[PDF] The Credibility Of Campaign Promises eBook

Author : Philip Keefer
Publisher : World Bank Publications
Page : 45 pages
File Size : 11,87 MB
Release : 2005
Category : Democracy
ISBN :

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"Keefer and Vlaicu demonstrate that sharply different policy choices across democracies can be explained as a consequence of differences in the ability of political competitors to make credible pre-electoral commitments to voters. Politicians can overcome their credibility deficit in two ways. First, they can build reputations. This requires that they fulfill preconditions that in practice are costly--informing voters of their promises, tracking those promises, and ensuring that voters turn out on election day. Alternatively, they can rely on intermediaries--patrons--who are already able to make credible commitments to their clients. Endogenizing credibility in this way, the authors find that targeted transfers and corruption are higher and public good provision lower than in democracies in which political competitors can make credible pre-electoral promises. They also argue that in the absence of political credibility, political reliance on patrons enhances welfare in the short run, in contrast to the traditional view that clientelism in politics is a source of significant policy distortion. However, in the long run reliance on patrons may undermine the emergence of credible political parties. The model helps to explain several puzzles. For example, public investment and corruption are higher in young democracies than old; and democratizing reforms succeeded remarkably in Victorian England, in contrast to the more difficult experiences of many democratizing countries, such as the Dominican Republic. This paper--a product of the Growth and Investment Team, Development Research Group--is part of a larger effort in the group to investigate the political economy of development"--World Bank web site.

Author : E. Naurin
Publisher : Springer
Page : 201 pages
File Size : 13,62 MB
Release : 2011-07-14
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 0230319300

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An exploration of whether politicians are perceived to keep their election promises. While scholars claim that parties act on most of their election promises, citizens hold the opposite view. This 'Pledge Puzzle' guides Naurin in her analysis of the often referred to but not empirically investigated, 'conventional wisdom' about election promises.

Author : Tabitha Bonilla
Publisher :
Page : pages
File Size : 16,75 MB
Release : 2021
Category : POLITICAL SCIENCE
ISBN : 9781108824248

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"Campaign promises are a critical component to conceptions of democratic representation. Candidates make promises, voters (prospectively) use those promises to choose candidates, and then evaluate them (retrospectively) based on those promises. Most research dedicated to understanding campaign promises focuses on promise fulfillment. Other research considers how candidate positions on various policies influence voter decision-making but ignores candidate commitment to those issues. I argue that understanding how campaign promises function during campaigns is an important missing piece to our understanding of representation. In context of campaigns, I offer an important conceptual clarification to the theory of promises by defining promises operationally as policy statements that indicate an action the candidate intends to carry out if elected. Thus, policy statements can be issued without promising, indicating a candidate's stance on an issue. This critical distinction, I argue, leads to several important contributions to our understanding for how promises matter to voters both prospectively and retrospectively that I test observationally and experimentally throughout the book. I develop a theoretical framework to examine how the conceptual distinction in campaign promises might matter by rigorously defining promises and giving context to what we already understand about promises. I argue that promising increases a candidate's appeared commitment on an issue. Because campaign promises serve as a signal for what candidates will do if elected, by increasing commitment to an issue, candidates are sending a stronger signal about their intended actions in office. Because voters disapprove of candidates who act out of step with their policy platforms, there can be relative confidence that an increased commitment to a position does not come without consequence, thus cementing promises as a strong signal of commitment. It follows then that this stronger signal will be preferred by individuals who hold the same position on the issue, and will more strongly repulse individuals who disagree with the candidate. The result of this argument is that promises polarize voter opinions of candidates"--

Author : Tabitha Bonilla Worsley
Publisher :
Page : pages
File Size : 49,57 MB
Release : 2014
Category :
ISBN :

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How does a candidate's rhetoric affect a voter's understanding of the candidate's position? Campaign promises, specifically, seem like they would affect voter opinion differently than position statements made without a promise. This dissertation develops a theory of how promises affect voter opinions of candidates with regard to non-promise position statements. Specifically, I argue that promises serve as commitments to voters of an action the candidate will take on a specific issue when in office. By increasing their perceived commitment to an issue, promises alter voter opinions both prospectively and retrospectively. Through a descriptive study of promise-making throughout the televised, presidential election debates, I show that there is a distinction between promises and non-promise position-taking in actual campaigns. I then present data from several survey experiments that demonstrate that promises have an impact on voter evaluations of candidates, and how they affect voter opinions. Ultimately, this dissertation points to the importance of understanding political rhetoric in position-taking.

Author : Enriqueta Aragones
Publisher :
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 49,57 MB
Release : 2005
Category :
ISBN :

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We analyze conditions under which campaign rhetoric may affect the beliefs of the voters over what policy will be implemented by the winning candidate of an election. We develop a model of repeated elections with complete information in which candidates are purely ideological. We analyze an equilibrium in which voters' strategies involve a credible threat to punish candidates who renege of their campaign promises, and all campaign promises are believed by voters, and honored by candidates. We characterize the maximal credible campaign promises and obtain that the degree to which promises are credible in equilibrium is an increasing function of the value of a candidate's reputation.

Author : Marek Hanusch
Publisher :
Page : 38 pages
File Size : 47,14 MB
Release : 2017
Category :
ISBN :

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Vote-buying is pervasive, but not everywhere. What explains significant variations across countries in the greater use of pre-electoral transfers to mobilize voters relative to the use of pre-electoral promises of post-electoral transfers? This paper explicitly models the trade-offs that politicians incur when they decide between mobilizing support with vote-buying or promises of post-electoral benefits. Politicians rely more on vote-buying when they are less credible, target vote-buying to those who do not believe their political promises, and only buy votes from those who would have received post-electoral transfers in a world of full political credibility. The enforcement of a prohibition on vote-buying reduces the welfare of those targeted with vote-buying, but improves the welfare of all other groups in society.

Author : Philip Keefer
Publisher :
Page : pages
File Size : 50,48 MB
Release : 2012
Category :
ISBN :

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The authors demonstrate that sharply different policy choices across democracies can be explained as a consequence of differences in the ability of political competitors to make credible pre-electoral commitments to voters. Politicians can overcome their credibility deficit in two ways. First, they can build reputations. This requires that they fulfill preconditions that in practice are costly: informing voters of their promises; tracking those promises; ensuring that voters turn out on election day. Alternatively, they can rely on intermediaries -- patrons - who are already able to make credible commitments to their clients. Endogenizing credibility in this way, the authors find that targeted transfers and corruption are higher and public good provision lower than in democracies in which political competitors can make credible pre-electoral promises. The authors also argue that in the absence of political credibility, political reliance on patrons enhances welfare in the short-run, in contrast to the traditional view that clientelism in politics is a source of significant policy distortion. However, in the long run reliance on patrons may undermine the emergence of credible political parties. The model helps to explain several puzzles. For example, public investment and corruption are higher in young democracies than old; and democratizing reforms succeeded remarkably in Victorian England, in contrast to the more difficult experiences of many democratizing countries, such as the Dominican Republic.

Author : Kathleen Hall Jamieson
Publisher :
Page : 326 pages
File Size : 25,68 MB
Release : 2000-06-23
Category : Political Science
ISBN :

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A media expert and network commentator examines the welter of misinformation--generated by politicians and the media alike--that surrounds political campaigns.