Equal Performance of Minority and Majority Coalitions? Pledge Fulfilment in the German State of NRW

Matthieß, Theres

doi:10.1080/09644008.2018.1528235

Cited by 18 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…Usually, coalition partners write a coalition agreement at the beginning of the legislative period which to a large degree sets their governing agenda (Timmermans ; Moury ) 5 . In line with that, pledge scholars have found that election pledges that are supported in the coalition agreement are more likely to be enacted (Mansergh & Thomson ; Matthieß ). However, even if on average the share of pledge fulfilment is lower for parties in coalitions when compared with single party governments, there still is considerable variation within each of these groups.…”

Section: Retrospective Pledge Votingmentioning

confidence: 74%

Retrospective pledge voting: A comparative study of the electoral consequences of government parties’ pledge fulfilment

Matthieß

2020

European J Political Res

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Does pledge fulfilment bear any electoral consequences for government parties? While previous research on retrospective voting has largely focused on electoral accountability with respect to the economy, the theoretical framework presented in this study links government parties' performance to their previous electoral pledges. It is argued that government parties are more likely to be rewarded by voters when they have fulfilled more pledges during the legislative term. Good pledge performance of a party is associated with the ability to maximise policy benefits (accomplishment) and to be a responsible actor that will stick to its promises in the future as well (competence). Analysing data from 69 elections in 14 countries shows that a government party's electoral outcome is affected by its previous pledge performance. A government party that fulfils a higher share of election pledges is more likely to prevent electoral losses. This finding indicates that voters react at the polls to party pledge fulfilment, which highlights the crucial role of promissory representation in democratic regimes. Surprisingly and in contrast with economic voting, there is no evidence that retrospective pledge voting is moderated by clarity of responsibility.

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Section: Retrospective Pledge Votingmentioning

confidence: 74%

Retrospective pledge voting: A comparative study of the electoral consequences of government parties’ pledge fulfilment

Matthieß

2020

European J Political Res

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“…Comparative research [49,50] as well as empirical studies focusing on Germany [51] have shown that the policy pledges parties make in their election manifestos are an important determinant of what policies they propose. Parties that do not deliver on their policy pledges have been found to be affected by electoral losses.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Civil Society and the Governance of Water Services: German Political Parties’ Reactions to Right2Water

Tosun

Triebskorn

2020

Water

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The European Citizens' Initiative (ECI) Right2Water asked for guaranteed water quality and quantity all over Europe, and demanded that water services remain in the hands of public entities. Support for Right2Water was particularly pronounced in Germany. The German organisers managed to collect 16 times more signatures than the minimum necessary to be counted towards the quorum. How have the German political parties reacted to the overwhelming public support for Right2Water? To answer this question, we examined the election manifestos of the main political parties, published for the federal elections in . We concentrated on one specific goal of Right2Water, which refers to preventing the liberalisation of water services in the European Union. We expected the attention to and positioning of the liberalisation of water services to vary across the individual German parties. Since Right2Water was organised by public service trade unions and pursues an anti-liberalisation agenda, we expected left-wing parties to have laid a greater emphasis on this issue than right-wing parties, and for them to have adopted positions that aligned with the goals of the ECI. Our empirical findings show that a left-right division exists among the parties concerning the attention they paid to this issue as well as how they positioned themselves.

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“…However, given the close ideological proximity of the three parties in this analysis and the high salience of the issues in question, there is no reason to believe there is undue cause for concern. Additionally, as stated above, this approach has also been adopted by Matthieß (2019) for the purposes of a regional-level pledge study.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Another recent study reports on the linkage in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia (Matthieß 2019). Though Matthieß focuses on the dynamics of education-related pledge fulfilment for majority and minority coalition governments and does not draw a direct comparison with the national level, the NRW parties' low fulfilment rates in the area-none even reaching 40%-also compare unfavourably to previous German federal governments (Ferguson 2012).…”

Section: Expectationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Devolution, “new politics” and election pledge fulfilment in Scotland, 1999–2011

McMillan

2019

Br Polit

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The institutions of Scottish devolution were designed using the majoritarian Westminster system as a "negative template" with the hope that a more consensual "new politics" would emerge. The electoral system successfully prevented a single-party majority in the first three sessions of the Scottish Parliament. But did this bring about the desired changes in party behaviour? Research on the connection between campaign promises and government actions shows that it is strongest in the United Kingdom-where single-party majorities are the norm-and weakest in countries where multiparty coalitions are common. If new politics had succeeded in its aims, we would expect Scottish governments to fulfil a lower proportion of manifesto pledges than British governments. This study investigates the extent to which the 1999 and 2003 Scottish Labour-Liberal Democrat coalitions and the 2007 SNP minority administration fulfilled their campaign pledges using an original dataset containing 600 individual manifesto pledges. All three parties are found to have fulfilled pledges at a rate comparable to Westminster governments. These findings reinforce the notion that the reality of post-devolution Scottish politics fell short of its designers' ambitions. Supplementary analyses provide further support for inferences made in previous pledge studies concerning the factors which contribute to pledge fulfilment.

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Equal Performance of Minority and Majority Coalitions? Pledge Fulfilment in the German State of NRW

Cited by 18 publications

References 32 publications

Retrospective pledge voting: A comparative study of the electoral consequences of government parties’ pledge fulfilment

Retrospective pledge voting: A comparative study of the electoral consequences of government parties’ pledge fulfilment

Civil Society and the Governance of Water Services: German Political Parties’ Reactions to Right2Water

Devolution, “new politics” and election pledge fulfilment in Scotland, 1999–2011

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