Are broken pledges more important to voters’ evaluation of
government performance than fulfilled pledges?
On negativity biases in specific accountability processes
Elin Naurina, Stuart Sorokab and Niels Markwatac
Abstract
This paper investigates whether pledge fulfillment is less important to individuals’ evaluations
of government performance than is pledge breakage, moderated by individuals’ preferences
regarding pledge contents. In an online survey experiment, 13,000 Swedish respondents were
randomly presented with one of ten pledges, including five fulfilled and five broken
government pledges. All were actual pledges made by the current government. We find that
broken pledges were more important to government evaluations than were fulfilled pledges.
We also find that treatment effects are moderated by “partisan consistency” – the degree to
which a pledge is in line with individuals’ own partisan preferences. Predictably,
inconsistency leads individuals to punish fulfillment of the pledge; but consistency leads to
only to very marginal rewards. The end result is that government evaluations actually drop
even when pledges are fulfilled.
Paper to be presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association,
San Francisco, 3-6 September 2015. Division 36: Elections and voting behavior. Panel:
Voters and Mandates: Evaluating Specific Accountability Processes. Saturday, September 5,
10:15am to 12:00pm.
a
The Department of Political Science, University of Gothenburg, b Communication Studies,
and The Center for Political Studies at the Institute for Social Research, University of
Michigan. c The SOM Institute, University of Gothenburg.
1
Is a fulfilled election pledge of less importance to individuals’ general evaluation of
government performance than a broken pledge? Even though election pledges have prominent
places in theories of representative democracy, there are surprisingly few studies of how
voters are affected by broken election pledges. And we know even less about how voters use
information about fulfilled election promises (cf. Naurin 2011; Thomson 2011; Elinder,
Jordahl, Poutvaara 2015).
In some classic accounts of representative democracy, political parties make clear election
pledges before elections, and voters use these pledges to make up their minds at the ballot
box. Voters “vote the rascals out” if they break their promises, but reward them by letting
them stay in power if they keep them. Often this linkage between election pledges, election
results, and actual policy is summarized as the “mandate model” or the “responsible party
model” (e.g., Downs 1957; Dahl 1991; Klingemann, Hofferbert and Budge 1994; Budge and
Newton et al. 1997; Powell 2000; McDonald and Budge 2005). For Mansbridge (2003, 515),
“the idea that during campaigns representatives made promises to constituents, which they
then kept or failed to keep” is the focus of the traditional model of democratic representation,
also known as “promissory representation”.
The idea that parties actually win a democratic mandate to enact their policy programs is
sometimes criticized as an unrealistic perspective on representation (e.g., Pennock 1979, 31521; Riker 1982; Kelley 1983; Powell 2000; McDonald and Budge 2005; Franklin et al. 2014).
It is nevertheless the case that party representatives often claim to hold a mandate to carry out
their election platforms (Grossback et al. 2005); the fulfillment of election pledges is a
common topic in political debate around the world; and parties have been shown to make a
large, and over time increasing, number of election pledges in campaigns (Håkansson and
Naurin 2014).
Research also indicates that parties’ election programs and specific election pledges get
considerable media attention (Krukones 1984; Costello and Thomson 2008; Kostadinova
2014). It is illustrative that the 2009 Pulitzer Prize was awarded to the web site Politifact.com
for its Obameter, where US President Obama’s election promises are tracked. Similar
websites operate in other countries. A study of Swedish parties shows that the most-used
accusation in political debates amongst party leaders is that other parties are not trustworthy
and do not keep their word (Esaiasson and Håkansson 2002; see also Ansolabehere and
Iyengar 1995; Lau and Pomper 2004). Even as there are (profound) weaknesses in mandate
theory, then, campaign pledges matter – both to everyday politics, and voting behavior. This
is of real importance, of course: even the intermittent and imperfect tendency to punish
governing parties for broken pledges while rewarding them for fulfilled pledges (the “reward
and punishment hypothesis,” see James and John 2006) can incentivize governments to take
their promises seriously. The alternative is a situation in which governments “feel freer to act
in ways that serve only their own narrow goals—goals that may come at the expense of the
collective good” (Jones and McDermott 2004:1, see also Mayhew 1974).
