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Title  |
Party Pledges and Democratic Accountability: The Portuguese case from a comparative perspective |
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| Coordinator |
Moury, Catherine
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| Researchers |
Moury, Catherine
Belchior, Ana Maria
Adinolfi, Goffredo
Seiceira, Filipa
Moriconi, Marcelo
Nóbrega, Cláudio
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| Researchers from other institutions |
Dr. Robert Thomson; Edwina Love; Elin Naurin; Elisabetta De Giorgi; Joaquin Artes Caselles; Luís de Sousa; Marco Lisi; Nathan Perry McCluskey; Nicolò Conti; Petya Kostadinova; Terry J. Royed |
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| Abstract |
This project seeks to increase our understanding of democratic party government and the agenda-setting process. It investigates the ability of Portuguese parties to fulfil their electoral pledges and the process through which unforeseen decisions are adopted. Portugal is a very interesting case, since, in the last twenty five years, it has featured an alternation of single-party majority and minority governments. By using a homogeneous methodology designed by researchers belonging to the same research group, Portugal could be compared with eleven other democratic countries (the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, the United States, Sweden, New Zealand, France, Germany, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Italy and Spain). Our first objective is to investigate the extent to which governing and opposition parties fulfil their electoral pledges in Portugal, as compared to other countries. The method we employ to calculate pledge fulfilment is that developed by Royed (1996) and subsequently used by several other scholars from this research team. The method consists of identifying testable pledges and verifying their fulfilment. On average, we expect Portuguese governing parties to fulfil fewer pledges than their counterparts in Westminster systems but more than those in multi-party coalitions. We also expect parties governing as a minority to fulfil fewer pledges than their counterparts governing as a majority, except when more than one alternative is available for the minority party to build a majority. We also argue that opposition parties will fulfil considerably fewer pledges when the governing party disposes of a majority than when it does not and, finally, we expect parties that come to power from opposition to fulfil fewer pledges than those that governed in the previous government. The second objective of this project, which is totally innovative, is to ascertain how many new decisions (i.e. decisions not based on the programme) emerge and are adopted and how this process takes place. An argument regarding minority governments is that because these governments need to address the supporting parties’ demands, they are much more likely to adopt new decisions than their majority counterparts. |
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| Keywords |
Democratic party government, Election manifestoes, Pledge fulfilment, agenda-setting |
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| Research lines |
Line IV - Politics and citizenship: institutions, cultures and behaviour
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| Begining date |
01/03/2011 |
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| Expected end date |
28/02/2014 |
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| Partnerships |
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| Project type |
Funded research |
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| Funding entities |
Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT)
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| Programme |
-- |
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| Website |
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