Electoral Consequences of Individual Politicians' Pledge Fulfilment

Ivana Tománková

Politická ekonomie, 2023, vol. 2023, issue 4, 473-495

Abstract: Voters' ability to act upon the fulfilment of election pledges matters profoundly for democratic accountability. Existing literature provides evidence of retrospective voting on pledge fulfilment at the party level. This paper investigates retrospective voting on pledges at the level of individual politicians. It estimates the effect of breaking a pledge to support anti-corruption legislation on Czech deputies' preferential votes. Since the pledge was identical for all the participating de- puties and not all deputies pledged, the data permit estimation of the effect of pledge breakage independently of the effect of voting against anti-corruption bills. Results show that retrospective voting on pledges occurs even at the level of individual politicians when information about pledge fulfilment is easily accessible. Voters "punish" pledge breakage alone, i.e., they do not punish voting against anti-corruption bills if the politician has not pledged to act otherwise.

Keywords: Election pledges; pledge fulfilment; retrospective voting; anti-corruption legislation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C12 D72 D73 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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DOI: 10.18267/j.polek.1395

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