Election promises and their implementation

Whether someone votes for a particular party also depends on what election promises the party made and whether voter groups feel that these promises appeal to them. However, many voters in Germany believe that election promises are not kept – although studies show the contrary. In two projects at the University of Stuttgart, researchers are looking into the causes of this discrepancy.

On October 9, 2022, state elections will take place in Lower Saxony and, as with every election, the question arises: “Have the governing parties implemented what they promised before the elections?”. In representative systems, people expect that, after the elections, parties will implement their campaign promises, on the basis of which these parties were elected. As far as Germany is concerned, however, this criterion is not met in the view of large parts of the population.

In a survey conducted by the Institute for Social Sciences at the University of Stuttgart, 60 percent of respondents said that governing parties implement few if any of their campaign promises. However, studies that examine the implementation rates of election promises on an international comparative basis reveal a different picture: On average, governing parties do keep about 60 percent of the promises they made before elections. In Germany, the governing parties of the past two legislative periods actually implemented almost 80 percent of the coalition agreement.

Given these results, the question arises: How can you explain the discrepancy between citizens’ subjective assessment of the government’s performance and the actual implementation rates?

The collaborative project “Unequal Mandate Responsiveness?” (UEEQUALMAND) is intended to provide answers to this question. The project is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR). For this purpose, Dr. Elisa Deiss-Helbig, academic staff member at the Institute for Social Sciences at the University of Stuttgart, and her colleagues are analyzing the election programs of German governing parties and of the presidents of France of the past 25 years. On a comparative basis, the researchers are looking into differences at different levels of policymaking processes in Germany and France. They are guided by the following questions: For which groups are election promises made and for whom are they implemented? Are there groups in society that only very rarely receive promises, while promises are made disproportionately often to other groups, whereby these promises are rarely implemented after the elections? What role do the strength of lobby groups and the image of these groups that prevails in society play here? Preliminary studies by the three scientists show that election promises address a wide range of social groups. The groups differ in terms of family or social status, age, gender, family immigration history, and place of residence. They are now to be covered over the period of the past 25 years and for both countries.

UNEQUALMAND is built on the findings of the DFG project GROUPTA (“Group Targeting and Electoral Promises“), which is also located at the Institute for Social Sciences at the University of Stuttgart. In this project, Deiss-Helbig and her colleagues are studying the circumstances under which citizens respond to election promises and their implementation.

Preliminary results show

• that the intention to vote for a particular party is not influenced solely by who is addressed in campaign promises. Another factor is whether there is sympathy for or affiliation with the group being addressed.
• The findings also show that it’s solely the breaking of election promises that has a negative impact on the rating of governing parties,
• and that the fulfillment of a campaign promise has no demonstrable impact on a voter’s intent - even if it’s a promise from which the respondents themselves or groups sympathetic to them would benefit.

Against the background of these results, the scientists now want to identify other conditions under which voters respond to group-specific promises and their fulfillment.

The projects are carried out by Dr Elisa Deiss-Helbig (University of Stuttgart) in cooperation with Dr. Isabelle Guinaudeau (Sciences Po Paris) and Junior Professor Theres Matthieß (University of Trier). The total amount of funding for both projects is about EUR 800,000, the duration of the projects is two years (2021-2023) and three years (2022-2025), respectively.