Parties in Southern Europe during the crisis: Free from election pledges?

Within the context of the economic downturn in Southern Eurozone and imposition of new constraints on national policy making, our paper examines the congruence between issue prioritisation during and after the electoral phase. This is done through comparative longitudinal analyses and use of party manifesto and parliamentary question data. We found that within the electoral and the parliamentary arenas, parties tend to emphasise similar issues, but differences emergence between the two arenas. However, this occurs unevenly at different points in time, across countries and among parties. We propose a measure of issue congruence between the two phases to assess how much elections provide a guide for public policies and how the crisis context has impacted this process.