Political Parties and Mandate Politics

Abstract

The growing body of literature on the party mandate has mainly focused on the effect of institutions on mandate fulfilment (Klingemann et al. 1994, Mansergh and Thomson 2007, Louwerse 2012, Thomson et al. 2012, Artes 2013, Naurin 2013). Explanations of mandate fulfilment include the electoral system, type of government as well as other elite-related variables, such as portfolio control and the coalition agreement. Elite-mass interactions, such as responsiveness, leadership, (in)congruence of conceptions of democracy, have been notably absent from the explanations of mandate fulfilment. These interactions seem to be increasingly relevant, especially since the start of the Eurocrisis, which has led to a decline of elite-mass trust in at least some of the affected countries. The panel consists of papers that explore these relationships between the party mandate, responsiveness, and leadership both theoretically and empirically offering updated empirical observations about mandate fulfilment.

Title	Details
What Citizens Think about Whether Governing Parties Fulfil Election Pledges	View Paper Details
Electoral and Financial Bookkeeping: A Comparison of Pre-Electoral Pledges on Public Spending and the Outcome of Post-Electoral Budget Debates	View Paper Details
Minority Governments and Pledge Fulfilment: Solving the Puzzle of their High Performance	View Paper Details
The Impact of Electoral Uncertainty on the Party Mandate and Responsiveness in Ireland and the United Kingdom	View Paper Details
Spreading the Wrong Word? On Party Representatives’ Knowledge about What their Party Pledges	View Paper Details