This paper aims to better understand how fulfilled and broken pledges affect voters’
evaluations of government performance. Our focus – on the asymmetric impact of unfulfilled
versus fulfilled pledges – is rooted in the empirical observation that citizens in most political
contexts expect that election pledges mostly are broken, while research tends to find the
opposite, namely that a majority of election pledges are acted upon in most contexts (see for
ex Royed 1996; Thomson 2001; Mansergh & Thomson 2007; Naurin 2014). Our idea is that
this “pledge puzzle” (Naurin 2011) is related to a tendency to give greater weight to policy
failures than to policy successes, in line with the “negativity bias” observed across a wide
range of behaviors, political and otherwise (see, e.g., Soroka 2014). We expect to observe, in
2
short, that unfulfilled pledges (moderated by citizens’ own partisan attachments) will matter
more to government evaluations than will fulfilled pledges.
We explore this possibility using an online survey experiment administered to 13,000
Swedish citizens. In a simple randomized design, respondents get information about one of
five fulfilled or one of five broken pledges from the currently governing Social Democrats, or
information unrelated to election promises (i.e., a null treatment). Results show that the
respondents’ evaluations of the governing party’s performance are indeed negatively affected
by information about the broken pledges. Information about fulfilled pledges does not lead to
positive evaluations, however; and when citizens disagree with a fulfilled pledge they punish
the governing party accordingly. The result can be a net decrease in evaluations even when a
government fulfills a pledge.
Theory and expectations
In classic mandate-based models of representative democracy, commonly no distinction is
made between the rewarding of parties based on positive information, and the punishing of
parties based on negative information. The implicit assumption is that fulfilling pledges is
likely to result in electoral rewards, while breaking pledges is expected to induce
punishments.
That said, there is now a growing body of work suggesting an asymmetry between electoral
rewards and electoral punishments (e.g., Lewis-Beck 1988; Radcliff 1994). This work is
related to a large body of research – across the social science – on negativity biases, i.e., the
human tendency to give greater weight to negative information than to positive information.
Psychology research on negativity biases in impression formation (e.g. Feldman 1966; Fiske
1980; Skowronski and Carlston 1989) has been especially influential, and has been fruitfully
applied in work on political leaders as well (e.g., Lau 1985; Klein 1991; Goren 2007).
Negativity biases have also been observed in studies on economic voting: Bloom and Price
(1975) find that worsening economic conditions have a stronger effect on support for member
of Congress than do improving conditions; Claggett (1986) finds complementary evidence
that aggregate vote shares are affected asymmetrically by good and bad economic conditions.
More recently, Kappe (2013), using insights from economic prospect theory, finds strong
support for the hypothesis that voters respond asymmetrically to good and bad past economic
performance; so too does Soroka (2006; 2012; 2014).1
This asymmetry fits with (and maybe even helps explain) notions of the “the cost of ruling”
(e.g., Paldam and Skott 1995; Palmer and Whitten 2002; Stevenson 2002), namely, the idea
that that incumbent parties tend to (increasingly) lose votes over time, almost regardless of
performance. If governing parties are in fact punished for their “wrongs” (such as not
fulfilling their promises to the electorate), and not really rewarded for their “rights” (such as
fulfilling their promises), then it makes sense that government parties obtain worse
evaluations the longer they have been in office. We can draw similar parallels to work on
“problem avoidance,” or “blame avoidance,” in policymaking (e.g., Weaver 1986; Hood
2010) – work suggesting that governments and bureaucracies are regularly immobilized by
the realization that policy change more frequently comes with political losses rather than
gains.
1
Though note that some work does not point towards negativity biases. See, e.g., Kiewiet
1983; Lewis-Beck 1988; Headrick and Lanoue 1991.
