The principle that political candidates should make policy commitments and fulfill those commitments if elected is the essence of promissory representation, as well as a widely held norm in the practice of modern democracy. Research on the fulfillment of election pledges concludes that parties often fulfill specific campaign promises when they enter government office. This appears to contradict the conventional wisdom held by the public that candidates’ promises are generally broken. However, there is little systematic evidence on citizens’ views on whether specific promises were fulfilled or broken. We provide new evidence and test several theoretical propositions on citizens’ evaluations of the extent to which specific, electorally salient pledges were fulfilled. Our evidence comes from the ongoing British Election Study. It includes a survey experiment that enables us to examine whether citizens’ views are conditioned by the prevailing stereotype of promise-breaking politicians.
