels, E-commerce has nowadays facilitated retailers to sell goods to customers worldwide and tremendously increased the supply chain efficiency by removing most intermediate links. The broaden business scope and accelerated goods circulation, nevertheless, have generally led to capital shortages for retailers, especially small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Given the SMEs’ difficulty in acquiring capital from financial institutions such as banks, logistics finance (LF) has emerged as an alternative, which is the combination of logistics and financial service. However, the frequent order fulfillment and diversity of pledges in E-commerce hinder SMEs in meeting LF's financing requirements. Furthermore, the current LF relies more on large and reputable third-party logistics (3PLs) to alleviate financing risks, which in turn raises the entry threshold for other 3PLs. Hence, this paper has proposed a blockchain-enabled logistics finance execution platform (BcLFEP) as an integrated solution to facilitate LF for E-commerce retail. A cross-layered architecture is proposed to organize and manage involved resources, workflows and decisions based on the object-oriented methodology (OOM). A hybrid finite state machine-based smart contract (HFSM-SC) is designed to associate and coordinate with all kinds of agents for LF operations throughout its lifecycle. Moreover, blockchain is integrated with agent technology to construct a blockchain-enabled multi-agent system (BcMAS), providing a trusted runtime environment to more autonomously and efficiently execute smart contract. Finally, a case study is conducted to implement BcLFEP-enabled dynamic pledge management for verification and evaluation.