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When Is A Pledge A Pledge?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 October 2021

Suthan Krishnarajan Open the ORCID record for Suthan Krishnarajan [Opens in a new window]  and
Carsten Jensen Open the ORCID record for Carsten Jensen [Opens in a new window]
Suthan Krishnarajan*
Affiliation:
Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark;
Carsten Jensen
Affiliation:
Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark
*
*Corresponding author. Email: suthan@ps.au.dk
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Abstract

Despite the central role of election pledges in modern representative democracy, it remains uncertain how voters define pledges. We examine this by focusing on four rhetorical dimensions of political statements: the pledge giver, the formulation of commitment, the policy content and quantification. In three conjoint experiments on representative samples totalling around 6,000 respondents in the United States, Britain and Denmark, we find remarkably consistent results. On the one hand, voters consistently differentiate between statements in a highly focused manner: a promise is a promise if it is sincere and realistic – no matter who made it and whether it can be checked. On the other hand, voters are not willing to hold their party accountable for a given statement – even if they consider it an election pledge. We demonstrate that this is the perceptual logic of election pledges in Western democracies.

Keywords

election pledgesaccountabilityvoters
Type
Letter
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 52 , Issue 4 , October 2022 , pp. 1911 - 1922
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/X73XUM
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