3
In short, we expect that pledge success will not result in benefits similar in magnitude to the
costs of pledge failure. We aim to identify this through the use of randomized treatments, as
noted above. But we expect that the impact of pledges will not simply be a product of
fulfillment versus unfulfillment – individuals’ own partisan and policy preferences will matter
as well. We believe, in short, that the impact of pledges, fulfilled and unfulfilled, will be
moderated by some combination of (a) the extent to which a pledge is consistent with
individuals’ partisan preferences, and (b) partisanship (independent of pledge contents).
Regarding the former: the effects of fulfillment/breakage on government evaluations should
depend on whether or not the policy is desired to begin with. A broken pledge can be grounds
for disappointment over the government’s untrustworthiness, but it can also lead to
disappointment based on the fact that the individual looses a policy that they believed was
positive. In a similar way, a fulfilled pledge should lead to disappointment if the individual
does not welcome the policy. In short, the content of the policy proposal should (ideally)
condition how pledge fulfillment and breakage affects individuals’ government evaluations.
(Indeed, individuals may even reward non-preferred parties for fulfilling a preferred pledge;
and may attach stronger punishments to any party breaking a preferred pledge.)
There are also reasons to expect that partisan allegiances matter for how fulfillment and
breakage of pledges affect evaluations of governments. Most importantly, those who voted for
the governing party should have higher evaluations than should those who voted otherwise;
and their evaluations may be less affected by information about pledge fulfillment/breakage.
There is of course a considerable body of literature on partisan bias. Perhaps most relevant is
Fiorina’s (1981) work highlighting the retrospective aspect of partisan biases, in which past
performances of incumbent parties are observed through a party-colored lens. In short, similar
events/performances can be perceived differently by different individuals based on their party
identification and/or voting behavior. More recent contributions have also underlined the
connection between partisan biases and negativity biases, which are seen as intertwined in the
sense that positive information matters most if it concerns the party one identifies with, and
negative information matters most if its subject is a party one does not identify with (e.g.,
Goren 2002; 2007). Thomson (2011, 190) summarizes the application of this concept to the
evaluation of government performance as follows: “[…] citizens evaluate government
performance more positively as a consequence of their identification with a governing party
[and] citizens who identify with an opposition party will evaluate government performance
more negatively than others”.2
In sum, in our study we expect and test whether (1) pledge breakage is more influential on
government evaluation than is pledge fulfillment and, (2) whether the impact of fulfillment
and/or breakage is moderated by individuals’ policy and partisan preferences.
Research design Our data come from an online survey experiment on 13,000 respondents coming from the
Swedish Citizen Panel of the The Laboratory of Opinion Research (LORE). LORE is a
university-run academic web survey institute hosted by the University of Gothenburg. The
2
Note the connections between this expectation and the growing body of work on motivated
reasoning. That work suggests that not only do partisan (and other) biases cause individuals
to process the same information differently, they also cause individuals seek information that
matches their worldview (see, e.g., Stroud 2008; Lyons and Jaeger 2014). This makes
individual more likely to be knowledgeable and aware of, and/or open to, information that is
positive from their partisan perspective (e.g., Jerit and Barabas 2012).
4
Citizen Panel consists of more than 60,000 active respondents in Sweden. Respondents are
both self-selected and come from population based recruitment campaigns to get respondents
to the panel. Applications to run survey experiments are granted after a detailed application
process (www.lore.gu.se). The experiment was implemented in June 2015.
All respondents were presented with one pledge, randomly selected from a pool of 10
pledges, whereof five were fulfilled and five were not fulfilled. All pledges were taken from
the election manifesto of the Social Democrats in the election 2014, or from publicly
announced pledges made by the Prime Minister Stefan Löfven. In order to avoid results
driven by the peculiarities of a single policy domain, we select one fulfilled and one
unfulfilled pledge from each of five policy domains: tax reductions, labor market,
infrastructure & transportation, macro economy and education. Constraints on our choice of
subject area and pledges were posed by the actual pledges that had been made by the Social
Democrats and by the fact that the pledges had to be either clearly fulfilled or clearly broken
(even as the current government had been in power for just under a year).
