Pledge Fulfilment in Single-Party Governments: New Evidence from Australia

Elections should allow the public to hold politicians and political parties to account for their past performance and to select parties based on their policy intentions. Retrospective and prospective voting highlights the importance of parties keeping the promises they make during campaigns if they hold government office after elections. But how likely are parties to fulfil their campaign promises? Previous research has found that parties that enter single-party governments, both with and without legislative majorities, are more likely to fulfill their election pledges than parties in coalitions. Somewhat surprisingly, parties in single-party minority governments are as likely to fulfill their pledges as are single-party majority governments. Moreover, there is considerable variation in rates of fulfillment within the group of single-party governments, and single-party minority governments rely on a broad range of support arrangements. This paper investigates pledge fulfillment in single-party governments from a comparative perspective. It presents new evidence on Australia’s single-party minority government that held office 2010-13, when the Australian Labour Party held office with the support of independent MPs and a Green MP. The paper examines the extent to which characteristics of individual ministers, notably their political experience, affects the likelihood of pledge fulfillment. The Australian case offers an insightful point of comparison with other single-party executives that are examined in the Comparative Party Pledges Project. Australia has a long tradition of single-party governments, both with and without legislative majorities, and a federal system. Moreover, Australian politics provides an interesting case for pledge research because parties do not commonly release comprehensive platforms of manifestos, but instead issue policy statements throughout the course of the campaign. To ensure that the evidence is comparable to that provided by other country studies, the authors apply the same coding procedures as the Comparative Party Pledges Project. The study highlights where Australia conforms with and deviates from the other countries studied in the CPPP, thus adding an important comparative element to the findings.