Parliament as a Deliberative Body – How Well are Parties Pre-electoral Promises Travelling into Parliamentary debates?

This paper evaluates how well parties keep their promises by comparing manifesto content with parliamentary debates in Germany between 1990 and 2014 through automated content analysis. There is a general public notion that parties do not act in accordance with their pre-electoral promises. But this judgment is usually based on legislative output, which depends on various factors, e.g. institutional settings, coalition agreements. In accordance with representation theory, we need to evaluate how well parties act in line with their promises before these institutions come into play, i.e. which issues they raise in parliamentary debates and which demands they introduce into the bargaining process. Are there differences between representatives from government or opposition parties, party leaders or back benchers? Does the saliency parties attribute to a topic influence how strongly they defend their electoral promises in debates? Comparing manifestos with parliamentary debates adds a new measure for evaluating parties’ performances. (Section2:Legislatures)