Our treatments were as follows (Swedish original in appendix): “Before the 2014 election, the
Social Democrats promised to xxx. Are you aware that the Social Democrats will break/has
fulfilled this promise?” The given alternatives were: 1. Yes, I am aware that the Social
Democrats will break/has fulfilled this pledge. 2. No, I am not aware that the Social
Democrats will break/has fulfilled this pledge”. The given pledges were: “reduce the tax
reduction for household services “(The “RUT-reduction” – FULFILLED); “keep the tax
reduction for re-building private housing unchanged” (the “ROT-reduction” – NOT
FULFILLED); “improve unemployment benefits” (FULFILLED); “forbid companies to hire
temporary workers for permanent needs” (NOT FULFILLED); “invest in the Swedish rail
network” (FULFILLED); “abstain from increasing taxes on gasoline” (NOT FULFILLED);
“increase state support of export and innovation” (FULFILLED); “balance the public finances
so that Sweden reaches the surplus goal” (NOT FULFILLED); “increase funding of adult
education” (FULFILLED); “make high school compulsory until 18 years of age” (NOT
FULFILLED).
We also include a null treatment, in which we provide information about the government that
is unrelated to pledges. This treatment was as follows: “Do you know that the Social
Democrats have been in government since the election 2014?”. Alternatives: “1. Yes, I know
that the Social Democrats are in government since the election 2014.” and “2. No, I do not
know that the Social Democrats are in government since the election 2014.”
We used a perfect randomization between 11 groups, where each of the 10 treatment groups
have roughly 1,000 respondents, while roughly 3,000 respondents are assigned to the null
treatment. Randomization checks are provided in Appendix 1.
Note that here, and above, we do not focus on respondents’ answers to treatment questions;
rather, we focus on the impact of the information in each treatment on our dependent variable,
government performance: “How well do you think that the Social Democrats perform in
government?” Answers were given on a seven-point scale, where 1 was marked “Very bad”
and 7 was marked “Very good”.
Recall that we expect treatment effects to be moderated by variables related to partisan and
policy preferences. Our analyses thus include two different partisanship-based measures. The
first is a binary variable equal to one for respondents who voted Social Democrat in the last
election. Note that this vote variable is from a previous wave in the panel (one immediately
proximate to the 2014 election), and is thus entirely unaffected by our experimental
treatments. The second captures the Partisan Consistency of individual pledges. This
variable is equal to +1 for respondents who receive a treatment (pledge) that is clearly
5
consistent with their partisanship, based on party support for each individual pledge. The
variable is equal to -1 for respondents who receive a treatment (pledge) that is clearly
inconsistent with their partisanship. Consistency is based on statements of support, or not, in
all parties’ election programs from the 2014 election. There are a limited number of cases in
with we cannot readily assign either -1 or 1 to respondents because the party they voted for
did not take a clear stand either for or against the pledge they received; we exclude this
limited number of cases from this analysis. The appendices include the coding for all the
pledges and parties on which this variable is based.
Results
Estimated treatment effects are displayed in Table 1, which shows the results of an OLS
regression of Social Democrat evaluations on either the Unfulfilled or Fulfilled treatments (in
comparison with the null treatment).3 The Unfulfilled treatment leads an average decrease in
Social Democratic evaluations of roughly -.12; the Fulfilled treatment, in contrast, has no
significant effect on evaluations. These effects are illustrated in Figure 1 as well, which shows
estimated Social Democratic evaluations across all three treatments.
Table 1. Basic Experimental Results
DV: SocDem evaluations
-.122***
(.037)
Fulfilled
-.058
(.037)
Constant
3.011***
(.029)
N
12,868
Cells contain OLS regression coefficients
with standard errors in parentheses.
