Elin Naurin

Is a Promise a Promise? Election Pledge Fulfilment in Comparative Perspective Using Sweden as an Example

The link between parties’ campaign messages and government action is essential to theories of representative democracy. This article offers the first evaluation of how different empirical approaches alter results regarding the fulfilment of mandates by governments. Three commonly used operationalisations of the notion of election promise are applied to the case of Sweden. The conclusion is that results are not significantly altered depending on the approach that is taken. By studying only certain subsets of promises in election manifestos, overall government fulfilment of election promises can be estimated. By performing the analyses on the case of Sweden, the study also gives focus to two cabinet formations that have received little scholarly attention but are common in the European context – namely minority single-party cabinets and coalitions formed pre-election. The article argues that such cabinet situations are particularly efficient when it comes to election pledge fulfilment, no matter how the notion of election promise is defined.

Promising ever more An empirical account of Swedish parties’ pledge making during 20 years

This study argues that three recent societal trends have increased parties’ incentives to give election promises in campaigns: the increasing volatility of voters, the professionalization and marketization of politics, and the mediatization of politics. Arguments are empirically tested on the case of Sweden between 1991 and 2010. All promises presented in election manifestos by Swedish parliamentary parties are analyzed, enabling analyses of six elections, nine parties, 44 manifestos and almost 4000 election promises. We find that Swedish parties increased their pledge making considerably during the period, from an average of 46 per manifesto to 149. Specific promises have increased, as have the pledges that are unrelated to other parties’ pledges. Altogether, the results point at an increasingly specific vote choice for voters.

Party-constrained Policy Responsiveness: A Survey Experiment on Politicians’ Response to Citizen-initiated Contacts

How do individual party representatives respond to direct policy requests from citizens when the requests go against the party’s position? In a survey experiment, 2,547 Swedish politicians are randomly assigned to scenarios in which citizens make contact to influence a political decision. Their willingness to respond to citizens’ policy requests is measured using six indicators that capture adaptive as well as communicative responsiveness. The results show a lower willingness to adapt and to communicate when the request disagrees with the party’s position. The effect is mitigated when politicians agree with the proposal and when likely voters make contact, but only for listening and adaptive responses, not for explaining responses (which have the opposite relationship). Important findings for future research are that the party matters for politicians’ responsiveness and that their willingness to give explaining responses follows a different logic than for listening and adaptive responses.

When and Why Are Voters Correct in Their Evaluations of Specific Government Performance

Democratic theories expect citizens to be able to accurately evaluate fulfilment of parties’ election pledges. We use specifically designed survey items from the Swedish National Election Study to compare citizens’ perceptions of the fulfilment of specific party pledges with actual fulfilment and assess circumstances that lead to correct evaluations. We find that political knowledge triumphs partisan attachments to incumbent parties when it comes to explaining why voters are correct. The results are interesting in light of common knowledge about the importance of partisan attachment in evaluations of general government performance: We argue that when specific election pledges are being evaluated, personal heuristics, such as attachments to incumbent parties, play a lesser role for judgements. Instead, the specificity embedded in the evaluation encourages citizens to engage in a more knowledge-based evaluation of whether pledges are fulfilled or not.

Party Representatives’ Adaptation to Election Results Dyadic Responsiveness Revisited

Politicians’ dual responsibilities to respect their party and also be responsive to their constituents is surprisingly lacking in studies of representation. How do politicians—especially those who function in strong-party systems—individually respond to their constituents’ preferences? We make use of an original, large-scale survey of politicians and the recent success of the Sweden Democrats in the elections in Sweden to show that important adaptation takes place within the party structure. Individual politicians are responsive to signals about voters’ preferences, and they act on these signals by internally lobbying their party leaders to change the party’s positions in the direction of their constituents’ preferences. These results provide a rationale for why niche parties invest in elections even if they are unlikely to enter government: Their electoral successes can cause change in other parties. The results also add a new angle to the discussion of how anti-immigration parties affect mainstream parties, a hotly debated issue in many advanced democracies.

Descriptive Representation and Negotiation: Gender Balance in the Committees of the Council of the European Union

We study the descriptive representation of women and men in the negotiations of the Council of the EU. We find that even though women are systematically underrepresented, the number of women has increased significantly over time. Some of the patterns follow well-known traits, with women being less prominent at higher hierarchical levels and in “hard” policy areas. We also discover a significant effect of gender equality at the domestic level on the gender balance of states’ delegations in the Council committees. Furthermore, we find a strong negative effect of the number of years a state has been a member of the EU on the presence of women in its delegation, which may relate to the gradual development of gendered institutions at the domestic level.

Do They Really Know? On Party Representatives’ Knowledge of the Extent to Which Their Parties Make Election Pledges

The assumption that representatives hold knowledge about their parties’ programmes underlies models of representative democracy. However, representatives’ party knowledge is rarely discussed in theoretical detail, nor is it often systematically empirically investigated. This article takes the first steps and discusses what type of knowledge of their parties representatives need and what knowledge they actually have. Specific focus is given to parties’ election pledge-making. By comparing the number of parties’ pledges in Swedish election manifestos to Swedish party representatives’ perceptions of the extent to which parties make pledges, the article presents empirical evidence indicating low levels of knowledge. Knowledge is higher among top-level politicians and politicians who trust parties to generally keep their pledges, but the main conclusion is that research should not assume detailed knowledge of pledge-making in manifestos among elected representatives, which has not previously been shown in systematic studies.

Can you deliver a baby and vote? The effect of the first stages of parenthood on voter turnout

ABSTRACT Becoming a parent is a profound change in one’s life that likely has consequences for political mobilization. This paper focuses on the earliest stages of parenthood, which have rarely been theorized nor empirically investigated. Close to childbirth, there may be substantial demobilizing effects due to hospital stays, immediate childcare responsibilities, parenting distress and the physical burden of pregnancy and childbirth. It is unclear how sizeable these effects are on political demobilization as well as the extent to which they are long-lasting. Based on two individual-level register datasets from Denmark and Finland, we compare the voter turnout among parents in local elections across different dates of childbirth. We find a robust negative short-term effect. We also find that the recovery periods after childbirth are differentiated by gender, illustrating a somewhat stronger demobilizing effect of early stages of motherhood compared to the early stages of fatherhood. There are also some indications that recovery periods after childbirth are slower for women with higher socioeconomic backgrounds. Our study shows that childbearing and childbirth have strong demobilizing, although mostly temporary, implications for electoral participation, even in these strong welfare states.

Election Promises in Representative Democratic Theory

Theoretical debates about representative democracy often revolve around vague and rather imprecise notions like ‘the mandate’, ‘accountability’ and ‘responsiveness’ (Pitkin 1967; Przeworski, Stokes & Manin 1999; Mansbridge 2003; Urbinati 2006). This chapter will try to argue that election promises can be used to give specific meaning to important aspects of these concepts. We will see that election promises specify at least five important aspects of how good democratic representation is described in theory.

Definitions of Election Promises in Empirical Research

The saying ‘A promise is a promise’ implies that it is obvious what a promise is and when it is fulfilled. It suggests that we intuitively can judge what should or should not be considered a promise.1 Intuition, however, is not a sufficient condition in a scholarly approach to empirical investigations of election promises. In this chapter, I will describe the most obvious common denominators in the choices that scholars make when they define election promises and fulfilled election promises. This is important for the coming discussion about whether or not it is reasonable to claim that scholars’ choices of definitions can explain why citizens and scholars seem to come to different conclusions.2