Do Parties Fulfil Their Election Promises?

Abstract

Scholars' best answer to the question of whether or not parties fulfil their election promises is that they mostly do-at least in the political contexts that have so far been investigated. In order to describe this scholarly part of the pledge puzzle more thoroughly, this chapter will give an interpretation of the growing field of research on election pledge fulfilment. It will also add new data. The interviews with citizens which are to come were done in Sweden, a system that was long characterized by frequent single-party minority governments ruled by a strong Social Democratic party. Such parliamentary systems with single-party minority governments have only rarely been investigated in the pledge literature. My study of the Swedish Social Democrats' election promises is thereby hoped to show what kind of system the coming respondents live in. At the same time, it contributes a new and important case to the body of research on parties' fulfilment of election promises. Furthermore, it gives me an opportunity to describe the hands-on problems that empirical investigations of election pledge fulfilment stand before, which is useful for an understanding of the scholarly part of the pledge puzzle.