Minority Governments and Pledge Fulfilment: Evidence from Portugal

Abstract

In an age of rampant distrust and disaffection, pledge fulfilment is important for the quality of delegation between voters and elected officials. In this article, we make an empirical appraisal of pledge fulfilment in Portugal. Do Portuguese minority governments fulfil their pledges? How do they fulfil those pledges? What is the role of opposition parties? Using an original data set with over 3,000 electoral pledges for three Socialist governments, as well as interviews with former ministers and party leaders, our evidence suggests that: (1) minority governments fulfil at least as many pledges as their majority counterparts; (2) the main opposition party manages to extract the most policy benefits; and (3) economic conditions and cohabitation situations matter for pledge fulfilment.

Electoral Promises and Single Party Governments: The Role of Party Ideology and Budget Balance in Pledge Fulfillment

“…Some of these studies date back several decades and their methodologies differ so their findings are difficult to compare. This paper deploys the methodology now commonly in use in more recent studies of fulfilling campaign promises in a comparative perspective under the auspices of the Comparative Party Pledge Group (CPPG) (Artés, 2013; Artés and Bustos, 2008; Costello and Thomson, 2008; Håkansson and Naurin, 2016; Kostadinova, 2013; Mansergh and Thomson, 2007; Moury and Fernandés, 2016; Naurin, 2014; Pétry and Duval, 2015; Praprotnick, 2017; Thomson et al, 2017; Toros, 2015). Our findings can therefore be compared with their findings without loss of validity.…”

Under the Influence: Pay-Offs to Legislative Support Parties under Minority Governments

“…He argues that forming minority cabinets can be a rational choice if opposition parties can exert influence on policymaking from the opposition – for example, through strong parliamentary committees. Catherine Moury and Jorge Fernandes (2018) show that opposition parties are indeed more successful in implementing their policy promises under minority than under majority cabinets. The institutionalist approach concentrated on the impact of investiture vote procedures (Bergman 1993) or strong government agenda-setting powers (Heller 2001) to explain the formation of minority cabinets.…”

Party Manifestos, Opposition and Media as Determinants of the Cabinet Agenda

“…In comparison with government parties, opposition parties have no control over the cabinet agenda, yet they can exert influence over it. They can raise public attention for specific issues (recent research showed evidence that a part of their electoral commitments are even fulfilled; see: Moury and Fernandes, 2018; Thomson et al, 2017) by keeping a constant eye on cabinet’s activities through oversight procedural tools in parliament (such as hearings and parliamentary questions) and publicly challenging its decisions in the media. Previous research has shown that these strategies are not inconsequential.…”