* p < .05; ** p < .01; *** p < .001.
Unfulfilled
The figure makes clear the imbalance between the Unfulfilled and Fulfilled treatments: the
former make a difference to evaluations, while the latter do not. This is of course perfectly in
line with existing work suggesting that government suffer more for failures than they benefit
from successes. Indeed, it appears in these basic results that the Social Democrats receive no
benefit for success whatsoever – they may even be penalized for it.
Are treatment effects moderated by partisanship and/or the partisan consistency of pledges?
Regarding the former, no: preliminary models suggest that while there is a direct and sizeable
(positive) impact of Social Democratic voting on government evaluations, this variable has no
moderating impact on the experimental treatments. We consequently include only the direct
effect of this variable below.
3
Note that we pool together all fulfilled, and all unfulfilled, treatments here; in doing so, we
pool results across all policy domains. Adding a categorical variable capturing the five
domains makes no difference to the overall effect, however; that is, the impact of fulfillment
and unfulfillment does not vary systematically across domains.
6
Figure 1. The Impact of Unfulfilled versus Fulfilled Promises
Government Evaluations (1−7)
3.2
3.1
●
3.0
2.9
2.8
2.7
Unfulfilled
Null Treatment
Fulfilled
Partisan Consistency does moderate treatment effects, however. These results are shown in
Table 2, which includes models that first add the direct effect of Social Democratic voting,
and then the moderating effect of Partisan Consistency. The Social Democratic variable has
the expected effect: the Social Democrats receive markedly higher ratings from co-partisans –
roughly 2 points higher on a 1-7 scale. The impact of Partisan Consistency, in the final
model, is more illuminating. Note that the direct effects of Unfulfilled and Fulfilled now
capture the impact of these variables for respondents who received a pledge that is
inconsistent with their views; the impact of pledges for those who saw consistent pledges is
captured with the addition of the direct and interactive impact of Partisan Consistency. The
various effects are a little opaque in Table 2, but they are illustrated clearly in Figure 2, which
shows predicted evaluations by a combination of experimental treatment and Partisan
Consistency.
What then is the moderating impact of Partisan Consistency? Amongst those who receive a
pledge that is consistent with their partisanship (indicated with green squares in Figure 2), we
see roughly the same dynamic as in Figure 1: the consequences of an unfulfilled promise are
much more dire than the consequences of a fulfilled promise are beneficial. Again, the
unfulfilled treatments produce a significant drop in evaluations; the one minor difference here
is that the fulfilled treatments appear to increase evaluations when they include partisanshipconsistent pledges – though the apparent effect in this case is both small and insignificant.
Where partisanship-inconsistent pledges are concerned (shown with red squares in Figure 2),
the situation is worse: an unfulfilled pledge comes with a similar penalty, and a fulfilled
pledge is even costlier. These respondents learn that the Social Democrats have passed a bill
that they do not like, after all – whatever gains are made from following through on a promise
appear to be overwhelmed here by disagreement with the policy.
7
Table 2. Experimental Treatments and Partisan Consistency
DV: SocDem evaluations
-.107**
-.204***
(.032)
(.048)
Fulfilled
-.032**
-.673***
(.032)
(.062)
SocDem voter
2.041***
2.066***
(.033)
(.035)
Partisan Consistency
.699***
(.063)
Unfulfilled * Partisan Consistency
-.713***
(.079)
Constant
2.650***
2.645***
(.026)
(.026)
N
12,868
10,704
Cells contain OLS regression coefficients with standard errors in
parentheses. * p < .05; ** p < .01; *** p < .001.
