Electoral Competition, Political Promises and the “Responsible Party Government” Hypothesis

Benoît Le Maux ()
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Benoît Le Maux: University of Rennes 1, CREM-CNRS, Condorcet Center

A chapter in Power and Responsibility, 2023, pp 305-329 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract This essay reviews the literature on the two main issues that characterize the responsible party government hypothesis: whether political parties have clear and distinct positions, and whether they hold to their pledges once elected. It brings together and summarizes the knowledge that has been gained in political economy and related disciplines since the first developments. Based on a critical confrontation of theories with the empirical literature, this essay concludes that the Downsian conception of political markets—i.e., partial or complete convergence of platforms towards moderate policies—is not necessarily adequate to explain political outcomes. As a matter of fact, parties are in most cases shown to be responsible in the sense that they differentiate their policies and hold to their political promises once elected. Several other causes of the current political distrust and disaffection are being identified.

Keywords: Responsible parties; Electoral competition; Political promises; Downsian model; Party credibility; Policy convergence (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B41 D72 D78 H11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-031-23015-8_17

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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-23015-8_17

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