Unfulfilled
Figure 2. The Impact of Unfulfilled versus Fulfilled Promises, Moderated by Partisan
Consistency
Government Evaluations (1−7)
3.2
●
Partisanship
Constistent
3.0
2.8
2.6
Partisanship
Inconstistent
2.4
2.2
Unfulfilled
Null Treatment
Fulfilled
Results in Figure 2 help make sense of the overall results in Figure 1. Even amongst those
who support their campaign pledges, the Social Democrats do not reap major gains from
following through; they do suffer from breaking those pledges, however. Those who do not
support campaign pledges are a tougher group. It makes sense that they do not support a
government for passing policies they do not like, of course. But the consequence of (a) only a
limited bump in evaluations from supporters, and (b) a marked drop in evaluations from nonsupporters, is that the net impact of successfully fulfilling a promise leans towards a decrease
rather than an increase in evaluations.
8
Discussion
This paper investigates whether pledge fulfillment is less important to individuals’ general
evaluation of government performance than is pledge breakage, taking into account
individuals’ preferences regarding the contents of each pledge. We find that broken pledges
are more important to government evaluations than are fulfilled pledges. This is in line with
existing work suggesting that governments suffer more for failures than they benefit from
successes. Here, we can observe the asymmetry in rather more detail, however. Clearly,
governing has consequences.
Indeed, even amongst those who support a party which endorsed the pledge (including the
governing party), the government does not receive much reward for pledge fulfillment. Just as
importantly, those whose parties did not support a fulfilled pledge punish the governing party
severely. To be clear: individuals who voted for a party that did not want to see the pledge
fulfilled not only refrain from reward, they give more negative evaluations. Taken together,
this means that the governing party can receive a net loss in evaluations even if they fulfill
their pledges.
The study serves to highlight the fact that increasingly negative evaluations of governments
over their time in office have to do not only with disapproval of policy failure, but also
disproval of the policies that have been successfully adopted.4 The study also may shed light
on why voters are so convinced that parties usually break their promises, while scholars
repeatedly find the opposite (see for ex Royed 1996; Thomson 2001; Mansergh & Thomson
2007; Naurin 2014): voters appear to value breakage of a pledge more than fulfillment. Our
findings point to the possibility that the “pledge puzzle” (Naurin 2011) can be partly
explained by the fact that broken pledges are seen as more important information than
fulfilled pledges when individuals evaluate government. This makes good sense: if we elect a
party to do something, then doing it is part of the deal. It is not clear that governments should
receive a bonus for doing what they said they would do. Nevertheless, our findings make
clear that, at least where campaign pledges are concerned, it would be very tough for a
governing party’s evaluations to improve over time.
4
This is one aspect of government evaluation that cannot easily be identified in past work on
asymmetries in government evaluations, which has been focused primarily on economic
evaluations.
9
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Appendix 1.
Table A1. Treatments: Sample Size and Demographics
Treatment
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
N
% Female
Median Age
988
993
978
983
968
969
984
982
985
983
3078
43%
40%
39%
40%
42%
40%
40%
40%
41%
40%
41%
54
55
55
56
55
54
55
53
55
55
55
Mean Education
(1-5)
3.51
3.54
3.48
3.53
3.52
3.56
3.63
3.51
3.49
3.57
3.53
Mean Political
Interest (1-4)
3.32
3.31
3.31
3.31
3.30
3.31
3.30
3.31
3.32
3.34
3.35
Appendix 2.
Swedish original treatment and dependent variable formulations. English formulations are found in the
text.
GROUP 1: FULFILLED; TAX REDUCTION
Inför valet 2014 lovade Socialdemokraterna att minska möjligheten att göra skatteavdrag för
hushållsnära tjänster (det så kallade RUT-avdraget). Känner du till att Socialdemokraterna har uppfyllt
detta löfte?
m Ja, jag känner till att Socialdemokraterna har uppfyllt detta löfte
m Nej, jag känner inte till att Socialdemokraterna har uppfyllt detta löfte
GROUP 2: BROKEN; TAX REDUCTION
Inför valet 2014 lovade Socialdemokraterna att inte minska möjligheten att göra skatteavdrag för
reparationer och underhåll av bostäder (det så kallade ROT-avdraget). Känner du till att
Socialdemokraterna kommer att bryta detta löfte?
m Ja, jag känner till att Socialdemokraterna kommer att bryta detta löfte
m Nej, jag känner inte till att Socialdemokraterna kommer att bryta detta löfte
GROUP 3: FULFILLED; LABOR MARKET
Inför valet 2014 lovade Socialdemokraterna att höja taket i a-kassan. Känner du till att
Socialdemokraterna har uppfyllt detta löfte?
m Ja, jag känner till att Socialdemokraterna har uppfyllt detta löfte
m Nej, jag känner inte till att Socialdemokraterna har uppfyllt detta löfte
GROUP 4: BROKEN; LABOR MARKET
Inför valet 2014 lovade Socialdemokraterna att förbjuda företag att hyra in arbetskraft från
bemanningsföretag för permanenta behov. Känner du till att Socialdemokraterna kommer att bryta
detta löfte?
m Ja, jag känner till att Socialdemokraterna kommer att bryta detta löfte
m Nej, jag känner inte till att Socialdemokraterna kommer att bryta detta löfte
GROUP 5: FULFILLED; INFRASTRUCTURE & TRANSPORTATION
12
Inför valet 2014 lovade Socialdemokraterna att öka anslagen till järnvägsunderhåll. Känner du till att
Socialdemokraterna har uppfyllt detta löfte?
m Ja, jag känner till att Socialdemokraterna har uppfyllt detta löfte
m Nej, jag känner inte till att Socialdemokraterna har uppfyllt detta löfte
GROUP 6: BROKEN; INFRASTRUCTURE & TRANSPORTATION
Inför valet 2014 lovade Socialdemokraterna att avstå från att höja bensinskatten. Känner du till att
Socialdemokraterna kommer att bryta detta löfte?
m Ja, jag känner till att Socialdemokraterna kommer att bryta detta löfte
m Nej, jag känner inte till att Socialdemokraterna kommer att bryta detta löfte
GROUP 7: FULFILLED; MACRO ECONOMY
Inför valet 2014 lovade Socialdemokraterna att öka statens export- och innovationsfrämjande insatser.
Känner du till att Socialdemokraterna har uppfyllt detta löfte?
m Ja, jag känner till att Socialdemokraterna har uppfyllt detta löfte
m Nej, jag känner inte till att Socialdemokraterna har uppfyllt detta löfte
GROUP 8: BROKEN, MACRO ECONOMY
Inför valet 2014 lovade Socialdemokraterna att minska underskottet i de offentliga finanserna så att
Sverige når det så kallade överskottsmålet. Känner du till att Socialdemokraterna kommer att bryta
detta löfte?
m Ja, jag känner till att Socialdemokraterna kommer att bryta detta löfte
m Nej, jag känner inte till att Socialdemokraterna kommer att bryta detta löfte
GROUP 9: FULFILLED; EDUCATION
Inför valet 2014 lovade Socialdemokraterna att öka anslagen till vuxenutbildningen. Känner du till att
Socialdemokraterna har uppfyllt detta löfte?
m Ja, jag känner till att Socialdemokraterna har uppfyllt detta löfte
m Nej, jag känner inte till att Socialdemokraterna har uppfyllt detta löfte
GROUP 10: BROKEN; EDUCATION
Inför valet 2014 lovade Socialdemokraterna att göra gymnasieskolan obligatorisk till 18 år. Känner du
till att Socialdemokraterna kommer att bryta detta löfte?
m Ja, jag känner till att Socialdemokraterna kommer att bryta detta löfte
m Nej, jag känner inte till att Socialdemokraterna kommer att bryta detta löfte
GROUP 11: NULL TREATMENT
Känner du till att Socialdemokraterna sitter i regeringen sedan valet 2014?
m Ja, jag känner till att Socialdemokraterna sitter i regeringen sedan valet 2014
m Nej, jag känner inte till att Socialdemokraterna sitter i regeringen sedan valet 2014
DEPENDENT VARIABLE
1. EVALUATION OF GOVERNMENT PERFORMANCE (THE SOCIAL DEMOCRATS):
Hur tycker du att Socialdemokraterna sköter sin uppgift i regeringen?
m Mycket dåligt 1
m 2
m 3
m 4
m 5
m 6
m Mycket bra 7
13
Appendix 3.
Pledge congruence with the political agendas of the Swedish political parties.
-1 = incongruence; 0 = unclear; 1 = congruence
Acronym Party
P1 P2 P3 P4 P5 P6 P7 P8 P9 P10
V
Left Party
1
1
1
1
1
-1
0
-1
1
1
S
Social Democrats*
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
C
Centre Party
-1
1
1
-1
1
1
1
1
1
-1
FP
Liberal Party
-1
1
1
-1
1
1
1
1
1
-1
M
Moderates
-1
1
-1
-1
1
1
1
1
1
-1
KD
Christian
-1
1
1
-1
1
1
1
1
0
-1
Democrats
MP
Green Party
-1
1
1
1
1
-1
1
0
1
0
SD
Sweden Democrats -1
1
1
-1
1
1
0
1
1
-1
FI
Feminist Party
1
0
1
0
1
-1
0
0
0
0
* Since all included pledges were made by the Social Democrats during their election
campaign, the level of congruence between the pledges and the Social Democrats’
political agenda is set to 1 for all pledges. Pledges:
P1. “Reduce the tax reduction for household services” (The “RUT-reduction” – FULFILLED).
P2. “Keep the tax reduction for re-building private housing unchanged” (the “ROT-reduction” – NOT
FULFILLED).
P3. “Improve unemployment benefits” (FULFILLED).
P4. “Forbid companies to hire temporary workers for permanent needs” (NOT FULFILLED).
P5. “Invest in the Swedish rail network” (FULFILLED).
P6. “Abstain from increasing the gasoline excises” (NOT FULFILLED).
P7. “Increase state support of export and innovation” (FULFILLED).
P8. “Balance the public finances so that Sweden reaches the surplus goal” (NOT FULFILLED).
P9. “Increase funding of adult education” (FULFILLED).
P10. “Make high school compulsory until 18 years of age” (NOT FULFILLED).
Explanation of coding
The congruence between the content of the included pledges and the political agendas of the Swedish
political parties was based to the largest extent on the election manifestos drawn up by these parties
prior to the Swedish parliamentary elections of 2014. Where applicable, media reports were used to
obtain more concrete statements by the parties on specific issues or pledges. For several of the
pledges, comprehensive overviews of party positions were found in reputable Swedish media sources
– sometimes as a part of “Vote Compasses” or equivalent tools developed to assist voters in making
their vote choice. At no point did these overviews conflict directly with the information provided by
the parties in their election manifestos.
When a party has expressed explicit support or an explicit desire for a particular policy proposal given
in an included pledge, the supporters of this party received a score of 1. In case of the opposite, thus if
clear opposition was expressed, the supporters of that received -1. In some cases, parties had not taken
a clear stand on the issue, or at least not made their point of view explicit to the public. In that case,
the supporters of that party were coded 0.
Sources
* All party manifestos 2014 – Respective official party web sites
* “Issue list” – Dagens Nyheter
http://www.dn.se/valet-2014/dn-valfragekollen/
* “This is how the parties think about different issues” – Dagens Nyheter
http://www.dn.se/valet-2014/sa-tycker-partierna-i-de-olika-sakfragorna/)
* “Dispute over benefits” – Dagens Nyheter
http://dn.se/nyheter/sverige/striden-om-bidragen-en-av-valets-hardaste
* “This is how the parties think about temporal employment” – Dagens Nyheter
http://www.dn.se/valet-2014/sa-tycker-partierna-om-visstidsanstallningar/
* “This is how the parties think about RUT and ROT” – Kommunal Arbetaren
http://www.ka.se/sa-har-tycker-partierna-om-rut-och-rot
14